We're going to talk about memory. So we talked about memory a few sections ago, when we were talking about accompanying difficulties that people with dyslexia may experience, and so now we're going to talk about you know, 'what can you do about that?' And this is actually a vast and quite controversial question to ask, actually, because it's an open question in science as to how pliable our memories are. So can you actually, if someone has a certain span of say, auditory verbal memory can by training, actually increase that memory span? We don't actually know the answer to this right now. For many years it was actually thought that no, memory is fairly cut and dried, what you have is what you have. However, there has been research recently. And as you may be aware from media, and actually, you may have experienced these software programs yourself, there has been an emergence of software programs that are designed to use quite simple kind of game-like activities to hopefully increase your memory span. And this can, this can be visual memory or auditory memory. And initial studies suggested that these, these were effective. That they were creating change in memory. However I think overall the current consensus in research is that these software programs can definitely improve this specific skill that they're training. So, if you're working on increasing how many sounds you can hear in a sequence correctly, you will over time, if you keep doing that, you will manage to hear more sounds. But what's less clear right now is how generizable that skill is. So if you learn to hear more sounds in the software program, in a particular way, is that going to help you remember more words that your teacher says? Or more French vocabulary items? We don't yet have very convincing evidence that you do see that degree of generalization. That practicing a specific skill is going to be able to help you learn a foreign language or remember more of the things you need to pack in your school bag. So that's the caution with these programs. People are using them and there maybe benefits that we're actually not capturing yet through research. There may be general motivational benefits, there may be some subtle positive effects on attention. But we would just say treat those software programs with caution right now. Things are changing rapidly. The software programs themselves are developing quickly, and research is really looking at this question in depth, because of the widespread nature, and the hope that actually we could improve memory as a core ability. But, I wouldn't put all of your faith right now in using one of these software programs as a kind of cure for memory problems. So, what I'm actually going to focus on in this segment is really knowing your memory as it is, and working optimally around the memory you have. And I think everyone, it's a good skill for everyone to be able to do this in busy, busy lives. But it's particularly pertinent if you do have dyslexia, where this may be an added vulnerability for you. So, many of the things I'm going to talk about are actually very simple work arounds, but it is a question of knowing and remembering them. And it may be that in some school systems the use of these does need to be formalized in terms of an accommodation, formal accommodation. So, what kinds of things can you do? How can you support the memory capacity that you have? So first, number one is actually really echoing what we've talked about in our previous content. We've talked a lot about if your auditory or your sound base skills are vulnerable, then you're going to use multisensory techniques to shelter and scaffold that skill. And so that's what we want to do with wider memory as well. So if we know the auditory memory, so listening to instructions, hearing things through our auditory channels, we know that's vulnerable. Then let's support it by learning things, or trying to remember things with our other senses. So rather than expecting someone to learn everything from an auditory lecture, then if you have the opportunity have more sensory experiences. So maybe rather than just listening to how something is done, actually doing that thing, manipulating objects and using pictures, images, videos, or just getting people, if you can do something with a real experience as opposed to listening about it, then do that. Obviously there are limits to this, but I think knowing that a person may be able to remember more, you can be strategic about your use of multisensory learning techniques. So this is one thing you can do. Also, as number two, over-learning things is going to be essential. So if you're a teacher you're going to need to think, okay if for some students in my class I can just tell them what a word means, put it in a context, ask them to write it down, then they're probably going to remember that when I bring it up again. You can't make that assumption for someone who has short-term memory issues. So, you need to remember that once you've introduced a word, you may actually want them to do more active retrieval or use of it. So rather than you giving an example of how you might use it. You give one example, but then you ask the student to do it so that they can internalize some of that themselves. You're then going to need to mention that same word again the next day. The next day, and maybe the next week as well. And there's definitely some vocabulary programs that do try and do this kind of thing, so I was involved with a program, a US program, called Word Generation, where vocabulary items were introduced on a Monday to students in one subject lesson. But then teachers in other content areas also reiterated those same items in the context of their subject the next day. So on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, different subjects. On Friday, the students would write something that was related to those vocabulary items. So, obviously these kind of things can be hard to implement all the time, but when it is possible then, it really can be effective. So, over-learning this is important to remember as a teacher teaching, but then, if you're watching this as someone with dyslexia, if your teacher is not providing this over learning then you're going to have to do some of this yourself, and so thinking about how you can bring that in. And the same with the multisensory techniques I just talked about. If the teaching you're given doesn't provide those, how can you provide that for yourself or get people to help you with those kinds of things? A third key strategy again as a teacher or a student is chunking. So making sure that instructions or things that you're doing are not going to go beyond the capacity you have. So it's good for students to actually play around and work out, well, how many bits of an instruction can I keep hold of before I, kind of, lose the thread? So if you know your capacity, it's actually going to be really much easier for teachers to help, and for you to know what you're likely to remember and what you're going to need some extra help with so teachers as well work out what student's capacities are, and we've talked about things like the digit span test was mentioned. This is something you can do to get an idea of how much information can be held In memory, but you can also do this kind of thing even more informally with just giving instructions with increasing numbers of elements, and seeing how much can be retained. So, if you don't have time to do this, but you just know, oh, there's a memory limitation, then just be conservative. So give instructions in part by part elements, and front load the key information, as well. Think about if you want someone to pack some things, or if you want them to hang up some things, then try and get that action verb in your instruction early on, rather than having lots of, for example, you might say, 'oh, the bag and that thing that's under it. Oh, and, is there a pen in there, as well? Well, could you put those over there?' You can see that that instruction is just a mind field, because there's lots of embedding, and then the actual instruction part is at the end, once you've actually lost your listener. So think about language, listen to other people's instructions, think about how clear they are. because when you're on the go, if you're trying to juggle lots of children, or lots of things happening, it's actually, it's very common that we're actually not so clear with our language. I'm very much, I see this in myself in terms of language I give. We're not always as clear as maybe we think. So always just think, 'am I giving across the most salient information?, and if not you can always rephrase, there's always a second chance with this. So try and make information as salient as you can, and also as an added element, if you can, accompany auditory instruction with some visual backup, so having something written on the board as well, that could be a useful technique. And another thing to think about here is self-monitoring, so as a student, if you, there are going to be occasions where they can't retain everything, where the information is lost. So is there a subtle way that a teacher and a student can communicate this breakdown of comprehension to each other? So first, some children are not always able to monitor when they've lost their comprehension or not. So actually the first step here is actually some one to one help with getting children aware of when they are comprehending and when they've lost that comprehension. And then, it might that they don't really feel very comfortable sticking their hand in the air and saying, I don't understand, who really would want to do that all the time? So it might be that you develop a subtle sign that they can use to tell you that they're not understanding and they need a repetition. It could be that they have some colored squares on their desk and they can signal different colors, you probably may not even want to use something like green or red, because a red might be too obvious to other children that they're not understanding, but think of something that will work between the two of you, so that a sign that maybe you just need to repeat something, or give some clarification. And then finally, if you have access to technology, another useful thing to do either as a student yourself, or as a teacher using this technique for students, is to use audio recording. And you do need to be careful with this. If you are a student wanting to audio record, you will always need to check with the person that you're recording, that they're happy to be recorded. Typically they are if they want to help. And so this is a way that if you don't catch everything you can go back and listen again. And audio recorders, voice recorders, are now quite common on smart phones for people that have those. Otherwise you can buy now fairly cheap voice recorders. So, technology is an option. And again, this actually can count as a formal accommodation in certain education settings where you have designated rights to do this in class. So, another thing to think about.
