Forgetful? Try repeating things out loud

By Sarah Harvey

Forgetful? Try repeating things out loud
Feel a bit silly repeating things out loud to help yourself remember? Well, a new study suggests you might, in fact, be onto something.

The study, published in Consciousness and Cognition unveiled that repeating aloud can boost verbal memory, especially if you are speaking to someone else.

The research involved a study of 44 French-speaking university students who were asked to read a series of basic words from a screen and then do four tasks: repeat the words in their head, repeat silently while moving their lips, repeat aloud while looking at the screen and repeat aloud while talking to someone.

The volunteers were distracted and then asked to recall as many words as they could.

And the results? After speaking aloud to someone else the participants could remember the post clearly. Repeating in one’s head without gesturing was found to be the least effective way to recall information.

“The simple fact of articulating without making a sound creates a sensorimotor link that increases our ability to remember, but if it is related to the functionality of speech, we remember even more,” author and professor, Victor Boucher said.

“We knew that repeating aloud was good for memory, but this is the first study to show that if it is done in a context of communication, the effect is greater in terms of information recall,” he said.

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