Improve Verbal Memory
The Missing Memory Link
This Article covers the two part technique Auditory and Motor Articulation. The introduction is a brief overview of the technique, followed by a steps by step section explaining the individual activities for the three stages of the course.
Introduction to improving your verbal memory
How good is your verbal memory, and how good is your verbal representation? Okay to begin with a little challenge to see how good your verbal representation is.
Try the following experiment. Imagine waving your arms around in front of you. Image waving your arms about behind you where you can’t see them. Easy? Concentrate on the sensation of your arms moving, the air passing over and around them. Imagine the sensation of running your hand up and down your lower back.
Simple?
Imagine speaking out loud and imagine hearing someone speaking out loud, but focus on evoking the experience of hearing them, not saying it to yourself in your internal voice.
Not so easy?
Okay, now keep your mouth still and imagine the sensation of speaking. Can’t? Shouldn't you be able to imagine the movement of your tongue, lips, the roof of your mouth, nasal passage and jaw. The reason you don’t have this ability is because it is beyond normal experience. Many may be able to visualise it or know how they do it but almost everyone will not be able to mentally evoke the sensation of making a sound, let alone the speaking a common phrase. Would it surprise you that improving this ability can improve verbal memory.
A confounding factor is how can you ensure verbalization is processed in the bit that is supposed to process sound. This can be achieved easily by mouthing a vowel sound, a word or even a phrase whilst trying to recall a different sound. This is referred to as locking up your internal voice. This will ensure that the competing motor representation is occupied or locked and does not compensate. Keep it simple to start with by just mouthing one vowel sound.
Test it, make a vowel sound in your head, for example, ‘Ah’, whilst mouthing a vowel sound for example ‘e’. The mouthing of the vowel sound should interrupt (lock up)the 'Ah' in your head. As you improve you should be able to evoke a word then later on a phrase
Contents
Steps
Improve Auditory Representation
You must practise these activities multiple times per day.
- Evoke isolated sounds. The idea is to try to recall sounds that cannot be represented by your internal voice (examples are below). Try to evoke as many sounds as you can. Don’t focus too much on one sound, you must try as many as you can for a little while then go on to another if the sound doesn’t come to you. This will be easiest to do at night, when you are relaxed.
- A beeping alarm.
- A single note from a familiar or pleasant sounding instrument (i.e. piano).
- The noise of a buzzer from a familiar game show.
- A crashing noise.
- Smashing pans.
- A door closing.
- A popping sound.
- Clicking buttons
- Putting a cup down on a table
- The high pitch screaming of a child or even a baby screaming.
- Belches
- Any other interesting sounds you hear throughout the day
- Get a Dictaphone and record a sound and play it back after a few seconds. Try to recall it exactly. Imagine the sound then play it back after a few seconds.
- Listen to snippets of classical or instrumental music. Try to recall the melody or keep it in your head. Make sure you concentrate on the quality of the notes. Start with a few simple notes at a time and gradually progress to more complicated melodies.
- Focus on recalling daily events, such as where you went for a meal. Try to recall some of the incidental sounds such as the clinking sound of the serving staff placing food, footsteps or the noise of pouring a drink.
- Try to imagine friends and loved ones saying your name or a phrase they are known for. Then move on to people that you do not know well. Finally, attempt to remember voice-overs from adverts and slogans. Avoid voices that are similar to yours. Strong emotions assist recall, so familiar phrases and familiar voices will be the easiest at first. Try to do this with as many varieties of voices as you can. Be sure that you are recalling the actual voice, rather than simply restating what was said in your internal voice. See if you can build a repertoire of voices.
- During conversation be attentive to the the voice of a speaker. If you are left out of the conversation for a little, listen in and try to hold a phrase that has been spoken then after a while try to hold another in your mind. A little later try to recall a phrase from earlier on.
- Use the dictaphone and record a spoken phrase, play it back after a few seconds. Try to recall it exactly. Imagine the phrase then play it back to yourself.
- Turn the television right down till you can just make out what is being said. Then, recall the vague impressions of their voices. You’ll probably find this will be slightly easier than trying to recall someone’s voice cold. Furthermore, it will be easier with repeats of programs you have seen before!
- Read as many notices as you can during the day. try to hear them in a familiar voice.
- When you have time during the day try to get into the habit of naming everything in your head in another voice. Use different voices for each object; again lock the internal voice occasionally.
- Read familiar childhood books or comics. This should be done for at least quarter of an hour each night. Do not get frustrated if you cannot remember the text word for word—the goal is to evoke sound, not memorize the book. Remember to lock your internal voice now and again.
- Read them in a familiar voice. You may occasionally, lose the voice. If this is the case, switch to a more distinctive voice or one that you have heard more recently.
- Read a passage, then recall it. After the next passage has been recalled, recall the passage prior to that, then read it out loud again, and continue this until you have a progression of passages.
- As you get better, progress to longer and less familiar novels.
- Read your diary back to yourself in someone else’s voice.
Motor Representation
This other part of the programme deals with the touch and motor components of speech.
- Gain a working knowledge of the phonetic alphabet and the mechanics of speech. This will provide you with the necessary mental framework to recognize and make sense of the motor and touch sensations of verbal articulation.
- The mechanics of speech is best presented via study sessions using a series of pictures to present the position of the tongue and mouth, etc., for each sound, which in turn is related back to the study of phonetics. The learning of phonetics and the mechanics of speech is best aided with an illustrated and detailed breakdown of how each sound is made, which can be found in the title "The Missing Memory Link" by J Rowan.
- Speak a phrase and then imagine saying that phrase whilst concentrating on the sensation of speech. Then, practice this in the reverse order: imagine or evoke a phrase and then say it out loud, all the time concentrating on the sensation of each component. This swapping round of the activities will help you to build a stable and more accurate physical representation of speech.
- Complete these tasks again. However, give yourself a secondary task designed to create interference. This use of a secondary task is intended to inhibit the functioning areas from assisting in verbal representation and potentially drowning out the benefits of the therapy by forcing the under functioning area to assume the full workload.
Tips
- It is best to imagine no more than two or three words in succession during the early stages of recalling voices. You’ll build up fluency and the number of words by the time you complete this part. Try to imagine voices that are interesting e.g. squeaky, deep or even accented. To make sure you’re not using your internal voice, lock it up, if mouthing a vowel sound interrupts your sound imagination too much then you are not focusing on evoking sound. However, if this interferes with your development, hold back on locking up the internal voice too often. Again at first a phrase will differ in clarity but eventually it will gradually become clearer.
- It is also advisable to take up a musical instrument, something simple. When playing, play close attention to the sound. You are required to learn scales by hearing the notes in your head and playing the correct keys on the instrument, not just to know the fingering for a particular piece. Start with parts of tunes, a few notes two or three. The exercise is not only to learn how to play music but to be attentive to sound.
- Later on in course of activities during the reading tasks you may experience a mild ache, on one side of you head and mild fatigue this is expected don’t worry, you are just using a part of your brain you’ve never used before. If you have problems getting to sleep then this is your answer. You may also experience some vivid dreaming too don’t worry this is all to be expected.
- Don’t expect your imagination of sound to improve dramatically immediately, It will improve gradually, eventually it will be as vivid visual imagery, which many take for granted. Sound will come as a vague impression at first and later it on it will steadily become more clear.
- Get a dictaphone or an mp3 recorder; many mobiles have this feature built in.
- Lock up your internal voice: Ensure verbalization is processed in the bit that is supposed to process sound. This can be achieved easily by mouthing a vowel sound, a word or even a phrase whilst trying to recall a different sound. This is referred to as locking up your internal voice. Evoke hearing a vowel sound, word or even if you can a phrase, for example, ‘Ah’, whilst mouthing a vowel sound for example ‘e’. The mouthing of the vowel sound make a little more difficult (lock up) to evoke the 'Ah' sound, this is mainly because the Auditory centers are having to do all the work.
- Another important component of this memory technique is to swap around the order you do the activities, listen to a phrase or sound then evoke it and evoke a phrase or sound then listen to it. This is very important, you need a reference to work from, but you also need to able to image and evoke verbal articulation without any prompts, cues or triggers.
Related Articles
- Improve Verbal Skills
- Increase Physical Memory
Sources and Citations
- How to taken from the book "The Missing Memory Link" by J Rowan. The Motor Articulation section also contains the necessary detailed diagrams of how the parts of speech are made in order for you to recognise them and learn them.
