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

Metamemory is a set of mental skills that are very useful for tapping into our memories.

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

This is where metamemory comes into play metamemory, a unique human ability that allows us to push our memory skills to the limit.. Let's discover what it consists of and how we can use this valuable aptitude.

What is metamemory?

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

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

A good metamemory is useful because it allows us to make the most of our abilities, since we can become aware of which processes we are better at, for example, which way to study.For example, what way of studying makes us retain concepts better, how long it takes us to memorize more or less quality, or what is the amount of data we can retain in a given time.

In this sense, age is a fundamental factorIt has been shown that during childhood, children believe that they have much more powerful memory capacities than they really are, so that their metamemory is overestimated. Due to this error in their self-perception, they always tend to assure that they are capable of memorizing many more elements than they can actually do, a conclusion that is evidenced in the results of the studies.

Components of this set of skills

Within metamemory we can make a distinction between two distinct components. The first would be procedural knowledge, which would refer to the abilities described in the previous point, concerning our perception of our own memorizing skills, which make us capable of establishing the strategies that best suit us to optimize our ability to memorize data.

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

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

On the other hand, there would be declarative knowledge. Metamemory is also useful for us to be aware of the quality and reliability of a memory of a past event, allowing us to 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 we experienced in the past.

Declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge would complement each other to form, therefore, metamemory. None of these components is more relevant or important than the other, but each one refers to one of the skills that make up memory, so it is important to consider both if we want to study and enhance metamemory in all its forms.

What we don't know

The former US Secretary of Defense 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 much more transcendent question than it may seem to understand the implications of metamemory.

And the fact is that another of the abilities that allows us to carry out metamemory is precisely the following the instantaneous recognition of whether we know or ignore a given piece of information.. Depending on how familiar the subject is to us, we can make a quick inference and anticipate whether it is possible that the answer is buried somewhere in our brain or, on the contrary, it is impossible for us to be able to give a reasonable answer.

This mechanism is called the signal familiarity hypothesis, and it works exactly like a dictionary.and it works exactly as its nomenclature dictates. If our brain detects whether the fact 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 may or may not be there).

But another phenomenon may occur when we are asked about a specific question: we may not remember the exact fact but we have the feeling that it is indeed something we know ("it is on the tip of my tongue!"). This is where the accessibility hypothesis comes into play, a mechanism of the brain that tells us that, when we have that feeling, it is very likely that we have the knowledge stored in our memory, and the more clues we have about it, the more we know about it.and the more clues we have about it, the easier it is to access that data.

Sensation of knowing

We mentioned before the sensation of having something on the tip of the tongue, and this 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 a piece of data in our memory, but we are sure that it is there (although sometimes it is not and our metamemory has played a trick on us).

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

The sensation of knowing and its relation to different physiological conditions has been investigated in the laboratory. For example, it has been shown that alcohol consumption affects memory per se, and not the subject's judgment of whether or not he or she knows a given question. However, the altitude factor produces the opposite effect: it does not change the memory, but it does attenuate the person's perception of whether he or she knows a piece of information..

How to improve metamemory

Once we are perfectly clear about what metamemory is and what its characteristics are, we can ask ourselves if it is possible to improve this capacity. And the answer is yes.

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

The key to be able to learn and use these mnemonics is to understand how the brain establishes 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 we want to memorize.. Some are very simple, such as building a word with the initials of the list of words we want to remember, but others are extremely complex and require a lot of training in mnemonics to be able to use them with some skill.

This is where the mnemonists appear, those individuals whose memory and metamemory abilities make the rest of mortals blush, 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 of a human being, such as reciting by Heart more than 70,000 decimals of the number pi.

Bibliographical 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). Metamemory: a basic learning resource in school settings. Transformation.
• Nelson, T.O. (1990). Metamemory: A theoretical framework and new findings. Psychology of learning and motivation. Elsevier.
• Sierra-Fitzgerald, O. (2010). Memoria y metamemoria: relaciones funcionales y estabilidad de las mismas. Universitas Psychologica.