External and internal memory aids: When and how often do we use them?

Abstract

What kinds of memory aids do people use to help them remember in their daily lives? Depending on the situation, they may use internal aids (e.g., mental rehearsal, imagery) of the types usually studied in the laboratory or external aids (e.g., reminder notes, asking someone else), which are rarely investigated but may be often used. College students indicated that they used external memory aids more often than internal aids (a) to prepare for future remembering than to remember past situations, (b) to remember spatial tasks than to remember verbal tasks, and (c) to remember to do things in the past than to remember information from the past. External aids were rated as more dependable, easier to use, more accurate, and more preferred than internal ones. At least one external aid, taking notes, affects encoding and not just retrieval, as shown by (a) its facilitation of remembering even when the notes were not available as retrieval cues, and (b) its induction of greater categorization of the to-be-remembered items than the use of some other memory aids.