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Breann Daniels
English 1201
Casey Flores
17 April 2016
Retaining Information
As people progress through their life from one challenge to the next,
people have to remember things from their past experiences. There are
many ways to retaining information and some of them are more useful than
the other ones. Three ways to retain information would be reading the
information, listening to the information, or looking at a visual of the
information. An example of a visual would be a picture or video explaining
what is trying to be conveyed. People struggle with college because they
dont know how to study their materials. People think that there is no way or
remembering all the information within a class, but if they looked into all the
different types of methods to retain information and which ones work for
them, it would be an easy process and theyll be able to achieve a good
grade. The best way to retain information would be by looking at a visual
because it allows the brain to retain more information at a time, there is
more objects so your mind wont be wondering off, and it will be an easier
process like step by step. On the other hand, there wont be as much
information as if someone was reading it or listening to it and people who are
blind will be more likely to retain information better with listening to it.
Schools need to be more involved with visual learning habits because it will

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better off the students once they move on to college. They will teach the
children how to use visuals to help them learn every day.
With retaining information, there are also two different types of
memory, long term and short term. The part of the brain that deals with
short term memory is the prefrontal cortex. Long term memory is our brains
system for storing, managing, and retrieving information. Short term
memory is also known as the working memory and you keep it in your
mind for a short period of time. A person with a psychology degree told me
that with short term memory, the brain will keep the old information for a
short period of time, until new information is trying to be remembered, or
until the next cycle of information is done. (Donati) When you are trying to
absorb information for just a simple test, you are going to use short term
memory. But, if you are needing to remember something for a long period of
time, then you will use long term memory. An example of these different
memories would be, a nursing student is needing to take classes like music
and anatomy. The music classes she wont necessarily need for her future
job, so when she has a test coming up, she will cram study and use she short
term memory. For her anatomy tests, she will need to learn it with the long
term memory, because she will need to use that information when she is
working in the medical field.
The average person will only retain about 10% of facts that they will
read, as stated by Mastin, which he is included with a network of people who
studies on how people retain information collectively. He says Sure it is, but

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its not making any mistakes. What your brain hears or sees is simply an
abstract concept. And no matter how clearly the steps are outlined, there is
no way youre going to retain the information. (Mastin) The two reasons why
our brains can grasp all the information we take in because they focus on the
first thing that happens as you read. People will continue on reading, but
their brain will only pick up some information and not all of it. As you would
read the selection over and over again, you can retain more information than
you would have the first two times. The second reason why your brain
cannot get all the information down is because you need to see a mistake
happen. People interpret things differently and you dont really know what
you heard without someone actually doing it. If someone would act out what
is being said, then it would be a video/ picture, and not something that you
have read. Luke Mastin says you can see that people retain only 5% of
information they are given when someone is lecturing them. Mastin also said
that listening to someone is like reading to yourself. He says they are closely
related because of the two reasons why the brain cannot grasp everything
they are given at one time. According to Mastin, he says that people can
remember 30% of the information given to them by a demonstration. People
might not think that visuals are the right rout to go when retaining
information, and they would argue that because everything we learn is from
a text book in schools. Kids would prefer a visual but, they just have a hard
time putting words into a picture. Students will ask the teachers multiple
questions like can you show me an example of that, or is this topic like the

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one we have seen before. What this is saying is that the students are
wanting to learn from visuals that they have seen before so they can relate
the information from one to another.
The National Association of Realtors (NAR) tells us that 90% of home
buyers use the internet to source information on properties. 85% of buyers
deem photos very useful to their decision making process. (Maria) This
says when people are looking a house to buy, they are wanting to see a
picture of what the house looks like. People these days dont want to read
information about the house because people can interpret things in different
ways. For example; if someone says there is an agreeable amount of
furniture in the house, people could take that a couple ways. Is there a lot of
furniture in the house or is there not enough furniture? Also the people would
have questions regarding the furniture. Seeing a video or a picture will help
you understand more clearly of what is happening and you can get a grasp
of how to do it yourself. People may argue that pictures are only good for
some things, which is true, but majority of the time, people would prefer
pictures when they are dealing with a story, an example of something being
put together, or a simple diagram when you are trying to dissect an animal in
a class. A picture or video is a lot more helpful than reading or listening to
someone read you information.
While someone is reading or listening to the information, their minds
tend to wonder off. The very freedom granted by audio booksinviting the
eyes to wander, and then the mindmay make them less intellectually

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interchangeable with printed ones than some readers would like. (Jaffe) This
is reliable because a group of psychiatrists at the University of Waterloo
studied a group of individuals who were listening to an audio tape and read a
story, and Jaffe was one of the people who helped conduct the experiment.
By the end of the experiment, they asked all the participants if they were
truly paying attention. They also made a true and false test to see if the
participants were paying attention. The results in this experiment is that the
students were receiving better grades when they were listening to someone
read aloud to them. They explained their reasoning for this is because their
minds would wonder off when they would try to read and the just couldnt
pay attention to the words, and couldnt comprehend what was being read.
When someone is trying to put together a chair, of example, it would
be easier for them to look at a step by step visual than to try and read a
couple of paragraphs of information. If people had to read the information
while putting something together, nothing would get done. Looking at
pictures of the directions make it more appealing to the eye and it can make
the process faster than what it does when you try to comprehend what you
are reading. There was an experiment that a psychiatrist constructed and it
allows multiple people to listen to head phones and after they listened to a
story, they had to repeat what the story was about. Not many of them did
well because their minds were wondering off and listening to the background
noises. (Anderson 13)

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The downfall with visuals is that there is a limited amount of

information being given. There are a limited amount of details and there
could be a variety of different ways to interpret what they are doing. For
example, if there is a step by step direction of putting a chair together,
people could have a hard time telling which part goes to which hole and if
you mess up, you will end up breaking the chair. That person wont be able
to ask anyone else because they might have a different opinion on the visual
they are looking at.
Since visuals are the best way to learn and retain information, there is
always a chance that people will still forget things. So, here are some ways
to help you retain information that is being lost. First, you can make mistakes
while you go along with your project. When you learn something, it only
comes from a mistake and not just reading or hearing it a couple of times.
You see people doing the same thing over and over again, and that is
because they refuse to make a mistake. Without people wanting to make a
mistake, they wont ever grasp the subject they are doing. You need to only
concentrate on some subject at a time. Having multiple things in front of you
at one time can cause stress to the brain and allow you to not focus on what
you are trying to remember. No matter what studying strategy you are using,
when your body feels tired, your brain is telling you that you are also tired
and its time to take a long break from the books. (Parker- Pope) You must
have an interest in what you are doing to retain information. If you are
lacking interest, than you will have a tough time trying to concentrate. If

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most people dont like a subject, it is only because they do not understand it.
If you dont understand what you are trying to grasp, than look more into it.
You can do background research or ask a friend who is strong in that area.
Regardless of what you are doing, there is going to be a boring subject in it,
and you will have to fight through it and find ways to make the boring part
interesting to you. This came from a college who studied upon these things
and they said that you should put words with pictures and it will help you
remember what you are learning more easily. They say this because you
remember pictures better than words and once you see something relating
to that picture, the words will come back into your thoughts and not be study
in the back of your brain.(How to Retain Information)
While people are moving from one chapter of their life to the next, they
can learn new ways of how to remember their past. The best way to retain
and comprehend something would be by looking at a visual. Visuals are
better because it allows the brain to retain more information at a time, there
is more objects so your mind wont be wondering off, and it will be an easier
process like step by step but, there wont be as much information as if
someone was reading it or listening to it. If someone is needing to study
information for a class, looking at a visual will make it easier for the person in
the long run. People need to focus on what they are doing and be
concentrated so they can retain information.

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Works Cited
Anderson, John R. Cognitive Psychology and Its Implications / John R.
Anderson. New York:

Worth, 2004. Print.

Donati, Courtney. "Retaining Information." Personal interview. 01 Mar. 2016.

"How to Retain Information. Memory Improvement Strategies. College Atlas,
1 June 2015.

Web. 13 Jan. 2016.

Jaffe, Eric. "Your Brain On Audio Books: Distracted, Forgetful, And Bored."
Co.Design, 12 Feb.

2014. Web. 22 Feb. 2016.

Maria, Jess. "45 Video Marketing Statistics - Virtuets." Virtuets, 15 Oct. 2013.
Web. 13 Jan.

2016.

Mastin, Luke. "Short-Term Memory and Working Memory." Short-Term Memory

and Working

Memory. The Human Memory, 2010. Web. 13 Jan. 2016.

Parker-Pope, Tara. "Better Ways to Learn." Well Better Ways to Learn

Comments. 06 Oct. 2014.

Web. 01 Mar. 2016.