Routines are easier to remember when combined with complex "silly" motor tasks

A study by an international team published in the journal Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition finds that when seniors do odd, complex motor tasks while taking medication, it increases the likelihood that they'll remember to take their meds next time. I love this stuff -- the idea that thinking takes place in the body as well as the brain -- and I bet it works for non-seniors just as well.

"In extended medication-taking situations, the habitual nature of the task may make it difficult for older adults to remember whether or not they took the medication on a particular day, especially if pill boxes are not used," explains Mark McDaniel, Ph.D., lead author of the study and a professor of psychology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University.

"To remedy this potential problem, older adults could be instructed to take their medication while placing one hand on their head or in some other unusual or silly way, like crossing their arms," he suggests. "Our results indicate that older adults can use these sorts of more complex motor tasks to effectively reduce repetition errors in habitual prospective memory tasks, such as taking a daily medication."...

In another phase of the experiment, participants were asked to do the letter-recognition task while simultaneously carrying out an additional more complicated and distracting task -- listening to a series of random numbers and pushing a clicker whenever they heard two odd numbers in a row...

"When ongoing task demands were challenging, older adults committed more repetition errors than younger adults, regardless of whether they'd been told in advance to err on the side of omission -- told not to push the F1 key if they had any doubt about whether it had already been pushed once in the same trial," says McDaniel.

However, older adults asked to carry out the more complex motor task (placing hand on head) while pushing the F1 key made significantly less repetition errors than older adults not making use of this memory enhancing technique

A Silly Pat On The Head Helps Seniors Remember Daily Medication

• [Kieran O’Neill]

  For a long time, when I’ve needed to remember something important, I associate a reminder with something I know I will see at a time when I need to be reminded. (e.g. Yesterday, I needed to return a library book, and the library was close to my bus stop, so I associated the area around the bus stop with remembering to return the book).

  What they’re talking about is the same, just using kinaesthetic rather than visual associations.

  Ain’t the brain wonderful?

• [apoxia]

  I’m pretty sure all thinking takes place in the brain.

  This study seems to imply that making a memory more enriched by associating addition information with it makes it easier to retrieve. This makes total sense and is a basic tenet of information processing.

• [Daemon]

  “the idea that thinking takes place in the body as well as the brain”

  Or maybe using the motor cortex (the part of the brain that controls movement) to do something wierd makes the event more memorable.

  Just saying.

• [gerg]

  I do something similar to help me remember mundane tasks. For example when I lock my car I will check two of the doors are locked, or when I lock my house up, I will shake the door.

  Then I never have the uncertain feeling of not knowing if I have done something, as I can remember doing the tasks.

• [ariadneallan]

  This goes along with the old trick of tying a string around your finger as a memory aid. Sometimes when I’m already in bed and realize that I need to take something to work the next day (or whatever) I’ll put my wedding ring on my right ring finger. My brain isn’t terribly functional in the mornings pre-caffeine, so feeling the ring on the wrong finger when I wake up is a good trigger.

• [OCNCTY]

  @ 2:

  I do something similar when locking the house door. I have the tendency to think I have forgotten to lock it (which will haunt me all day), so I say the name of the day to myself when locking the door. I can then recall that if I have recited the day’s name it is associated with locking the door and the memory is easily retrievable.

• [buddy66]

  Every time I take my afternoon blood pressure pill I yell “Dude!” at my cat. His response is always memorable enough that I remember it.

• [Anonymous]

  I write down the date and time I take my pills. It reminds me when I last took my pills.

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    Morning pill – the bottle goes upright. Afternoon pill – the bottle goes on its side. Evening pill – the bottle goes upside down.

• [Anonymous]

  Of course when I’m looking for something, I often pantomime using it. And yes, all learning takes place in the brain, but the non-consious learning used for repetetive actions is often called “muscle memory.” The Army is very big on the idea of practicing something until doing it requires no conscious thinking. This looks like a variation of the same idea.

• [Anonymous]

  Going by the exerpt you provided, this article doesn’t say what you say it says. The techniques being discussed help seniors to remember if they have already taken their medication, so they don’t take it again. So its actually about how to help seniors remember to NOT take their medication.

  And, figurative “muscle memory” notwithstanding, all thought seems to happen in the brain which, it just so happens, is connected to everything else in your body.

• [0xdeadbeef]

  Another one for the check the door to make sure it is locked even though you just locked it ritual.

  I also must check three pockets for keys, wallet, and phone whenever I leave a room. I suppose it derives from college, where it was easy to lock oneself out of the dorm room, and unattended wallets were the favored prey of thieves.

  I have yet to include security badges in this ritual, though I’ve been trying to for years. The best I can do is always place it where my wallet it is, so it is equipped simultaneously when I leave for work.

  I hit a metal column in my basement to remember turning off the iron. I do not know why unplugging it cannot be remembered distinctively from day to day, but making a sound can.

• [samuelad]

  Similarly, NBA free throw shooters have routines to help them recall the fine motor skills that create a good and consistent shot.

  http://lowposts.com/free-throws/

• [Anonymous]

  If you like that, then look into Brain Gym. This is a method that uses motor skills to prime the brain for learning, as therapy for learning disabilities, etc. For example, it’s been found that movements that cross the midline will “wake up” children’s brains and that they retain more of what they learn following the movements. When schools implement Brain Gym programs, test scores go up.

• [Anonymous]

  Similar to pointing and calling, invented by the Japanese railway a hundred years ago? < http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ek20081021wh.html>

  From the article: “Those odd vocalizations and gestures help keep us safe by heightening workers’ mental focus at key points on the job where accidents are likely to occur.”

• [Anonymous]

  In fifth grade we girls had a technique for this: write things you need to remember on your hand with your finger. The physical act aids in remembering. I still use this method for names, phone numbers, or “don’t forget to buy milk.”

• [Kludgegrrl]

  This reminds me of the (famous?) youtube clip < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0V5mvXKee8&feature=related> which I encountered in a teaching TESOL class — an extreme (ly silly) example of learning through coordinating language production with motion…

• [Kludgegrrl]

  Perhaps I should actually link to the clip in question (duh!)

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0V5mvXKee8&feature=related

• [Baldhead]

  Am I the only one who thinks referring to putting your hand on your head as “complex” a bit odd?

• [Anonymous]

  Neurobiological analog to comment #1: Memories of explcit information are stored in a different part of the brain (hippocampus; cortex) than motor routines (striatum). If you do both at once, remembering one can help trigger the other. This is important b/c older people tend to have degredation of hippocampus and cortex.

• [Pantograph]

  Some of us have huge afros preventing the putting of hand on head.

• [vuvuvogel]

  I once heard that before contracts were written down, the two men brokering the deal would grab a child and slap him across the face so he would remember the contract for future years. Kind of analogous.

• [vuvuvogel]

  Not condoning it in any way, mind you.