Very often you can hear that a person has verbal memory, and also that you need to try hard to develop it. However, what does this term mean? What is meant by verbal memory? This is what this article will help you figure out. You will learn what verbal memory is, how it differs from non-verbal memory, how to check its condition, and also how to develop it at any age.
What it is?
Verbal memory is a memory that is responsible for a person’s ability to remember various information provided in verbal form. This means remembering texts, news, poems, reports that you are going to present, and so on.
As a rule, using exclusively verbal memory can be problematic, as remembering clear text can be extremely difficult. However, this type of memory will be very useful to you in life, no matter what career path you choose. Accordingly, you need to develop it. Verbal memory is what makes it possible for you to absorb the most complex information, that is, dry text.
Verbal and nonverbal memory
However, before we talk about how exactly this type of memory can be improved , it is necessary to fully understand what it is. And the easiest way to do this is through comparison - so you can understand how verbal memory differs from non-verbal.
As mentioned earlier, in the first case, you remember information that comes to you from the outside in the form of text, words, speech. Accordingly, non-verbal memory is the exact opposite. And the information that you receive and remember in this way is not text, speech, or anything else like that. Most often these are images, faces, images, aromas, sounds, etc.
Thus, verbal memory is responsible for verbal data, while non-verbal memory is responsible for figurative. And while studies show that one of the types of memory in all people is better developed than the other. How is this happening?
Cerebral hemispheres
The properties of memory depend on what you do for its development, not in the first place. Initially, the benefits of a particular type of memory are determined by the development of one of the two hemispheres of the brain.
The left hemisphere of the brain is precisely the center that is responsible for memorizing verbal information, while the right hemisphere is already responsible for images, sounds and other non-verbal forms of information. Accordingly, now you know that if you want to develop the verbal properties of memory, then you should concentrate on the activity of the left hemisphere of the brain.
Separately, it is worth talking about lefties. Many people believe that absolutely all left-handed people have completely opposite functions of the cerebral hemispheres compared to people who write and perform basic actions with their right hand. However, this is a common misconception - in fact, most people who write with their left hands have exactly the same brain functions as right-handed people. Only thirty percent of them have a change in the functionality of the cerebral hemispheres to the opposite.
Verbal intelligence
If you want to learn about how the development of verbal memory goes, then you first need to deal with another concept, such as verbal intelligence. What is it, and what does it have to do with memory?
The fact is that the connection between the two concepts is direct - verbal intelligence is responsible for a person's ability to analyze text information and generate it independently. Thus, the higher it is, the better you can understand the text, the wider your vocabulary.
It is easy to understand that this improves your verbal memory, as you are able to memorize more different information, being aware of it, and not just memorize it. It will be much more efficient to use memory, filling it with what you understand, than just a set of letters and words that you can only reproduce thoughtlessly.
Verbal memory is formed in children, that is, at a very young age. So parents should think about how to stimulate its development and increase the verbal intelligence of children from a very young age.
Semantic memory
There is another concept that is worth mentioning before moving directly to the methods of development and improvement of verbal memory. This is semantic memory. This concept can be found less commonly in everyday life, but much more often it is used in psychology. What it is?
Actually, this is a kind of system in which a person stores his generalized idea of the world in a verbal form. Thus, this is a subspecies of verbal memory, since semantic memory does not imply the storage of any emotions or experiences associated with information about the world. And these emotions can be stored exclusively in verbal format.
Testing
So, it's time to move on to practice. What needs to be done to determine how well your verbal memory is developed? The test is carried out mainly on young children under the age of ten, since in adults it is a little difficult to determine the level of verbal intelligence or verbal memory.
The reason here lies in the fact that it is at a very young age that there is a constant increase in certain knowledge, so it is easy to determine at what exactly stage of verbal development the child is. Adults are not too different from each other in this indicator.
Verbal memory in children is tested using game methods. For example, a child is offered to choose an extra item or image from a row or to finish a proposal that has already begun. These small tests will help determine the level of development of the baby.
However, verbal memory in psychology is also tested in adults. How does this happen? The most common option is that the psychologist reads to the patient a list of fifteen words that are completely unrelated to each other, and the latter should reproduce them. Typically, the average person is able to remember seven of the fifteen words after one reading. When he is read out the list four times in a row, he can already reproduce from twelve to fifteen words. And after fifteen minutes this number again falls to ten words.
So, if you show such results, then your verbal memory is normal, if the results are worse, then you should work on it. However, even if the results are normal, you can always strive for something more. How exactly? This will be discussed now.
Development in children
As mentioned earlier, verbal memory in children is best developed by the game method. The fact is that memorizing words, sentences and whole texts is a rather boring and uninteresting task, so a small child is unlikely to show serious interest in this. And as you know, a young child must be interested in order to get something from him. Therefore, try to come up with various games that will include memorizing words and sentences. Instead of texts, let the child learn poems, as they are given much easier, and the rhythm of their pronunciation always pleases the children. Later, you can move on to more serious options, but all the time remember that children should be interested, otherwise the results will be scanty.
Trainings
If we are talking about adults, then such simple techniques will have far from the most impressive effectiveness. Therefore, you need to pay attention to the training that psychologists can recommend.
One of the most popular is the repetition of television news. Its essence is that when viewing the news you need to repeat what the presenter said, as accurately as possible. So you can develop your verbal memory much more efficiently than when you just read and memorize any text.
Age features of memory
Naturally, when a person ages, his memory deteriorates significantly. However, it is worth noting that when trying to reproduce the story just read, seventy-year-olds show no worse result than twenty-year-olds. But if you ask them to try to reproduce the same story as accurately as possible half an hour after reading, young people cope with the task already much better.