As an adult you go over the same lessons and skills again and again that you did as a child. The more you do an activity the more it remains ingrained in your memory throughout your lifetime. Simple traditions you learned from your grandparents and are now passing on to your children or grandchildren; the smells of your house at Christmas, with the house each year smelling like apple pumpkin pies; the way you tie your shoes, and teaching your children to make the “bunny loopsâ€; these are all thing you learned and repeat – traditions that hold up now and you pass along. These lessons stay in your long-term memory so you can repeat them again and again.
When you repeat a lesson you are allowing your brain to form new synapses (connections) to your brain cells, and this transition allows your short-term memory to pass the lesson along to long-term memory. It also makes it easier for the brain to recall information when it is needed.
In my memory improvement course I stress repetition as one of the keys to improving your memory. It reinforces the lesson in your brain and the more you repeat it the better you will remember. Once committed to memory it is not likely to be lost, even if that information is not utilized again for years.
Once example: I enjoy playing trivia games. It allows you to recall information you may have committed to long-term memory, but have long forgotten. It also gets your brain working to produce new brain cell connections, and we all could use some additional ones of those!
The original lessons learned as children are often the foundation and building blocks for other lessons. It was probably though repetition that it became ingrained in your brain, and now by using that lesson as we grow up we are able to access it easier and easier.
When I was a child we would help my mother with the dinner dishes and we would go over our spelling lists. To this day I recall having trouble with the word “something†when I was in second or third grade. We would go over it and over it, and finally I got it right and could continue to remember it correctly.
You can remember names and faces easier if you repeat the name back to the person you are being introduced to. That, along with other memory techniques will reinforce the person’s name and face in your mind and you can repeat it in your head over and over to commit it to memory.
Numbers, names and faces are more easily recalled by repeating them. If you can develop a pattern for remembering names and faces, you can draw upon that same pattern over and over again as a memory training technique.
Research done at the University of Texas at Austin was the first time scientists had studied the activity levels of large brain regions. With the use of a functional MRI (fMRI) machine they searched for patterns of activity across all aspects of the brain. Different studies have shown that by mapping the activity of different areas of the brain – such as for reading, language, crafts, etc. strengthens the brain. Since it is now known that we use all areas of our brain, and not just one area at a time, for different functions we continue to make new brain cells and new neural connections. They also were able to know for certain that memories created and reinforced through repetition were stronger.
This is Ron White, memory speaker. Continuous repetition is a memory enhancing technique, and makes it easier to recall information you may have learned long ago. It is a method I highly recommend when teaching memory strategies.
Sources:
 Memoryzine.com – Repeating Brain Activity Pattern Each Time Helps Remembering: http://memoryzine.com/2010/09/10/repeating-brain-activity-pattern-each-time-helps-remembering/
Homework Help Today – The Importance of Repetition in Tutoring and Learning: http://www.homeworkhelptoday.com/2008/11/the-importance-of-repetition-in-tutoring-and-learning/