
A surprisingly potent technique can boost short and long-term recall - happy-go-lucky
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180208-an-effortless-way-to-strengthen-your-memory
======
dfabulich
Just as quiet contemplation can induce memory formation, playing Tetris after
a traumatic event (like a car accident) seems to help prevent the formation of
intrusive memories.

[https://www.nature.com/articles/mp201723](https://www.nature.com/articles/mp201723)

> _Preventing intrusive memories after trauma via a brief intervention
> involving Tetris computer game play in the emergency department: a proof-of-
> concept randomized controlled trial_

~~~
mephitix
Thanks for sharing this.. when I was around 4 years old my parents, a
relative, and I were in and out of a hospital.

We were going through a really tough time dealing with a life-altering
diagnosis of one of my siblings. A lot of anger and sadness, especially from
my parents.

But - the only thing I actually remember from the hospital was playing Galaga
in the hospital game room with my relative. Since I was 4 years old, I always
wondered (a) why it is such a vivid memory and (b) why I can't remember my
family or myself being upset. Quite surreal to see that this specific scenario
has been studied.

~~~
ak39
Hebbian theory: "neurons/cells that fire together, wire together".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebbian_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebbian_theory)

~~~
0xdeadbeefbabe
If that were so I would expect aversion therapy to work.

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laser
Is it possible that people simply continue to think about what they were
trying to learn, consciously or not, when given no tasks? Why is the control
comparing people who tried to learn information and then took a break to
people who tried to learn even more information? Would a more insightful
control be to look at how people who took a break compared to people who
continued studying the material during the break time?

I would expect those who continued to study for more time would have better
recall, but that would be incredible if untrue, ie. you could literally learn
more by doing less. Taken to the extreme you seem to learn more by doing less
at times. For example you'll learn more sleeping 8 hours each night for a week
than staying up for a week straight, but I wonder if these short breaks allow
for fatigue recovery and memory consolidation, like sleep, or if they simply
provide opportunity to think more about material, which would obviously give
an advantage as compared to the people in the studies "controls" that have to
learn new information.

Anecdotally, I definitely feel that meditation and breaks helps me consolidate
my learnings and raise my overall productivity, but I'm not sure I find the
particular scientific studies described here to be highly convincing of that.

~~~
brandall10
My thought is too much focus on a thing can cause blockages in the deeper
processing of that thing.

I'm sure many engineers are familiar with the concept of banging their head
against the keyboard all day on what's a seemingly simple issue/bug, only to
find the solution miraculously appear hours later in their heads out of thin
air - maybe over dinner talking to a friend, maybe awaking in the middle of
the night, maybe in the shower the next morning. The point is it all happened
a good chunk of time away from the glow of the screen with their debugger at
hand. It's a combination of having space to process subconsciously which is
often spurred on by a context switch.

I imagine a similar thing happens with learning, perhaps even the act of
trying to recall something that happened in the past itself causes a deeper
processing/association in your brain. All of a sudden you're not relying so
much on rote memory but deeper, somewhat disparate contextual cues to aid in
the recall.

~~~
zaphirplane
Being creative (debugging loosely falls in that category) and learning has to
be different. When creating or inventing you can fall well and truly inside
the box, taking a break helps you think outside the box, learning sounds like
the more in the box/zone the more you get it.

TLDR; sometimes you want a new perspective, sometime re-energise, taking a
break is an easy way to get both. You

~~~
brandall10
But that's the thing - I believe deep learning is actually a creative process.
The new information needs to fit in your existing model of what you already
know/believe, and doing so is a creative endeavor. The more you move away from
that the more you end up with rote memorization.

That's why people respond better to different teaching styles, different
angles of explanation, top-down vs. bottom-up, etc - because they better align
with how their creative mind works.

------
fineline
I feel (i.e. just my own subjective experience) it's not only the formation of
memory that benefits from mental "down time" but also the gradual solution of
abstract problems, such as the ones we come across in building complicated
information systems.

I'm not sure about this:

>> we should aim for “minimal interference” during these breaks – deliberately
avoiding any activity that could tamper with the delicate task of memory
formation. So no running errands, checking your emails, or surfing the web on
your smartphone.

Whilst I agree that cluttering up the brain with other similar sorts of
information (so stuff in emails or web) is counter-productive, I feel (again
just my own experience) that undertaking a completely different sort of
activity which exercises the brain in different ways (so for me things like a
bike ride, chopping firewood, kicking a footy with the kids) can have great
results. Getting back to the original task, I do often find progress has come
out of "thin air".

------
KyleBrandt
A bit of sad irony with the interjected clickbait-like links:

"... You really need to give your brain the chance for a complete recharge
with no distractions.

\- The mystery of why you can’t remember being a baby \- The man who can’t
trust his own brain \- A new way to master your emotions

An excuse to do nothing may seem like a perfect mnemonic technique for the
lazy student..."

~~~
flatfilefan
The content of the linked articles is no worse or better than the original
one. So I would not call that a clickbait. Actually red the one about children
memory with pleasure.

------
ferros
Isn’t this what people did this organically before the advent of smartphones?

There would be gaps of time where you would just ‘think’.

Now it feels like you don’t go a second without distraction. Any gap of
seconds is automatically filled by picking up your smartphone.

~~~
david927
_“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a
room alone.”_

\- Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662)

------
slaunchwise
I've found this technique also helps when trying to learn challenging (for me)
things on the guitar. The act of learning to play something new means inducing
muscle memory as well as simply memorizing the tune. I work on it in the
evening to the point where I don't feel like I'm making progress any more.
When I come back to it the next day, I find I've made progress.

~~~
brokenmachine
I had the same experience when I played the guitar.

Another thing is, a study was done where one group practiced the piano, the
other group just sat in front of the piano imagining practicing, and another
group did no practice.

The group that just imagined practicing ended up playing almost as well as the
group that was actually practicing, and both groups were obviously better than
the group that did no practice.

The mind is crazy.

------
monktastic1
Lot of comments about meditation here. The thing is, most forms of meditation
are _active_ \-- for example, pay attention to your breath. Presumably at
least some of the mind wandering that went on in this study was about the
material, and most (though not all) forms of meditation would suppress that.

~~~
fpgaminer
My takeaway from my thus far limited experience practicing mindfulness
meditation is that (at least that particular form of meditation) it is not
about suppressing thoughts. It's not about actively quieting the mind. Rather,
it's about becoming an observer of the thoughts in your mind, rather than the
active participant you usually are. You view your thoughts as if they were
just another sense from the external world. i.e. you become a passive
observer.

So, at least mindfulness meditation, is passive. And that's a rather popular
form of meditation these days. It may have the same effects the article
discusses, as a result.

(NOTE: The focus on breath during mindfulness training is temporary, and is
really just a technique to get you to A) relax and B) begin to focus on the
present and sensations you don't normally observe).

~~~
bjterry
I have seen other people who have this conception of meditation, but I am not
sure it paints the whole picture. Among the different schools of meditation
there are both those that tend to "suppress thoughts" and those that simply
observe whatever arises.

In the first category I would put techniques which teach you to focus on a
meditation object, most often the breath or a mantra. If someone says
"mindfulness meditation" I generally think they are referring to this kind of
meditation, and examplars can be found in books like Mindfulness in Plain
English or The Mind Illuminated (even though there are also both quite
different approaches to meditation, one being focused on "insight" first and
the other based on "concentration" first). They don't teach you to suppress
thoughts, but they teach you to focus on a particular thing and IGNORE
thought, which has the effect, long term, of causing those thoughts not to
arise.

But there are also schools that focus on "open awareness" or "just sitting"
styles of meditation. This is very common teaching in Zen Buddhism but is also
practiced in some schools Tibetan Buddhism, at least in Dzogchen. This, I
think, is what you are referring to; where you sit and observe at a mental
distance whatever thoughts arise. Eventually, this also causes thoughts to
arrive much less frequently.

If you are referring to the research literature, however, I think mindfulness
generally refers to the first kind. As with everything, the borders blur
together.

------
ivdivd0
This and some other tricks are covered in the "Learning How to Learn" course
on coursera ([https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-
learn](https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn)).

------
camillomiller
Another effortless way to improve memory and concentration: put your phone
away

~~~
jamesrcole
phones can be pretty addictive, so "effortless" is not the word I'd use.

~~~
camillomiller
True, but the action itself really is almost effortless: put the phone in
another room, then go to your desk and start working. You’ll be surprised at
how easier it becomes to get into “the zone”

~~~
jamesrcole
You're ignoring the part of it that's difficult. Like saying that not being
addicted to a drug or poker machines is effortless because the action of not
picking up the needle or not pulling the handle is almost effortless.

------
swsieber
For anybody perusing the comments here for tips on how to better learn,
consider reading "Make it stick". It's a research backed book about the most
effective study methods. It starts off with the most research backed and
simple techniques to the more complex and less well understood learning
concepts.

Here's the kicker: the two most common techiques, rereading and cramming, are
the least effective.

The underlying theme about what is effective: anything you can to do to make
learning take more effort, while not hindering it, generally improves it. That
includes spaced repetition, practicing recall in different settings, and even
something as mundane as pre-modifying the text to replace random letters with
underscores. Also, testing is very important to both to measurement of
learning _and the actual learning process itself._ Don't forget a proper
feedback loop either.

Lastly, something I appreciated reading in the books was how as often as
possible, there were studies done in classrooms to try to quantify how small
technique and curriculum changes actually impact student learning.

------
sureaboutthis
When my son was in grade school, he had to learn the 13 colony names. He could
only get about seven of them before stumbling. I told him to try memorizing
them before he went to bed and he would do better in the morning.

Needless to say, in the morning, he could rip off all 13 in a row without
effort. I've found this method to work for me, too.

~~~
bagacrap
This worked for me in middle school when I had to memorize German-language
poems while not knowing German. It was rather magical how I could go to sleep
unable to regurgitate the words and have no problem the next morning. These
days I don't have many opportunities to test my rote memory abilities,
thankfully.

------
zethraeus
This 2012 paper seems to be the original research.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22829465](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22829465)

------
alexland
Seems like there could be an interesting synergy here with the Pomodoro
technique (though the 15/5 cycle would need to be modified since the studies
appear to use 10 minute breaks).

------
YouAreGreat
> first documented in 1900

We should have put in 15 minutes of undisturbed rest after reading this in
1900. We didn't, and promptly forgot how not to forget.

------
stevebmark
__Please skip the clickbait article, __the entire thing is: "daydreaming
boosts memory"

------
sAbakumoff
I'm wondering is meditation is the best possible way to take a break after
learning new things...

------
shahbaby
The downtime from not having a smart phone allowed more time for me to
contemplate my life and sow the seeds for better future decisions.

Information and convenience is useful up to a certain point after which it can
actually become a hindrance.

There are billions spent on making you believe otherwise.

------
malloryerik
I wonder what happens if people meditate during the resting period.

------
polskibus
Yet, another argument against addictiveness of modern online services. I
wonder how it will turn out in the end.

------
lordnacho
What happens if you just go to sleep? Is stuff you learned right before
bedtime easier to remember?

~~~
leephillips
The article mentions that "stuff you learned right before bedtime [is] easier
to remember". Perhaps you should have read it just before bedtime.

------
nine_k
So, doing nothing is not doing nothing; it's thinking and remembering.

------
Someone1234
Are the benefits of meditation really that new? For example this article from
2013[0]. Seems like this gets repeated every couple of years like clockwork.

[0] [https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/05/study-
med...](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/05/study-meditation-
improves-memory-attention/275564/)

~~~
wahern
Don't forget the _dangers_ of meditation:
[https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/the-
dark-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/the-dark-knight-
of-the-souls/372766/)

~~~
jimmytucson
This. A lot of people get so caught up in the benefits of doing nothing they
forget it’s dangerous to do _too_ little. One technique that’s worked wonders
for me is breaking up doing nothing with 15 minutes of doing something. That
way I’m not doing nothing or something all of the time.

------
phinnaeus
The title claims this is effortless but at a minimum I have to at least read
this article. Misleading title.

~~~
logicallee
I had the same reaction to the title, however the article is extremely
convincing: in one case an 11-fold increase in recall.

I will use this for the rest of my life. By the way I used the technique after
reading the article. Likely this is why I recall the 11-fold figure. I even
remember the numbers: 7% recall to 79% recall for the case I just quoted. This
is far from normal for me.

This is probably the most important article I read in the past year on HN.

~~~
ramblerman
the 11 fold increase was for people with previous neurological damage.

For healthy people it was 10-30%

~~~
logicallee
Yes I know, but didn't mention it as I wanted OP to read the article. Still a
huge difference.

------
satori99
Doing nothing at all was the way I approached high-school homework, and it
worked well enough for me.

