科學家告訴你 這樣學才記得牢

The older we get, the harder it seems to remember names, dates, facts of all kinds. It takes longer to retrieve the information we want, and it often pops right up a few minutes or hours later when we are thinking about something else. The experts say that keeping your mind sharp with games like Sudoku and crossword puzzles slows the aging process, and that may be true, but we found three other things you can do to sharpen your memory.

隨着年齡的增長，我們似乎越來越記不住人名、日期、還有各種事情。我們要花更多的時間搜尋腦內的信息，而這些信息往往在我們開始想別的事情的時候突然涌出腦海。專家認爲經常玩數獨遊戲和填字遊戲可以減緩腦部衰老的過程。這也許可行，但是我們還發現了另外三種方式來提升記憶力。

1. Vary Your Study Space

更換學習場所

A study shows students who studied a list of words in a windowless room and again in a room with a view did far better on a test than students who studied only in the room without a view.

研究表明，先在一間無窗教室裏學習單詞後搬到有窗教室的學生要比一直在無窗教室裏學習並且欣賞不到風景的學生掌握得更好。

Dr. Robert A. Bjork, psychologist at the University of California, L.A. and senior author of the research, states, “What we think is happening here is that, when the outside context is varied, the information is enriched, and this slows down forgetting.”

加利福尼亞大學洛杉磯分校的心理學家羅伯特·A·比約克博士稱，“我們認爲之所以會產生這種結果，是因爲外部環境改變時，學生獲得的信息變豐富了，這就減緩了遺忘的過程。”

2. Vary What You Study

更換學習內容

The same principal may apply to what you study. Musicians and athletes have known this for years. They practice cross-training.

相同的原理可以用在學習內容上，多年前音樂家和運動員就已經知道這個道理了。他們採用交叉培訓的方式來練習。

“Varying the type of material studied in a single sitting — alternating, for example, among vocabulary, reading and speaking in a new language — seems to leave a deeper impression on the brain than does concentrating on just one skill at a time,” Carey writes.

凱利在其研究中寫道，“在同一段時間裏學習不同類別的內容，比如，學習一門新語言時可以在詞彙、閱讀、口語等不同技能間轉換，這樣比單單學習一種技能在大腦裏留下的印象更深。”

It might also be helpful, and this is my advice, to vary your learning style. Most of us use more than one style anyway, but if you find yourself relying primarily on visual learning, try auditory or kinesthetic techniques. You might be surprised.

我給出的另一個也許有用的建議是，改變學習方式。大多數人都會採用不止一種的學習方式，但是，如果你發現自己主要採用視覺學習，可以試着加上聽覺或者肌肉運動知覺，效果也許很驚豔。

3. Test Yourself Often

經常檢測自己

It also turns out that when a student is required to retrieve information, say for a test, that information is re-stored in the brain in a more accessible way for future use.

事實證明，當一個學生被要求在腦內搜尋一個信息，比如考試，那麼這些信息就會被儲存在大腦裏，供其今後更方便地使用。

Carey reports that researchers don’t know why this is true, just that it is.“It may be that the brain, when it revisits material at a later time, has to relearn some of what it has absorbed before adding new stuff — and that that process is itself self-reinforcing,” he writes.

凱利表示，研究者們不理解爲什麼會這樣，但事實確實如此。他寫道，“也許是大腦在後來重新回憶這些內容的時候，在新加上一些內容前，需要重新回顧之前吸收的內容，這樣的過程就相當於大腦的自我強化。”

“The idea is that forgetting is the friend of learning,” Carey quotes Dr. Nate Kornell, a psychologist at Williams College, as saying. “When you forget something, it allows you to relearn, and do so effectively.”Practice tests, then, are powerful learning tools.

凱利引用威廉姆斯學院心理學家奈特·科內爾博士的一段話，稱“遺忘伴隨着學習。遺忘使你重新學習某件事，並能更高效地學習。”那麼，不斷測試自己就成了有用的學習工具。