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Odds & Ends for Senior Citizens
Memory Tip for Senior Citizens: Convert it to Fewer
Syllables
Prices
remembered more easily if they have
fewer syllables, study finds
June 22, 2006 Most senior citizens wrestle with
their memory and worry about losing it. Now some researchers have come
up with an idea that may just help reduce the syllables in what you
want to remember.
In the first study to combine theories of working
memory and numerical cognition, researchers find that every extra
syllable in a product's price decreases its chances of being remembered
by 20 percent.
The researchers explain this effect by the fact
that our phonological (speech sounds) loop an important
regulator of memory can only hold 1.5 to 2 seconds of spoken
information.
"It is not the length of the price in digits that
determines how difficult it is to memorize, but rather how many
syllables this price has when read," explain Marc Vanheule, Gilles
Laurent (both HEC School of Management, Paris), Xavier Dreze (University
of Pennsylvania), and Bobby Calder (Northwestern University).
"Faster speakers are better at immediate price
recall because they can fit more syllables into the phonological loop."
In a study forthcoming in the September issue of
the Journal of Consumer Research, the authors show that people who use
memorization techniques to shorten the number of syllables have better
recall (e.g. read 5,325 as 'five three two five' as opposed to 'five
thousand three hundred and twenty five').
Interestingly, the researchers also found that
Hungarians, who tend to be faster speakers, have better price recall.
However, consumers store information both verbally
and visually, say the researchers. Thus, unusual looking prices, such as
$8.88, are recalled better than typical looking prices.
People also store magnitude information about
prices, remembering approximate figures when they forget the exact
price:
"We show that prices are encoded in multiple ways
and that each form of encoding affects the way prices are remembered,'
the authors say.
About report:
Marc Vanhuele, Gilles Laurent, Xavier Dreze, and
Bobby Calder. "Consumers' Immediate Memory for Prices" Journal of
Consumer Research. September 2006.
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