As you are sheltering in during COVID-19, reading is a great way to have fun and keep your brain active at the same time But, have you ever read a portion of a book and asked yourself - "What did I just read?" recognizing that either you did not remember what you read or your mind drifted to a far away place.
For many, it's necessary to employ engagement strategies while reading so that information can "stick." better. .As a speech-language therapist with experience treating Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), I've assisted many patients in managing these types of challenges. There are a number of techniques that you can use to improve informational processing of what they read to remember it better.
Research shows that reading is good for cognition. Reading just a few times weekly for 30 minutes per day can have marked improvements on cognition. Reading long form writing is best, such as the newspaper, magazines, or a novel. Once you have something to read on an ongoing basis, (preferably that you enjoy) I recommend three processes of highlighting text, which is outlined below.
Highlight and/or Underline Important Information: I recommend you use a highlighter or pen to identify important information like names of people, places where things happen, things that happened that are meaningful such as conflicts in the story or article. If you are borrowing a book, magazine, or paper, write notes in a notebook or piece of paper. If it is your own book mark it up! It will feel strange, but the idea is to realize you are doing this for the greater good of your brain power, so go for it!
Answering Wh-Questions: Write the following Wh- questions on an index card (Who, What, Where, Why, When, How) and use it as a bookmark to help you recall where you left off reading. You will use the card as a cue to remind yourself to ask these questions as you read about details to better help you learn the information and recall it later. If you read about a person, ask yourself “who?” after reading a name and see if you can state the name. Or, if someone does something, ask yourself, “what?” and see if you can restate the answer. Go down the line of questions and see if you can answer the questions relating to that action after it occurs. If you cannot recall the information after asking a question, reread the section and then answer the question. Restating information will give you an additional way to absorb the material and increase information retention.
Image important information: I recommend to patients develop images of things that happen in the text you are reading to help retain the information better. Begin developing images of what a person looks like when they are taking an important action. The more vivid the image you create, the more likely you are to remember it later on -- so imagine color and size of the images in a scene. Practice this after reading each sentence or paragraph in the story or article. You may have to start at the sentence level and move up to the paragraph level if it is hard to answer your Wh- questions after reading a paragraph. It may seem time consuming, but the good news is the longer you practice, the more successful you will become at comprehending and remembering the content you're consuming.
These recommendations are good to help readers with MCI improve their comprehension skills. When in therapy I ask patients to write a log about what they read daily and to bring it to treatment so we can discuss it. This step is not necessary here as you are doing this on your own, but implementing the steps will help you recall what your read which is a good home program to put in place to improve your memory.
Feel free to comment below if these strategies are helpful, or if you have recommendations of your own!