We’re all familiar with having a little memory fumble sometimes – whether its ‘did I actually ever send that email’ or ‘where have I put my car keys, it’s pretty natural that we don’t remember everything we’ve done that day all the time. But for somebody with dyslexia, there could be more to it than occasionally feeding the cat twice – dyslexia and memory have a lot of interplay, and dyslexia as a condition can actually affect memory quite dramatically.
Verbal short-term memory and working memory impairment are one of the most consistent they’re not the long-term kind of memory that remembers a holiday to Disneyland or your tenth birthday- although some people with dyslexia struggle with this kind of memory too. They’re the kind of memory that we use daily, to recall what’s been said to us in conversations, instructions we’ve been given, or what’s just happened in a narrative we’ve been reading.
There’s some crossover between the two, but perhaps the simplest way to visualise it is that short-term memory is a ‘bank’ of things we recall that have happened to us very recently. Working memory is more of the ‘instruction manual’ that helps us process long-term and some short-term memory to retrieve what we know and work out how to complete a task.
What can Dyslexia and Short-Term Memory Weakness Look Like?
🧠 Losing objects you ‘just had in your hand’ a few minutes ago
🧠 Not being able to recall if you actually completed a task or not
🧠 Forgetting what’s just happened in a TV show you’ve watched
🧠 Being unable to recall the details of a conversation you’ve just had
🧠 Memory anxiety- looking at a textbook and thinking ‘I’ll never be able to remember all this for the exam’.
What can Dyslexia and Working Memory Weakness Look Like?
🧠 Difficulty with spelling and writing as the tasks juggle different brain processes
🧠 Difficulty remembering what you’ve just read (for the same reasons)
🧠 Difficulty with ‘cramming’-style revision and a poor sense of information recall
🧠 Knowing how to spell or pronounce something one day and not being able to the next
🧠 Forgetting how to complete a task you’ve just been shown how to do
But this doesn’t mean you’re destined to be forgetful forever. Although dyslexia is a lifelong condition, many people who have dyslexia have developed coping strategies that can make all the difference when it comes to giving your memory a boost, and they’re often pretty simple to implement and slot into your daily routine, too. So they might work for you!
So What Can We Try?
Colour Association can actually help a lot when it comes to sparking off a memory – people seem to remember many things by their colour over their feel, dimensions or any information inherent. This can be handy when it comes to organising notes – colour-code with index tabs and highlighters, as it may aid a sense of information recall.
This is part of a wider technique called Visualise and Associate, which works on the principle that our brains process visual information 60,000 times faster than text. It’s all about creating an image- a mental hook- that associates with certain information, and by recalling that image, the information should become easier to be pulled from the brain too. A science example is associating different chemicals with differently-shaped and coloured bottles in your mind’s eye, which should make their chemical formula easier to recall. There’s a more in depth run-down of how it works at Memory Improvement Tips.
You could also try Mnemonic Linking as a way of remembering things like items or to-do lists. It’s argued that narrativizing a list makes it much easier to remember. So if you need to pop to the shops for, say, dog food, coffee and a printer ink cartridge, think of the starving dog novelist sat at his desk, drinking his black coffee and wondering if he’s going to get his draft printed out on time so that the publisher doesn’t shout at him.
(Did we just create 2022’s best new children’s novel?)
You can also try Chunking. This is a revision method that many of us pick up in school, but there are myriad applications in adult life where it can help out too. Chunking works on the principle that if we take a long or complex ppiece of information and group it, it becomes easier to recall. Many of us do this without realising it – say we need to remember a new phone number, instead of learning it as 0985677234, we remember it as 098-567-7234.
Boost Education has some great chunking tips and tricks to try the next time you need to remember any long pieces of information.
There are also some more practical things that you can add into your daily routine that can really help with memory. A lot of these are simply ways of taking the onus of remembering off your brain, and turning it into a physical stimuli. You could try…
💡Making written to-do lists, either on paper or on a notes app in your phone or tablet
💡Setting alarms before events– so if you’ve got a meeting at 4pm, set an alarm at 3.45pm
💡Have a whiteboard or a lot of post-its available around your workstation so you can write down to-do tasks as you’re thinking of them
💡Use a calendar in a visible place in the home to record future appointments and engagements
💡Attach key finder devices to things you put down and forget where they are often, such as wallets, keys, lanyards, or even your phone
💡Ask people to help you remember – if you’re headed out with somebody, ask them to message you the night before to make sure it’s on your radar
💡Use numbered index cards to provide a step-by-step run-through of how to complete a task, for example submitting a receipt at work, or freeing up space on your hard drive
Having a weak memory isn’t fun – it can make somebody’s work, social and educational life tricky in some ways, and when it’s thrown into the mix with dyslexia, it can make many aspects of somebody’s life feel stressful. But there are a lot of things to try that can alleviate some of the memory anxiety – and we’re all different, too, so it’s important to remember that it’s all about what works for you.