Reading aloud helps you remember...sometimes

According to an article in Psychology Today (May 11, 2010) by Art Markman, Ph.D, a paper talks about the production effect. People who read a list of words out loud remembered them much better than the words they read silently because they were creating the sounds.

Here's the interesting thing though: People who read all the words aloud remembered the same as those who read all of the words silently. Only the ones who read half aloud and half silently tested the highest. So what's going on?

The answer may lie in distinctiveness. We tend to remember things that stick out in our minds, the strange, unusual, different. So, the words that are spoken aloud are distinct from the silent ones, and thus remembered better. The words are both produced and heard. 

Application: Say the key information aloud while you are studying. Those should stay in your memory longer. 

Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, May 2010, MacLeod, Gopie, Hourihan, Neary, and Ozubko.