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62 of 64 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Your Memory, 31 Dec 2004
In the introduction to the book, one of the first things the reader realises is that the approach of the author is to present the fundamentals of memory from a scientific perspective and backing up assertions with evidence from studies. I was impressed with the frequent references to a huge number of psychological journals and also books published in the field of memory. This seems like the perfect introductory book in understanding one's memory and how to use it. The scientific objectivity of the book makes it all the more appropriate as a first book in the field, (if you would like to read several different opinions on the matter as I would), as it leads to not only knowing from evidence of the experiences of the author what is possible with memory, but also gives a sound framework of understanding how the brain is best worked with, giving data from studies to make this convincing. On the practical side, reading this book has given me a lot of ideas on how to improve my memory, and the improvements have been taking effect since I was still reading the book. This is due partly to the results given throughout the book, taken from scientific studies, such as studying seperate subjects in seperate places can reduce interference between recall of memorized information from those subjects, or that if two subjects that are very similar are being studied, (such as Italian and Spanish), then interference is much more likely so studying the two in different places or at clearly distinct times is important to reduce potential interference. So many interesting facts observed from studies are here; I'll give another example: it has been observed that after studying for a test, sleeping in the intervening time before the test results in better recall of the learnt material than if you were to stay awake, or continue to learn the material and not sleep before the test. Techical terms such as retention, recall, overlearning, interference, et al are here and I like the systematic way that the author uses these technical terms to clarify explanations of, for example, the use of specific mneumonics later in the book, (without the technical terms there would surely be more chance of ambiguity). The first sections of the book explain what is known so far from studies about memory and how to improve your memory in general. Later in the book, a number of mneumonic systems are expounded; namely the link, story, loci, peg, and phonetic mneumonics. The most advanced of these by far seems to be the phonetic system. All in all this is an excellent, well written, fascinating, and beneficial book. I wholly recommend it to anyone interesting in improving their memory, or anyone with a general interest in memory.
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by Peter Kump
by Derren Brown
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