New research from the University of Mississippi suggests that storytelling, from ancient oral traditions to modern digital communication, may be closely linked to how human memory evolved, according to a study published on Mar. 16.
The findings indicate that using stories could be as effective as established mnemonic techniques for improving memory retention. This has potential implications for educational practices and everyday learning.
Matthew Reysen, associate professor of psychology, and doctoral student Zoe Fischer conducted experiments comparing storytelling with survival processing—a widely recognized mnemonic device where individuals relate information to survival scenarios. "People have been using stories to communicate information as long as they've been passing information from one person to another," Reysen said. "But there wasn't much in the literature about storytelling as a way to improve memory. Our result was that storytelling was just as good as survival processing, and in the cases where people actually wrote out the stories, even better than the popular survival technique. The overall conclusion is that, just like with survival processing, memory may have an evolutionary tie to storytelling."
Fischer noted that many educators already use stories in their teaching because they find it engaging for students. "This is something that we hear often, right?" she said. "I presented at a conference recently, and so many professors came up to me after and said, 'I tell stories during my lectures and I do it because it's entertaining and more interesting, and people tend to love it.' It's so wonderful that we can see that there's evidence that this actually helps them remember information even more. Now we know it's not only entertaining for them, but also helpful."
The study involved four experiments with over 380 participants who were asked to create narratives using unrelated nouns or employ other mnemonic strategies such as pleasantness processing—rating words by how pleasant or unpleasant they are—or survival processing. Results showed those who used storytelling remembered more words than those who used pleasantness processing and performed equally well or better compared to those using survival processing alone.
However, combining both storytelling and survival processing did not significantly enhance retention further. "You would think, if both things work separately, that they would work even better together," Fischer said. "But what that tells us is that these two systems, underlyingly, have the same kind of cognitive function." The researchers believe both methods rely on relational processing—linking concepts through similarity—and item-specific processing—distinguishing unique features.
Reysen concluded by reflecting on the evolutionary significance of narrative: "Before people began even writing down words, they used stories to communicate information," he said. "So, it makes sense to me, from an evolutionary perspective, that we would be better at retaining stories...the mind provides a sort of framework or structure within it to include the information which organizes it and makes it easier to retrieve."
