
Reading Information Aloud to Yourself Improves Memory: Study - prostoalex
http://neurosciencenews.com/memory-reading-aloud-8084/
======
swsieber
This is not surprising. Methods of learning that require more effort improve
memory. These include:

\- Reading text that has the font a little fuzzy so it's harder to read.

\- Reading text with underscores substituted for obvious letters.

\- Asking yourself questions about what you've just read.

\- Asking yourself questions about what you're about to read based on
headings.

\- Finding ways to relate the content to other things you have in your head.

If you're interested in making things stick, I'd suggest the book "Make it
Stick" \- it's a great read about what things actually help one retain
knowledge. It's because I read that book that I'm not surprised by this
result.

~~~
DenisM
\+ taking notes while reading

~~~
swsieber
Yup. Somewhat counterintuitively, rereading is the least effective retention
method.

------
tsumnia
Its interesting to think about this. During my undergraduate studies, I dual
majored in Computer Science and Theater (to offset the pure science of CS).
One of the first aspects of performance is obviously "learning your lines".
Its seems obvious, but one of the ways actors do this is by simply verbalizing
the script. Although it doesn't help with deeper understanding of the
literature, it also allowed the speaker to personalize the words and
understand the how and why the character was saying what they were saying.

It would be even more interesting to see this expanded. In terms of
performance, the next element suggested to improve script memorization
suggested to me was to read the script aloud while walking around. Does the
walking around aspect build from applying environmental context (actors
typically recite lines while moving) or is it engaging physical aspects of the
body (learning while "exercises")?

------
danieltillett
I will add that this effect is broader than just reading aloud. Memory is
incredibly tied to place and time - everytime you try to memorise abstract
information you are mostly remembering your location and events going on in
the background (birds chirping in the trees, dog barking, light streaming
through the window, the room temperature, etc, etc).

If you really want to remember abstract information try to vary the background
environment as much as possible. Go over the material in as many different
locations as possible, with as many different outside cues as possible. Doing
this the different environments cancel out leaving only the information you
want to remember.

~~~
terheyden
That is really interesting, thanks. If you have any further info about that
effect, I'd be interested in reading more.

------
miranda_rights
> The study tested four methods for learning written information, including
> reading silently, hearing someone else read, listening to a recording of
> oneself reading, and reading aloud in real time.

I wish they had also tested reading silently "aloud", since it's not clear if
it's more the additional effort or actually hearing yourself that makes the
difference. Also, if they tested " listening to a recording of oneself
reading", wouldn't that have involved the subject to read the text aloud
initially? I must just misunderstand the article.

~~~
SOLAR_FIELDS
It would be interesting to compare to writing down something as well. My
anecdotal observation (and I believe there is some scientific literature to
support this as well) from college lectures is that I retained more from
writing pieces of the lecture down, even if I never reviewed my handwritten
notes afterward.

~~~
hrmn
In addition to being able to memorise things better when reading them out
loud, I also agree with your observation. I have the same memories about what
I did at university: writing down the parts of the lecture that I needed to
learn for a test helped me a lot. It took more time than just reading over the
stuff, but it was very effective for me.

------
CaptSpify
I've long suspected there is a good link between thinking and talking in
general. I personally find I think better if I go for a walk, and talk to
myself. It's never nearly as effective if I only think to myself. Have any
other studies shown similar results?

~~~
heymijo
It's communication! And the first step in communication is communicating with
ourselves.

Step 1: In your head Step 2: Aloud (to yourself or others) Step 3: Written

Ever notice how that thought you have in your head that makes sense suddenly
is incomplete/non-sense/wrong when you try to verbalize it? Our minds are
great at tricking themselves into believing they understand things.

Writing is the next level. Take something you talk about and try to coherently
communicate it on paper. More incompleteness/non-sense/wrongness may be
revealed.

For something you are an old hand at, you may not notice much difference
between what's in your head, what you can verbalize and/or write. But take
something nascent and the contrast will be sharp.

Verbalizing and writing are two tools we have for communicating first with
ourselves and then with others.

~~~
CaptSpify
I never really thought about it, but when I write, I do tend to talk to
myself. I also often write out concepts that I have difficulty verbally
expressing. Interesting...

------
scandox
I almost never forget things I repeat to other people. So my technique is to
bore the hell of out of people whenever I want to fix something in my mind.

~~~
danieltillett
I do the same, but generally it is not because I want to remember :)

------
visarga
I use TTS to read aloud almost all scientific papers, articles, ebooks and
forum discussions. It helps me a lot. Having the whole web as speech, not just
YT videos and movies, is liberating. Setting a higher speed for TTS is a very
interesting way to increase focus. Of course I still read simultaneously.

I wish there were more natural voices. As of now, I can only stand Alex from
Mac OS, on 1.4x speed. Deepmind's Wavenet promised human-level quality but
it's been a year and it's still not deployed. Unix has no OS-level TTS to brag
about - a sad situation. TTS can be a cognitive enhancing tool.

One side benefit of TTS+reading is lesser strain on the eyes, because the
reader is just following along and relies primarily on hearing. Another
benefit would be proofing your own forums posts and emails.

~~~
hanoz
Amazon Polly has a good selection of natural sounding voices.

------
rdtsc
And I bet talking to yourself helps think through solutions to problems. At
least that's what I choose to believe when I find I am talking to myself.

~~~
vintageseltzer
It does! It's called "rubber ducking" when applied to software engineering:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging)

~~~
lhuser123
It does. And I keep forgetting that it does.

------
aaronchall
It certainly can.

When I need to focus on reading something with distracting things around me, I
read it under my breath to myself, or even out loud when I'm at home.

~~~
tu7001
So is a better idea to produce screen casts instead of writing blog?

~~~
smashd
If the screen cast includes audio narration, no. From the the article: "the
study determined that it is the dual action of speaking and hearing oneself
that has the most beneficial impact on memory."

The person doing the learning needs to be speaking out loud. Screen casts with
narration would be worse in this regard because the viewer wouldn't be able to
speak and also listen.

~~~
has2k1
Parent says

> ... to produce screen casts ...

Not "to consume".

~~~
smashd
Then it is better for the producer, but at the cost of denying the consumer
this benefit.

~~~
lozf
"Repeat after me: ... "

Win / win.

------
avodonosov
So it doesnt improve memory, just helps to remember this particular thing you
pronounced.

~~~
dvtv75
My admittedly very limited understanding of memory is that you are right: we
each have a base level of memory which we can't improve upon.

There are factors that influence your memory, such as stress and anxiety,
injury, distraction, fatigue, and so forth. Those that we can reduce, such as
anxiety, will allow your memory to return closer to your baseline. Techniques
we use, such as association (anybody else remember "1 lamp post, 2 light
switch, 3 stool?") aren't actually improvements to your abilities, because if
you had poor ability to recall you would have trouble recalling the initial
subject for association.

Verbalizing the information is one technique that I've found is extremely
effective. "The red car just drove by me. He didn't indicate when he changed
lanes." I used to read my notes out loud, and record them to tape so I could
listen to them when I was on the bus, but now I just go to a private space and
read the entire text I'm studying out loud. It does get rather difficult with
abstractions such as paintings, particularly because I'm unable to form mental
pictures, but there are ways I can work within those limitations.
Occasionally, people do tend to take the mindset of "Didn't you learn to read
without moving your lips?"

Another technique I use is progressive summarizing, which takes quite a while.
I would write out sheet after sheet of my notes until I could get it down to a
single word or point per topic, and then expand back from that to basically
the initial page of my notes again. (This particular technique simply makes
use of my wrote learning skills.) It's only really useful for exams where
understanding isn't tested.

~~~
visarga
> progressive summarizing

Haha. I "co-discovered" this technique, including the expansion phase.

------
hrmn
This is a very interesting study to me. When learning I've always read out
books/scripts/articles loud to myself and it actually helped me to remember
things easier than by just reading them without speaking the text. So it was
not just my imagination it seems.

------
tomcam
I can stop feeling like an idiot now

------
neves
How strong is the effect?

~~~
jpeloquin
Subjectively, small-to-moderate. Quantitatively, from Figure 1 of the
(paywalled) journal article: Correct recognition of words as studied/unstudied
was 77% for read aloud, 74% for hearing a recording of oneself reading aloud
(from a session 2 w previous), 69% for hearing someone else reading aloud, and
65% for reading silently.

Although assessment was done with a recognition task, previous work in this
area has shown a similar effect for recall tasks.

[http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09658211.2017.13...](http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09658211.2017.1383434)

------
kjrose
But it drives your wife crazy.

