Moving Information From Short Term to Long Term Memory:

Focusing on meaning also helps with chunking.  Understanding the meaning of information to be learned involves understanding how new information relates to other new information or to information you already know.

Focusing on meaning not only helps with chunking, it also helps you to get information into and out of long term memory in the most efficient way.  While we said that rote rehearsal is not a very efficient strategy for moving information from short term to long term memory, there is another type of rehearsal, called elaborative rehearsal  that works quite well.

In elaborative rehearsal, you focus on the meaning of information to be learned and try to relate it to information that is already in your long term memory.  This seems to help new information to move into long term memory.  Since long term memory appears to "file" information according to meaning, this will also help you to be able to find that information when you need to get it for an exam or for real life.

This page was last revised on 09/09/2008.