Some Barriers to Remembering

Researchers have found that there are some cognitive barriers to a
better memory that will slow you down. One is having longer names
or words, especially when they have odd spellings and many syllables.
Even trying to take a mental picture of the name or word may
not work, because saying it verbally to yourself is an important part
of putting a new name or word into your memory.
For example, I found the long words and names a real stumbling
block when I tried to learn Russian two times—once when I was
still in college, and later when I was taking occasional classes at a
community college in San Francisco. I could even manage seeing the
words in Cyrillic, converting them into their English sound equivalent.
But once the words grew to more than seven or eight letters, I
had to slow down to sound out each syllable and it was a real struggle
to remember. Had I known the principle of chunking back then,
I’m sure I would have caught on much sooner.
Another barrier to memory is interference; if some other name,
word, or idea that you already have in your working memory is similar
to what you are learning, it can interfere with your remembering
something new correctly. And the more similar the two items, the
greater the interference16 and the more likely you are to mix them
up. Again, researchers have come to these conclusions by looking at
words (or even nonsense words) and pictures, and asking subjects
to remember these items after learning a series of similar items. But
you can take steps to keep what you have learned before from interfering
with what you learn in the future. As you’ll discover in Chapter
5 on paying attention, you can stop the interference by intensely
focusing on what you want to remember and turning your attention
away from what is similar and interfering with your memory now.