Remember Things Better By Saying Them Out Loud

The key to remembering something may be saying it aloud.

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Called the “production effect,” Canadian researchers have reconfirmed (it’s been proven by them before in 2010) that saying something aloud is the best way to remember something, CBC News reports.

Colin MacLeod, a psychology professor at the University of Waterloo calls the experience the “production effect” and says that he thinks that speaking something aloud leads to better encoding of the information in your memory.

MacLeod’s research team looked at four different ways of remembering using a list of random words: reading words silently, reading them aloud, listening to someone read them, and listening to a recording of their own voice reading them.

In the end, participants that read words aloud remember the most words that were included on the list followed by those that listened to themselves reading the words and then those that listened to someone else reading them. The worst was people who read the words they needed to remember silently.

In addition to reading, MacLeod says the trick can work for remembering everyday things. For instance, saying “I turned off the stove” aloud can help you remember that you did in fact turn off the stove before you left home.