Lesson 2. Associative thinking

The main role of associations in memorization is that we link new knowledge to information we already know. To build a good association, you need to know some useful criteria for finding connections between things, as well as develop your associative thinking and creative imagination. It is equally important to learn how to build associative series and connections to stimulate figurative memory.

This lesson will show you how to use the association method to remember information.

What are associations?

Association is a connection between individual facts, events, objects or phenomena reflected in a person’s mind and fixed in his memory. Associative perception and thinking of a person lead to the fact that the appearance of one element under certain conditions evokes the image of another associated with it.

The ability to make associations is the most important ability of our mind. There is even such a direction: associative psychology (or associationism), which tries to explain a person’s mental processes by studying his associations in connection with certain objects (stimulus - response); the process of memorizing information can also be considered from this point of view.

Completion

Engage in self-development, because it will provide you with a happy and successful future. Let’s say it wouldn’t be superfluous to pay attention to the development of non-standard thinking.

At a minimum, it will help you notice the obvious that is inaccessible to understanding due to existing stereotypes and personal limitations. And this skill, by the way, has allowed many individuals to make brilliant discoveries. So go for it and everything will work out for you!

And subscribe to the blog so as not to miss new and useful articles to broaden your horizons and develop awareness.

The material was prepared by psychologist, Gestalt therapist, Alina Zhuravina

Types of associations

To find associations, there are several ways to build associative links between any objects:

Contiguity in time or space: table and chair, winter and snow;
Similarity (similarity): earth and ball, lamp and pear;
Contrast (opposite): good and evil, black and white;
Causal relationships: thunder and lightning, lamp and light;
Generalization: tomato and vegetable, dog and animal;
Submission: vegetable and cucumber, animal and cat;
Subordination to one object: car and motorcycle;
Part and whole: seconds and minutes, car and engine;
Addition: toothpaste and toothbrush.

Depending on the application of these methods, as well as on various modifications and conditions of their use, different types of associations can be found. For example, associations are:

thematic, in which objects are related to a single theme (marketing and advertising);
phonetic, in which there is consonance between objects (lie and rye, night and daughter);
word-forming, based on the unity of the root or other parts of the word (laziness and laziness).

It is worth noting that the associative processes occurring in our consciousness depend on the degree of participation of different sensory organs in them. Thus, visual, auditory, kinesthetic, gustatory and olfactory associations are distinguished. Depending on a person’s predisposition and the characteristics of his sensory representational system, it will be useful for him to build associations that are suitable specifically for him.

Some people have motor memory, like Napoleon (who wrote down each new name three times, threw away the note and remembered the name forever). Some people, due to their developed auditory memory, prefer to speak information out loud. The basis of memory for people tuned to visual perception (and these are the majority) is, for example, the purposeful highlighting of key words in the memorized text (underlining, coloring, creating diagrams and drawings).

With the development of memory techniques, people have already developed associative techniques that are suitable for most of us. These techniques are called mnemonics, and they will be discussed in one of the following lessons.

Types

They are distinguished by:

similarities: sled – skis – snowboard.
contrast: white - black, boy - girl.
the relationship between the whole and its parts: finger - nail, phone - screen.
cause-and-effect relationship: clouds - rain, fire - fire.
generalization: shoes are footwear, earrings are decoration.
subordination: watermelon - berry, maple - tree.
contiguity of space or time: winter - cold, newspaper - magazine.
addition: butter - salad, soup - bread.

How to develop associative thinking?

Despite the fact that today there are many mnemonics that make it easier to build associations for memorizing various types of information, there is no universal technique that would be suitable for all cases. Often you have to create associations and systematize material for memorization on your own. Not everyone is good at associative memory, but it can be learned. Associative thinking is built, first of all, on our creative abilities, namely, on the ability to create something new by modifying what already exists.

The development of associative thinking is closely related to the imagination and a person’s ability to find similar elements even in the most different things, as well as to the training of figurative memory. On our website there is a special lesson on developing imagination in the course of creative thinking. You can familiarize yourself with this lesson by following the link.

In addition, expanding the range of associations can be achieved through targeted training. Below we offer you some simple exercises:

Exercises

Exercise 1. Solving doodles. Doodles are the invention of American humorist Roger Price and creative producer Leonard Stern. The essence of the invention is that you are asked to describe a picture that can have many interpretations. A droodle picture is something like a scribble, but in droodle the authors initially include variability in its perception. You can solve several droodles on this page.

Exercise 2. Drawing up a chain of associations. Choose any word and start building a chain of associations from it, writing them down on paper. For example, “trainings - courses - lessons - 4brain.ru”. Try to write down associations as quickly as possible, and make the connections as unusual as possible.

Exercise 3. Search for missing associations. Choose any two words or phrases that should have as little in common as possible. Try to build an association that connects these two words. For example, for the words “morning” and “food” the element complementing the associative series will be the word “breakfast”. Try to find the missing link for the words: film and dream, elevator and car, flower and skyscraper.

Exercise 4. Suitable associations. Choose two words and try to name associations that are suitable for each of these words at the same time. For example, for the words “white” and “light” one can name the following associations: snow, fluff, feather, etc. To complicate the exercise, you can choose not two, but three or even more words.

Exercise 5. Unusual associations. To develop associative thinking for the purpose of better memorization, it is useful to be able to look for the most striking and non-standard associations. In this case, the image will be better fixed in memory. Most people will give the following associations for these words and phrases:

Russian poet - Pushkin
Poultry - chicken
Fruit - apple
Part of the face - nose

Try to come up with other, less popular associations with the same words.

Statistics Full screen

Exercise 6. Drawing up mental maps. A useful exercise for developing associative memory is mental maps. One of the creators of the idea of compiling such maps, Tony Buzan, wrote in his book “Super Memory” that “... if you want to remember something new, you just need to relate it to some already known fact, calling on your imagination to help.” You can read more about the technique of drawing up mental maps consisting of associative series in the next lesson on memory development.

If you do at least some of these exercises for 10-15 minutes a day, then after a few days the workout will become easier and more exciting, and most importantly, you will be able to remember any new material faster.

Recommendations

To develop associative thinking in order to improve memorization of material, it is also useful to use the following recommendations. The associative connection should:

arouse your genuine interest (how to achieve this was written in the previous lesson);
touch various senses;
be unusual, but meaningful to you;
contain the most detailed picture (size, color, etc.).

And the main thing is that the association is bright and easy to remember.

So, the second rule of remembering:

To remember certain information well, find suitable vivid associations that will be an indispensable assistant in the process of representation (reproduction of information).

What's the benefit?

We need this type of thinking to solve problems, both life and work. And if you engage in its development, pleasant bonuses will await you. For example:

Improving imagination. Accordingly, you will be able to generate creative ideas, it will be easier for you to meditate and, in general, be creative.
Strengthening memory. You will remember the material better, since with the help of the created associative series it is quite difficult to forget something.
Increased productivity. Given the fact that your cognitive processes will become better, you will perform work faster and better.
Brain stimulation. When an associative series is formed, the brain goes into action, forming new neural connections.
Ease of perception. It will be easier to perceive new information and adapt to changes.
Personality research. Even Sigmund Freud, a well-known psychoanalyst, used associations to study what is in a person’s subconscious. In general, you will receive information about yourself that will most likely help you change your quality of life, find answers to important questions and solve complex life problems, and unleash your creative potential.

Many inventions were created thanks to associations. For example, Georges de Mestral came up with the idea of Velcro fasteners after once examining burdock spines under a microscope. He constantly removed them from the fur of his beloved dog after walks. Seeing how interestingly the hooks of this plant were arranged, he had the idea to create such a valuable piece of clothing, shoes, and accessories.

Gestalt theory of memory

After the associative theory encountered a problem that it could not answer (we are talking about explaining the selectivity of memory), it was replaced by another theory - Gestalt. The initial concept in this teaching was the original, integrity of the primary elements - gestalt. Proponents of this theory are convinced that it is the principles of gestalt formation that determine human memory.

This concept emphasized the importance of the fact that material to be memorized and reproduced by a person must be structured, brought to integrity and organized into a system

Particular attention was also paid to the role of human intentions and needs; by the way, this is what representatives of Gestalt theory explained the selectivity of mnemonic processes. The main idea of its adherents is that the material (both when memorizing and reproducing) is an integral structure, and not a random set of elements formed on an associative basis

Gestalt theorists explain the dynamics of memorization and reproduction as follows: at each individual moment in time, a person has a certain need that contributes to the creation of an attitude towards memorization or reproduction. The installation, in turn, animates the necessary integral structures, which are the basis for memorizing or reproducing the material.

Despite the fact that representatives of this theory found psychological explanations for many facts of memory selectivity, they were unable to solve the problem of the formation and development of human memory in phylo- and ontogenesis. Motivational states that determine mnemonic processes in humans are predetermined - this is exactly how representatives of the Gestalt theory of memory imagined memorization. Briefly, the shortcoming of this doctrine can be expressed as follows: it did not pose and did not try to resolve the issue of the dependence of the development of a person’s memory on his practical activity.

Psychoanalytic theory

Representatives of the psychoanalytic theory of memory, the founder of which is Z.

Freud, special attention in considering the preservation and memorization of information is paid to the unconscious level of the psyche. The psychoanalytic theory of memory shows the significant role played by early emotional experiences that can influence the rest of life.

Representatives of this theory pay special attention to the displacement of negative information from consciousness and its manifestation through humor, dreams, slips of the tongue and other manifestations of the unconscious.

Thanks to psychoanalysis, many interesting psychological mechanisms of subconscious forgetting related to the functioning of motivation have been discovered and described.

Implementation on semiconductors

Because AM is designed to search all memory in one operation, it is much faster than RAM searches in virtually all search applications. However, there is also a disadvantage in the higher cost of AP. Unlike a RAM chip, which has simple stores, each individual memory bit in a fully parallel AM must have its own associated comparison circuit to detect a match between the stored bit and the input bit. In addition, the comparison outputs from each cell in the data word must be combined to produce the complete data word comparison result. The additional circuitry increases the physical size of the AP chip, which increases production costs. The additional circuitry also increases power dissipation since all comparison circuits are active at every clock cycle. As a consequence, AM is used only in specialized applications where search speed cannot be achieved using other, less expensive methods.

Exercises for memory development

Many of the exercises that are presented on the site can be done not only online, but also in everyday life. You can practice remembering routes and people when moving around the city during the day. Memorizing employees in the office, who sits where and what they do, at the time of entering or leaving the office. You can memorize your to-do list for the day, week, or even month. I also highly recommend remembering the events of the whole day, start in the morning: how you woke up, what your mood was, how you managed to get up, what happened at home, what happened on the street, at work, and so on. At first, few events may be remembered, but over time there will be more and more of them.

Pay attention also to a very effective technique for remembering dreams. Not every person remembers what he dreamed in the morning, yesterday, and even 5 minutes after sleep

You can keep a dream diary. Over time, not only will your dreams be remembered better, but their quality will also become better and better. So in one night you will remember not just one, but 3, 4 or more dreams and you will remember everything better than before the start of the training. Often, such attention to dreams not only transforms them from cloudy memories into beautiful and detailed worlds, but also gives awareness. Thus, a lucid dream may develop, especially if in the evening you selectively or completely reread the dreams that you wrote down.

Internet course “Super memory in 30 days”

As soon as you sign up for this course, you will begin a powerful 30-day training in the development of super-memory and brain pumping.

Within 30 days after subscribing, you will receive interesting exercises and educational games in your email that you can apply in your life.

We will learn to remember everything that may be required in work or personal life: learn to remember texts, sequences of words, numbers, images, events that happened during the day, week, month, and even road maps.

Industry Standards for Content Addressable Memory

The definition of the primary interface for NSEs and other Network Search Elements (NSEs) was specified in an Interoperability Agreement called the Look-Aside Interface ( LA-1

and
LA-1B
), which was developed by the Network Processing Forum, which was later merged with the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF).
Numerous devices have been manufactured by Integrated Device Technology, Cypress Semiconductor, IBM, Netlogic Micro Systems and others under these LA agreements. On December 11, 2007, OIF issued a Serial Lookaside Agreement ( SLA
).

Patterns derived by G. Ebbinghaus

At the end of the last century, G. Ebbinghaus derived and systematized a number of memory principles. He managed to do this thanks to the associative theory of memory in psychology. Briefly, we can say that he worked on establishing patterns of memorization, for the study of which nonsense syllables and other information that was poorly organized in terms of meaning were used.

He found out that a person immediately and for a long time remembers even the simplest events in life if they made a particularly strong impression on him. If these moments are less interesting to a person, he may not remember them, even if they happen several dozen times. With sufficient concentration of attention, a person can easily reproduce from memory all the main points of an event that happened once in his life.

When memorizing a long series, you need to remember that its beginning and end are easiest to reproduce. When memorizing a series that is too long (when the number of elements in it exceeds the capacity of short-term memory), the number of correctly reproduced elements of this series is reduced if we compare this indicator with a similar indicator in the case when the number of members of the series is equal to the capacity of short-term memory.

Correction of memory impairments

In many cases, human memory impairments and disorders can be corrected and treated with medication if treated in a timely manner. Methods of correction depend on the type of memory impairment; in case of particularly severe ones, one should not hope for a cure, only for the relief of concomitant symptoms. The main treatment regimen is based on the following therapy:

relief of an acute condition (for psychosis, trauma);
vitamin therapy;
psychotropic drugs (tranquilizers Elenium, diazepam);
restoration of cerebral circulation (Nootropil, Vinpocetine, Piracetam, Gingko Biloba).

In addition to treatment, the following are prescribed:

balanced diet;
herbal medicine (sage, ginger, infusion of motherwort or valerian officinalis);
Cognitive development of memory helps keep it in good shape until old age (new hobbies, solving crosswords, learning foreign languages).

Memory theory

Since ancient times, humanity has wondered what human memory is and the direct psychological connections between memorizing and reproducing information. Explaining these mechanisms, many theories and explanations have emerged, which vary and are characterized by certain principles, for example:

Aristotle's associative theory;
Gestalt theory;
Behavioral theory;
Semantic theory of memory.

Only by considering each theory separately can one determine its features.

Aristotle's association theory

Assumes that all memorization consists of creating connections – associations. There are some types of associations:

Association by contiguity, which lies in the fact that by reproducing images, a person’s memory also reproduces the emotions that were experienced in those moments, both negative and positive.
Association by similarity, which is ensured by the reproduction of images and all features that are similar to it. For example, when you see a photograph of a person, ideas about him (character, voice timbre, etc.) immediately arise.
Association by contrast consists of representational processes that are based on contrast, on features opposite to the image.

Gestalt theories

Over time, one theory gave way to another, and now the time has come for the Gestalt theory, the essence of which was completely opposite. The theory was determined not by partial associative elements, but by a full-fledged holistic organization of processes - a gestalt. The direction of studying such a theory began to be called Gestaltology, the main postulate of which is the presence of the whole, the totality of all mechanisms, systems and functions of memory that form representation and perception.

Behavioral theory

The theory of behaviorism, which replaced the “Gestalts”, was in many ways similar to the previously presented theory of associations, with only one significant difference - according to the theory of behaviorism, the memorization process had to be constantly reinforced by some stimulus for high-quality further reproduction.

Semantic theory of memory

The beginning of the twentieth century in psychology was marked by the emergence of a new semantic theory of memory, the meaning of which was that all processes and accompanying reactions proceed in direct proportion to the presence or absence of a semantic connection that unites them. Thus, the theory that memory processes are inextricably dependent on thinking processes was subject to proof. Thus, memory, as a meaningful human activity, depends on the task at hand. It has also been proven that actions, as opposed to thoughts, are much better remembered.

Recent studies have proven that all memory processes are associated with biochemical reactions and RNA modifications.

In addition, recently scientists have been trying to prove and study certain areas of the brain responsible for storing and reproducing information, as well as characterizing the processes of forgetting. But more on that in other articles.

Download the infographic. What is memory

This article is part of a series of articles on memory.

Part one What is memory. Theories of memory

Part two. Physiology of memory

Part three. Products useful for brain function and memory

Memory training

Memory needs to be trained, like any human skill. Our brain holds tens, hundreds of times more information than a computer, but to unlock this potential we need to train hard.

Thus, you can train your memory in different ways, and before you start training, you need to answer several questions:

How much do you need to memorize?

There is a difference between memorizing 1-3 people and memorizing a group of 30 people. Memorizing a small passage of text or an entire book.

For how long will I need this information?

You need to remember a lot of information at once and for a short period of time. Then fast memory works, short-term, and it stores very little information. It also happens when you need to remember information for a month, a year, or even for the rest of your life, and then long-term memory turns on, which is capable of remembering for a long time without maintaining information in active - fast memory.

Laws of memory

Numerous psychological theories of memory have made it possible to derive a number of laws. Scientists have found that memorizing, preserving and reproducing material occurs through various operations of processing and recoding information, including analysis, systematization, generalization, synthesis and other mental operations.

When a person reproduces a text, wanting to remember it, both the words and phrases of which it consists, as well as the thoughts contained in it, are imprinted in the memory. It is the latter that are remembered first when faced with the task of reproducing a previously studied text.

A process-oriented mindset greatly contributes to memorization. In other words, if a person trying to remember a text or any other information sets himself a certain mnemonic task, the memorization process will be easier and faster, and the information will be stored in memory for as long as possible.

In order for the productivity of memorizing information to become higher, it is necessary that a person somehow connect it with the purpose of the activity. This is due to the fact that it is better remembered that in the structure of an activity its goals take place, and not the constituent means of carrying out this activity.

Good learning of material does not require immediate learning by heart. Moreover, if you study the material within 24 hours, it will take half as much time as if you do it all at once.

Sample Applications

Content-addressable memory is often used in computer network devices. For example, when a network switch receives a data frame on one of its ports, it updates an internal table with the source MAC address of the frame and the port on which it was received. It then looks up the destination MAC address in the table to determine which port the frame should be sent to, and sends it to that port. The MAC address table is usually implemented on a binary AP, so the destination port can be found very quickly, reducing switch latency.

Ternary APs are often used in those network routers in which each address has two parts: (1) the network address, which can change in size depending on the subnet configuration, and (2) the host address, which occupies the remaining bits. Each subnet has a netmask, which determines which bits are the network address and which bits are the host address. Routing is done by checking against the routing table maintained by the router. It contains all known destination network addresses, their associated network mask, and the information needed by packets routed to that destination. A router implemented without AP compares the destination address of the packet to be split with each entry in the routing table, performing a logical AND with the network mask and comparing the results with the network address. If they are equal, the corresponding direction information is used to send the packet. Using ternary AP for the routing table makes the lookup process very efficient

Addresses are stored using a "don't care" bit in the host address portion, so a lookup of the destination address in the AP immediately retrieves the correct entry in the routing table; both operations - mask application and comparison - are performed in hardware by AP.

Bibliography

Kohonen T. Associative storage devices. M.: Mir, 1982. - 384 p.

In English

Anargyros Krikelis, Charles C. Weems (editors) (1997) Associative Processing and Processors
, IEEE Computer Science Press. ISBN 0-8186-7661-2
Pagiamtis, K. & Sheikholeslami, A. (2006, March). [www.pagiamtzis.com/pubs/pagiamtzis-jssc2006.pdf Content-Addressable Memory (CAM) Circuits and Architectures: A Tutorial and Survey.] IEEE J. of Solid-State Circuits
, 41(3), 712–727.
[patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html Hannum et al. (2004) System and method for resetting and initializing a fully associative array to a known state at power on or through machine specific state
]. US Patent 6,823,434.

Meaning theory

In the first half of the 20th century, a semantic theory of memory emerged. Its most prominent representatives, A. Binet and K. Bühler, argue that the work of memory directly depends on semantic connections (their presence or absence), which unite the material to be memorized into semantic structures - more or less extensive

Representatives of this theory of memory in psychology pay special attention to the semantic content of the material. In their opinion, semantic memorization occurs according to laws different from mechanical memorization.

They argue that the material to be learned is part of a context of certain semantic connections.

Representatives of this theory strive to present memory in the form of the reproduction of pure thoughts, which are completely independent of the speech form. After all, they tear apart and contrast the memorization of words and thoughts, coming to conclusions that are consistent with the antagonistic theory.

What does associative thinking give us and how to develop it?