Repressed Memories in highly generalised amnesia. One of the results of such flights is the emergence of a disorder known as ‘fugue state’. Persons who become victims of such a state assume a new identity, name, address, etc. They have two personalities and one knows nothing about the other.
Forgetfulness or loss of memory under stress and high anxiety is not uncommon. Many hard working and ambitious students aspire for high scores in final examinations and to achieve such ends they put in long hours in studies. But when they receive the question paper, they become extremely nervous and forget everything they had prepared well. Let us understand this with the help of an example.
Suppose you have memorised a list of meaningful words like hut, wasp, cottage, gold, bronze, ant, etc. in which words belonged to six categories (like places of living, names of insects, types of metal, etc.). If after a while you are asked to recall those you may recall a couple of them but if during the second recall attempt, you are also provided with category names, then you may find that your recall is near total. Category names in this example act as retrieval cues.
Besides category names, the physical context in which you learn also provides effective retrieval cues. E NHANCING M EMORY All of us desire to possess an excellent memory system that is robust and dependable. Who, after all, likes to face situations of memory failures that lead to so much of anxiety and embarrassment? After learning about various memory related processes, you certainly would like to know how your memory can be improved.
There are a number of strategies for improving memory called mnemonics (pronounced ni-mo-nicks) to help you improve your memory. Some of these mnemonics involve use of images whereas others emphasise self-induced organisation of learned information. You will now read about mnemonics and some suggestions given for memory improvement. Mnemonics using Images Mnemonics using images require that you create vivid and interacting images of and around the material you wish to remember.
The two prominent mnemonic devices, which