The older we get, the harder it seems to remember names, dates, facts of all kinds. It takes longer to retrieve the information we want, and it often pops right up a few minutes or hours later when we are thinking about something else. The experts say that keeping your mind sharp with games like Sudoku and crossword puzzles slows the aging process, and that may be true, but we found three other things you can do to sharpen your memory.

随着年龄的增长，我们似乎越来越记不住人名、日期、还有各种事情。我们要花更多的时间搜寻脑内的信息，而这些信息往往在我们开始想别的事情的时候突然涌出脑海。专家认为经常玩数独游戏和填字游戏可以减缓脑部衰老的过程。这也许可行，但是我们还发现了另外三种方式来提升记忆力。

1. Vary Your Study Space

更换学习场所

A study shows students who studied a list of words in a windowless room and again in a room with a view did far better on a test than students who studied only in the room without a view.

研究表明，先在一间无窗教室里学习单词后搬到有窗教室的学生要比一直在无窗教室里学习并且欣赏不到风景的学生掌握得更好。

Dr. Robert A. Bjork, psychologist at the University of California, L.A. and senior author of the research, states, “What we think is happening here is that, when the outside context is varied, the information is enriched, and this slows down forgetting.”

加利福尼亚大学洛杉矶分校的心理学家罗伯特·A·比约克博士称，“我们认为之所以会产生这种结果，是因为外部环境改变时，学生获得的信息变丰富了，这就减缓了遗忘的过程。”

2. Vary What You Study

更换学习内容

The same principal may apply to what you study. Musicians and athletes have known this for years. They practice cross-training.

相同的原理可以用在学习内容上，多年前音乐家和运动员就已经知道这个道理了。他们采用交叉培训的方式来练习。

“Varying the type of material studied in a single sitting — alternating, for example, among vocabulary, reading and speaking in a new language — seems to leave a deeper impression on the brain than does concentrating on just one skill at a time,” Carey writes.

凯利在其研究中写道，“在同一段时间里学习不同类别的内容，比如，学习一门新语言时可以在词汇、阅读、口语等不同技能间转换，这样比单单学习一种技能在大脑里留下的印象更深。”

It might also be helpful, and this is my advice, to vary your learning style. Most of us use more than one style anyway, but if you find yourself relying primarily on visual learning, try auditory or kinesthetic techniques. You might be surprised.

我给出的另一个也许有用的建议是，改变学习方式。大多数人都会采用不止一种的学习方式，但是，如果你发现自己主要采用视觉学习，可以试着加上听觉或者肌肉运动知觉，效果也许很惊艳。

3. Test Yourself Often

经常检测自己

It also turns out that when a student is required to retrieve information, say for a test, that information is re-stored in the brain in a more accessible way for future use.

事实证明，当一个学生被要求在脑内搜寻一个信息，比如考试，那么这些信息就会被储存在大脑里，供其今后更方便地使用。

Carey reports that researchers don’t know why this is true, just that it is.“It may be that the brain, when it revisits material at a later time, has to relearn some of what it has absorbed before adding new stuff — and that that process is itself self-reinforcing,” he writes.

凯利表示，研究者们不理解为什么会这样，但事实确实如此。他写道，“也许是大脑在后来重新回忆这些内容的时候，在新加上一些内容前，需要重新回顾之前吸收的内容，这样的过程就相当于大脑的自我强化。”

“The idea is that forgetting is the friend of learning,” Carey quotes Dr. Nate Kornell, a psychologist at Williams College, as saying. “When you forget something, it allows you to relearn, and do so effectively.”Practice tests, then, are powerful learning tools.

凯利引用威廉姆斯学院心理学家奈特·科内尔博士的一段话，称“遗忘伴随着学习。遗忘使你重新学习某件事，并能更高效地学习。”那么，不断测试自己就成了有用的学习工具。

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