Related Articles

Memory

Memory Techniques

By Dr. Paul Whitby

Last Updated:

Introduction

Memory problems occur in varying degrees. Some people experience minor lapses, while others seem severed from their past and unable to retain the events of the moment. 

People with mildly impaired memory or normal age related memory changes will benefit most from the sections on Stay fit and healthy; Be Organized and Mental Exercises. People with more serious memory difficulties will benefit from Routines and Special Events; Memory Techniques and This is Your Life. 

Stay Fit and Healthy, Eat Well

Physical fitness is a great start to having a good memory. It is very simple, the brain is part of the body and staying healthy will ensure that the brain functions at it’s very best. The blood delivers oxygen and nutrients to the brain so it is important to make sure that, so far as possible, the heart and lungs are in as good condition as they can be. A study in 2001 showed that people with Alzheimer’s
Disease had a history of taking less exercise when younger than non-sufferers. It is never too late to start, but do take medical advice before commencing on a new regime of activity especially if it is at all strenuous.

Even in healthy adults over 60 it has been shown that those people who take regular exercise did better on tests of memory and the higher control of mental functions (planning, scheduling, monitoring etc) than those who took little or no exercise.

When you choose your physical activity it would seem to make sense to avoid sports that carry a risk of blows to the head. Sports that involve head trauma, even though they may be mild, are associated with a risk of increased memory difficulties. So it would be best avoiding boxing, rugby or soccer (heading) and wearing a helmet if you go cycling.

Make sure you are receiving a good diet including vitamins and minerals. Getting enough good food is important. Clearly being overweight can be a problem. It puts you at risk for diabetes and high blood pressure which in their turn will raise the risk of multi-infarct dementia (where one suffers a series of ‘mini-strokes’).

Keeping your weight under control may help reduce the incidence of severe memory problems. This is common sense and is just another good reason to avoid becoming overweight.

Some foods appear to have a beneficial effect. Olive oil has been shown in one study to offer some protection against poor memory developing in later life. Broccoli, strawberries and tomatoes are thought to have a similar effect. A glass of alcohol a day seems to help too but it is important to avoid excess. This is not so much because of the poisonous effects of alcohol but because high consumption can lead to falling down, car crashes or getting in to fights, all of which can result in head injury.

Keep an eye on your general health also. All sorts of illnesses, diseases and infections can have a bad effect upon your mental performance. Chest and urinary tract infections are notorious for causing people to become muddled. If you notice that your memory is becoming very much worse then it is always worthwhile getting a good physical check up from your doctor. Any text book on memory problems and dementia gives a long list of physical ailments that can bring on impairments in mental functioning. Sometimes these can go undetected, often because the person themselves puts up with it, accepting it as part of growing old. Don’t let this happen to you.

Be Organized

If your memory is beginning to fail then it is vital that you do not put any unnecessary strain on it. One way of doing this is to make sure that you get into routines and that you stick to them. A place for everything and everything in it’s place as the saying goes. Get into the habit of putting all your keys on a key rack that is kept somewhere close to your front door. This way you do not have to remember where you have put your keys, they will always be in the same place. You have less to remember and less opportunity to fail. The same can go for shoes, clothes, books, gardening equipment, knitting and so on. All the usual procedures and tricks that everybody uses to keep their busy lives in order will come in useful for you.

You may find it useful to use a diary. Just as people at work with hectic jobs use diaries to keep track their appointments, you may find it useful to write down what is on, where and when. Make this a habit. Put the diary in one place (this may be on a desk, the kitchen surface or in your pocket or handbag) and make a habit of referring to it regularly. Get other people to write in your diary if they are making a date or an arrangement. If you wish, you could use a wall planner, or an electronic organizer instead.

Alarms may be useful. One of the common complaints is the failure to remember to do something like make a phone call or take something out of the freezer to defrost. When you think of the task to be done, make sure you set the alarm. If necessary put a note on the alarm to remind you why it is going off.

Write yourself notes. Little ‘post-it’ notes are very useful and can be attached to most surfaces without marking. Put one on the inside of the front door to remind you to take the shopping list, or put one on the ‘phone to remind yourself to call a friend at a certain time.

You may like to label cupboards or their contents. Sometimes a row of blank and similar looking cupboard fronts may be quite baffling. Discreet labels can help save time and reduce frustration. I have known people record ideas and events onto a small voice recorder of the kind used for taking dictation.

Another idea is to write down in a separate journal all the events of the day as they happen. You can also get visitors to write in it too. This journal then can serve as a memory for the recent days and weeks. It can be rewarding to complete in it’s own right and can also make for good reading later on.

Mental Exercises

There is a belief that if you should ‘use it or lose it’ with regard to your brain. This is a common expression in physiotherapy where it is quite clear that if you do not use a muscle it will shrink and wither.

Something similar may happen in our brains. It is clear is that mental stimulation in early life is important in building up complex and rich networks within the brain that make it resistant to the effects of ageing.

There is also some good evidence that keeping your brain stimulated in middle age and old age can have a beneficial effect. In a study in the USA 801 older people were followed up for several years. It was found that those people who kept their brains active at the beginning of the study were less likely to develop Alzheimer’s Disease over the next few years than those who did not. The brain-stimulating activities were – watching TV, listening to the radio, reading books, newspapers & magazines, playing cards, doing puzzles and visiting museums. None of these sound too impossible not to be able to squeeze one or two in to every day.

Worrying About a Failing Memory

People begin to worry about their memory from about their 40’s or 50’s onwards. Although most of us do not have any noticeable worsening of our memory abilities at that age it does appear that the memory mistakes we make, and have always made, begin to seem more threatening as we get older.

Nearly everybody is aware that failing memory can accompany old age and most people fear it because it can signal an undignified decline. There is a problem here because most people are very poor judges of just how good or bad their memory is. There can be a temptation to jump to the wrong, extreme conclusion that some
memory errors are necessarily the start of a dreadful decline.

There is a further problem when people become so aware of their poor memory that they become focused upon it. They find that, for example when they speak to a stranger they are paying more attention to whether they will remember this person’s name than they are paying to what is being said. Consequently, their memory lets them down because their attention was distracted. This is the
beginning of a possibly very unpleasant vicious circle.

People who have a genuinely poor memory have good reasons to worry and they can be in a difficult predicament. The fear of not being able to conduct a sensible conversation can be enough to make any social gathering terrifying. They prefer to stay in familiar places with people that they know well. This way it does not matter too much if they get lost in a conversation and they do not have a bewildering range of new and strange faces to cope with. It is not that they are becoming anti-social but they are being driven by the fear of making a spectacle of themselves.

In extreme cases the fear of their memory letting them down can result in the person with severe problems becoming almost reclusive or maybe even following a caregiver around, too fearful to let that person out of their sight. Again it is important to remember that these seemingly odd behaviors are being driven by fear. Fear of embarrassment, fear of becoming lost or even fear of being abandoned. 

There is lots of evidence that people with even quite mild memory problems do worry themselves sick about it. They find that the self-doubts, embarrassment and fears for their future intrude into their minds all the time. Every new little memory slip becomes a further humiliation for them. It is no wonder that many people begin to withdraw from society at this point, preferring the company of those close and familiar to them.

Memory Techniques

1. Spaced Retrieval

With this memory technique you can get somebody with a poor memory to learn almost any small bit of information. Even people with huge memory difficulties can learn if you use this technique. A man I knew had an appalling memory problem following a stroke. He had been in hospital for about three months and had learned the name of only one member of staff in that time. He had learned her name because it was written on the board next to his name. All the other staff had been telling him their names many times a day, telling him where he was and what had happened to him. Despite this constant repetition nothing seemed to stick. Within five minutes I had taught him my name and one day later when the nurses checked he still knew my name. This is how it is done.

The secret is, you forget about repeatedly telling the person the bit of information, instead you get them to tell you. I initially said “My name is Paul Whitby”. I then asked him to actively recall this by following up quickly with the question “What is my name?”

Because the man’s very short term memory was still working he was able to correctly respond “Paul Whitby”. I then left it a few seconds and asked him again, “What is my name?” and again he could reply correctly. We now had two correct recalls or retrievals from his memory. The important thing in this technique is this getting the person to tell you the right information repeatedly. So, ten seconds later I repeated the question, then at twenty seconds, forty seconds, one minute and at two minutes.

If the person makes an error, you gently correct them and then reduce the interval before you next question them to the one before they made the mistake. I.e. if the person makes an error after two minutes delay you tell them the correct answer and ask them again after one minute. If that goes well you ask again after two minutes, and so forth.

You should continue this process up to ten minutes delay initially and this will give you an idea of how well the person with a poor memory can learn. With experience you should find out just how long the process needs to go on.

Example:
An American psychologist tells how a daughter used to get
questioned all the way to the Day Centre by her forgetful mother.
“Where are we going?” was asked nearly every
minute for the forty minute trip. Then, one day before they got in the car, the daughter told her mother “Today we are off to the Day Centre. Where are we going?” Mother looked a bit puzzled but replied correctly. The daughter repeated the question a few more times at slightly longer intervals. Very shortly mother knew the answer so well she was beginning to get annoyed with the questioning from her daughter! The rest of the trip passed without mother asking again “Where are we going?” A small achievement but one that turned the car trip from a nightmare into a pleasant experience.

2. Personal Tapes

For someone with serious memory problems, the method of making personal tapes can be extremely useful. What you do is decide, with the person involved, what would be the most useful bits of that person’s past that they really would benefit from knowing. You then make a short audio recording in which you read out that information and include brief quizzes at the same time. So, for example, you might work out that the person needs reminding of some details about where he is now living, where he used to live, who he lives with and where the family now live.

The ‘script’ would look like this:

“Hello George. This is Joe Smith speaking to you by cassette player. Can you repeat my name?” 5 seconds pause. “Again, my name is Joe Smith.”

“The purpose of this tape is to help you with some things that you cannot remember and also to help you keep on remembering the things you already know. Now I am going to say some things about your past. Then I will ask you a question about the thing that I have just told you. If you don't know the right answer, don't worry, I'll give you the correct answer right away.”

“Before we start, just to remind you my name is Joe Smith. Can you say my name?” 5 seconds pause.” My name is Joe Smith.” “If you are ready we'll begin.”

“First of all it is important to remind you where you are right now. You are living at home in 33 Canal Gardens, Highworth near Swindon. Can you say what your address is now?” 5 seconds pause. “Your address is 33 Canal Gardens, Highworth, near Swindon.”

“You live with your wife Mary. Your son Peter lives in Highworth too, with his wife Jane. Where do your son Peter and his wife Jane live? 5 seconds pause. Peter and Jane live in Highworth. They have two boys, your two grandsons Alan and Brian. Can you say what are the names of your two grandsons?” 5 seconds pause
“Your grandsons are called Alan and Brian.”

“Before you moved to Highworth you lived in Wooton Basset for 40 years. Where did you live before you moved to Highworth?” 5 seconds pause. “You lived in Wooton Basset before you moved to Highworth. Before you retired your job was as a baker. What were you working as before you retired?” 5 seconds pause. “You worked as a baker before you retired.”

“Now for some review questions. First question:”
“What is your address now?” 5 seconds pause.
“Your address now is 33 Canal Gardens, Highworth near Swindon”
“Where do your son Peter and his wife Jane live?” 5 seconds pause “Peter and Mary live in Highworth too.”
“Peter and Jane have two sons, your grandsons. What are the names of your grandsons?” 5 seconds pause.
“Your grandsons names are Alan and Brian”.
“Where did you live before you moved to Highworth?” 5 seconds pause. “You lived in Wooton Basset for 40 years before you moved to Highworth.”

“What were you working as before you retired?” 5 seconds pause.
“You worked as a baker before you retired.”

It is up to you to decide how long to make the tape and what material to put on it. Be wary of overloading the person with too much, and do try to make it interesting. Most people will sit and listen happily to a tape about their past but learning lists of names, birthdays and addresses is not going to motivate anyone. The person with memory problems can sit and listen to this tape at any time provided they can still operate a tape player. At other times you may have to put it on for them. Experience has shown that this can be a rewarding pastime for the person with the memory problems and it also allows caregivers to get on with something else for a short time while the person is occupied.

3. Vanishing Cues

It is well known that it is easier to recognize something as familiar than to freely recall it out of your head. Many people would have some difficulty recalling the Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1980. Yet most of those people would have no difficult in saying that the name ‘Geoffrey Howe’ sounds familiar in that context.

We can use this relative strength of recognition over free recall to help people with memory problems learn new bits of knowledge. A lady I knew found it most distressing that she could not recall the names of her two granddaughters even though she had been told dozens of times. What we did was to teach one name at a time. We got a photo of the youngest, Peggy, and wrote the name PEGGY on a piece of paper underneath it. “Who is this?” we asked. “Peggy” was the reply. This was simple. So we removed one letter from the name underneath the photo. It now said PEG_Y. Again we asked “Who is this?” and the lady was able to reply “It’s Peggy”. So we kept on removing one letter from the name under the photo, like this:

P_G_Y
__G_Y
____Y

Each time we asked the lady, she able to get her granddaughter’s name correctly. When she was able to name the photo correctly as Peggy, we used the method of Spaced Retrieval to make the memory stronger. We then re-taught her the name of her second granddaughter.

This method can be used with people who have serious memory difficulties. The focus is on helping the person to make a correct retrieval from their memory. It is this that seems to be so effective in helping lay down new memories.

All of these three memory techniques take up time and need to be administered in a friendly, patient and non-confrontational manner. It is important not to patronize or demean the person with memory difficulties. Although quite a bit of effort is required if you choose genuinely useful and meaningful bits of knowledge for the person to learn then the effort will be well worthwhile.

Routines and Special Events

This means just getting organized in time. So, regular waking, mealtimes and bedtimes can often save the trouble of having to remember new information each day. These routines help to locate the confused person in time. The more that you can arrange for everyday life to happen almost automatically then the less you

have to concentrate on what is happening. If your life is predictable you can attend to something else, hopefully something more enjoyable.

But of course routines can become boring. If each day is indistinguishable from the last day and the day before that then people can become listless and apathetic. Furthermore, days may make no mark on memory so never get retained at all. Rather than trying to make each day unique and different it seems to help

to have a solid base of routine to your life punctuated with a few memorable events. The solid routine becomes a safe base, the special events can be planned for beforehand and recalled later. They become all the more memorable because they stand out from the background of routine.

This is Your Life

Most people with memory problems complain about forgetting things from the fairly recent past. “I can remember my first day at school, or my wedding, but I cannot remember what I saw on TV last night,” is a frequent comment. This is a well known fact and even people who have no serious memory difficulties will say the same. What we can do is use this preservation of Long Term Memory as a strength. It is one of the remaining good, healthy, strong areas that the person with memory problems has left. You can take advantage of this by making sure that the person has plenty of opportunities to talk about their past.

So, this means that it can be far more rewarding if you are caring for a person with memory difficulties to spend your time talking about the distant past than it is to try to talk about current affairs or the recent performance of a favorite football team. It is not only rewarding for you, it can be an enjoyable and rewarding experience for the sufferer too.

Sometimes it is enough to steer the conversation toward the past. Just chatting about old times may be sufficient to stimulate a good flow of pleasant and rewarding conversation that is meaningful and interesting to the person with memory difficulties. 

Sometimes it may be necessary to use some sort of ‘prompt’ and these can be remarkably effective in stimulating ideas and responses. You could regard them as a key to unlocking a person’s hidden memories. Get the ‘key’ right and you will be able to discover a wealth of knowledge and experience that would otherwise be hidden. 

• A video or DVD of a film from the person’s youth
• Look up some old family pictures
• Photos of past events or historical occasions like the Korean
• War, or Kennedy’s assassination.
• Old books or newspapers, even comics if you can get them.
• Music from the past brings back floods of memories.
• The smell of carbolic soap
• Old utensils like mangles or flat irons can be touched and handled. This can bring forth a rich stream of memories.
• The taste of certain foods may be especially powerful if they are associated with the person’s youth
• Most bookshops have a section on local history which will have some photos of what life was like when this person was
  younger

This sort of reminiscing can go on for as long as you like. The prompts that you use are limited only by your imagination. The joy of reminiscing is that it allows the person with memory problems to take a main part in conversation, maybe even lead it. For once they are competent and expert, something that does not happen too often when serious memory impairment strikes.

You may choose to make this a little more formal and organized by building up an album of the person’s life. This can be done using a scrap book or a photo album or a loose leaf folder. You can insert as much information and as many pictures as you think is desirable. Generally, it is better to put in slightly too little rather than run the risk of overloading the person with too much detail.

A very simple album for somebody with moderate dementia would contain one photo and a little bit of explanatory text on each page. Page one could be a picture of the person as a baby with his or her parents. The text would say something like “I was born on 15th July 1937, my parents were Peter and Elaine Drury”. The next page might be of a larger family photograph or of the person at school. Again, a short bit of text would explain where the photo was taken, who is in it and the date. You will know what are the most important parts of a person’s life to include but it would be worthwhile thinking about including some of these:

• Family
• Schooldays
• Religious interests
• First job
• Military service
• Marriage (or other significant relationships)
• Children
• Other jobs and especially best ever position attained
• Achievements and hobbies
• Holidays
• Grandchildren

You can involve the person with memory problems in making up this album, ask them what they want to see included. Watch them, see what gets them interested and what leaves them cold. When the album is completed you can use it as a conversation piece, as something that you can look at together and talk over. Or you can leave the person to look through it alone.

An important use of these sorts of personal history albums is that they may be shown to professional staff, care assistants, nurses and doctors. By doing this you can show these professionals something of the individual person behind the illness. This really can be an eye-opening experience for some professionals. Too often people in the health and social services tend to see their clients and patients only as they are now. It is difficult to imagine how these people would have been when younger, fitter and more competent.

Dr. Paul Whitby, a senior Clinical Psychologist Clinical Psychologist at Victoria Hospital, Swindon, UK, works with Older Adults. He has been in this field since 1986. His work includes memory disorders, mental health and physical illness. He is particularly interested in ways that progress in these fields can be made available to the general public, to patients and to caregivers.Dr Whitby also has a strong interest in sexuality and ageing. He regards this as an important aspect of peoples' lives that too often is ignored once a person is over 60. This is an area in which older people have a lot to teach the youngsters, the basic idea proposed in my other book The Little Book of Impotence.
http://www.memorybook.co.uk/

Excerpted from The Little Book of Memory by Paul Whitby. June 2003.
Copyright © 2003 Paul Whitby. The right of Paul Whitby to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted to him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.