The repetition of information aloud can increase our verbal memory, according to the conclusions of the latest study carried out by the University of Montreal (Canada) and published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition .
The research, led by the professor of the department of linguistics and translation of the University of Montreal, Victor Boucher, had the participation of 44 French-speaking students. The young people had to read a series of lexemes (the part of the word that contains the greatest weight of meaning) while wearing headphones that emitted white noise with which they could not hear their own voices.
Is repetition beneficial in the context of communication? The participants were immersed in four different experiments in which they had to repeat different lexemes: repeating them silently while moving their lips, repeating them silently without making any movement, repeating them aloud while looking at a computer screen with the lexemes, or repeating them aloud. high addressing a person.
After this, the students were subjected to a distraction task. The researchers then asked the young men to repeat the lexemes they remembered from the previous experiments (in each of the experiments the lexemes were different). The results revealed that the highest percentage of memory recall or recovery occurred in the experiment in which they repeated the lexemes aloud while addressing someone in particular .
According to Victor Boucher “when we articulate sounds, we create a sensory and motor reference in our brain. Our mouth moves and we feel our vocal cords vibrate and the production of one or more sensory aspects allows a more efficient recall of the verbal element. The simple fact of articulating without making noise creates a sensorimotor link that increases our ability to remember , but if it is related to the functionality of the speech, we remember even more ”.
Delving into the fact that repeating information in front of a person improved memory even more, he adds: “the added effect of talking to someone shows that in addition to the sensorimotor aspects related to verbal expression, the brain refers to the multisensory information associated with the communication episode. The result is that the information is better retained in memory ”, Boucher sentence.
