Metamemory: what it is and how it helps us access our agreements

Memory is the ability to store and retrieve information in our brain, but there are processes that go further.

Is where it comes into play metamemory, unique capabilities of the human being and that allow us to push our memory skills to the limit. Let's find out what it is and how we can use this valuable skill.

• Related article: "Types of memory: how does the human brain store memories?"

What is metamemory?

We all, to a greater or lesser extent, get an idea of ​​the processes carried out by our memory, distinguishing the capacities we have to generate memories, relive them, or simply retaining some data in memory shortly term. This perception of our own memory capacities as well as the limits that it has, would be what is known as metamemory.

The concept is not current, since everything related to metacognition (and, metamemory, undoubtedly belongs to to this field) has already been studied in philosophy, although with other terms, since the time of Descartes. However, it is already in the twentieth century when everything related to memory and metamemory processes is studied in depth and under scientific criteria.

A good meta-memory is useful because it allows us to make the most of our abilities, since we can become aware of which processes we are best at, for example, what form of study makes us retain the concepts better, how long does it take us to memorization of more or less quality or what is the amount of data that we can retain in a while determined.

In this sense, age is a fundamental factorsince it has been shown that during childhood, children believe that they have abilities much more powerful memory than they really are, so his meta-memory would be overrated. Due to this error in their self-perception they always tend to ensure that they are able to memorize many more elements of what they can really do, a conclusion that is evidenced in the results of the studies.

Components of this skill set

Within metamemory we can make a distinction between two well differentiated components. The first would be procedural knowledge, which would refer to the capacities set forth in the previous point, referring to our perception of the own memory skills, which make us able to establish the strategies that best suit us to optimize the ability to memorize data.

Here another important concept comes into play, which would be learning judgment. It is about the assessment we make before facing a task that involves the use of memory, and for which We estimate the amount of time necessary to carry it out as well as the quality that we anticipate that this will have. memorization.

The most obvious example would be that of the student who takes all the notes of a subject and automatically knows the time that has to devote to studying them if he wants to get a good grade on the exam, and even what is the minimum time he would have to studying to get just a pass (although sometimes those estimates can be too optimistic, as many people will know).

On the other hand there would be declarative knowledge. And it is that metamemory is also useful to us to be aware of the quality and reliability of a memory about a past event, allowing us to give ourselves realize at a certain moment that the representation we are recalling in our mind may not be as close to reality as we had thought at first or, on the contrary, we are reasonably sure that the memory faithfully represents the event that we lived in the past.

Declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge would complement each other to form, therefore, metamemory. Neither of these components is more relevant or important than the other, but each one refers to one of the skills that configure memory, so it is important to take both into account if you want to study and enhance metamemory in all its shapes.

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What we don't know

The former US defense secretary once left a phrase for history: "There are two things we don't know: what we know we don't know and what we don't know we don't know." Behind this kind of tongue twister there is a question much more transcendent than it may seem to fully understand the implications of metamemory.

And it is that another of the abilities that allows us to carry out metamemory is precisely recognizing instantly if we know or ignore a certain data. Depending on how familiar the topic is, we can make a quick inference and anticipate whether the answer is likely to be buried somewhere in our brain or, conversely, it is impossible for us to be able to give an answer reasonable.

This mechanism is called the signal familiarity hypothesis, and it works exactly as its nomenclature dictates. If our brain detects if the data we are looking for can be found in our area of knowledge, and if so, it will proceed to try to find the answer in memory (which can be, or not).

But another phenomenon can occur when they ask us about a specific question: that we do not remember the data exact but that we have the feeling that, indeed, it is something we know (“I have it at the tip of the language!"). This is where the accessibility hypothesis comes into play, a brain mechanism that tells us that, when we have that feeling, it is very possible that we have the knowledge stored in our memory, and the more clues we have about it, the easier it will be to access that data.

Feeling of knowing

We mentioned before the sensation of having something on the tip of the tongue, and that topic deserves a separate point, since it is another of the processes that characterize metamemory. This mechanism comes into play when we are not able to access data from our memory, but we are sure that it is there (although on some occasions it is not like that and our meta-memory has played us a bad pass).

In these cases, get peripheral information (related to the data itself) can facilitate activating the neural circuits where the information we seek is housed and in this way it becomes accessible again. Another method that works is that of identification. We may not be able to remember the correct answer to a question, but if we are presented with a list with several options, we will instantly recognize the one we were looking for.

The sensation of knowing and its relationship with different physiological conditions have been investigated in the laboratory. For example, it has been shown that alcohol consumption affects memory itself, and not the subject's judgment of whether or not he knows a certain question. However, the factor of the altitude at which we find ourselves produces the opposite effect: does not change memory, but it does attenuate the person's perception of whether he knows a piece of information.

How to improve metamemory

Once we have perfectly clear the question of what is metamemory and what are its characteristics, one may wonder if there is a possibility of improving this ability. And the answer is yes.

For this there are what are called mnemonics or mnemonic rules, strategies used to improve our memory, and therefore further develop our metamemory, since we will have a wider range of strategies to choose from.

The key to being able to learn and use these mnemonics is to understand how the brain makes associations when we are immersed in a learning process, and then take advantage of these shortcuts and maximize them, optimizing the resources of our memory.

There are many types of mnemonic rules that can be learned depending on the type of data that we want to memorize. Some are very simple, like building a word with the initials from the list of words we want to remember, but others are tremendously complex and require a lot of training in mnemonics to be able to use them with certain skill.

This is where the mnemonists appear, who are those individuals whose capacities at the memory and metamemory level make those of the rest of the people blush. mortal, partly innate but mostly thanks to an impressive dedication and effort to enhance each of these skills through the study of mnemonics, sometimes achieving feats that seem more typical of a computer than a human being, such as reciting from memory more than 70,000 decimal places of the PI number.

Bibliographic references:

• Flavell, J.H., Wellman, H.M. (1975). Metamemory. Minnesota University, Minneapolis.
• Gómez, J.M.D., López, M.J.R. (1989). Metamemory and memory: an evolutionary study of their functional relationships. Journal of General and Applied Psychology.
• López, M., Cuenca, M. (2017). The metamemory: a basic learning resource in the school environment. Transformation.
• Nelson, T.O. (1990). Metamemory: A theoretical framework and new findings. Psychology of learning and motivation. Elsevier.
• Sierra-Fitzgerald, O. (2010). Memory and metamemory: functional relationships and their stability. Universitas Psychologica.