We hear different words every minute, every day! But how much can we recall what we hear? This is where auditory memory comes into play!
Auditory memory involves being able to hear, memorise and recall information. Simply put, it is the ability to recall information by hearing. The less time between when you heard something and trying to retrieve it, the more accurate your auditory memory will be. It involves the complex processing of attending, listening, processing, storing, recalling, and performing.
For instance, If someone told you their name, auditory memory will help you remember it without thinking about it. It is also perfect for remembering events in your life as a conversation or lecture. However, just like all other skills in life, this memory, too, needs sharpening. Therefore, in this post, we will talk about the various activities that can help an individual sharpen this skill.
Auditory memory- Comprehending the process
The way we all hear and memorize things depends entirely on the processing of the brain and on the auditory memory. Basically, when we hear things, the sound is transmitted to the brain to process it. It is memorized with the help of auditory memory, and it is recalled when needed.
In that short time span, our mind makes and stores a record of that sound so that we can recall it after the actual sound source has stopped. This process further continues even if a person is unaware or not consciously doing so. This happens because sound activates the part of our brain that handles language comprehension. Auditory memory can help us in many ways, especially when we are trying to learn something new or memorize something; a good example would be hearing a public speaker.
Like most skills, this might also need some upgradation time and again. And for this, individuals can indulge in some activities. These not only help you boost your power to memorize what you hear but also make you better listeners.
Activities for practicing your Auditory memory skills
1. Instructional Map
This activity is ideal for the little learners but can also be performed by older kids.
- Hide the kid’s favorite toy. This should be something with which they play the most; that’s how they would be even more intrigued to find it.
- Then ask them to find the toy. You can give them some small hints. You can also use multiple places like a nearby garden room, down the closet, etc.
- Give multiple instructions to make the toy hunt a tougher task. For example, you need to tell the child, ‘I have hidden your toy; you need to find it. Try looking at ……. ’
Basically, when all the hints are given all at once, the little one would have to listen even more carefully and use their auditory memory to recall the instructions. If the exercise is conducted with multiple children, the child who finds the object first will win a prize. This activity can ensure auditory memory as the little ones need to listen and grasp the information to step forward in the race.
2. Sing a Song
Not just kids, but most individuals love to groove over music. While listening to music, we often subconsciously memorize the lyrics/ This is a classic example of auditory memory, as, without even our trying, we learn the lyrics and it gets stored somewhere in our brains.
The same can be executed while helping individuals, especially kids develop auditory memory. The parents or educators can conduct this activity in 2 ways.
- Give kids a song; the song should be given according to their age. For the little ones, an easier song, preferably a rhyme can be given.
- Next up, they would have to memorize it and recite it in front of the class. Kids can also record a video and share it in the class group!
- The other way in which this activity can work is by teaching a few concepts in the form of a song. Learning it, and storing this in the auditory memory helps them even more with academics.
As children often like engaging with music, this would be easier for them to go with auditory memory exercises.
3. Shopping Haul
We all love shopping, and kids are no less of shopping fanatics.
- Set up a model shop with either pictures or some easily approachable household items. You can also use real food.
- Ask kids to buy specific things like, “Buy a Carrot, Banana, and Beans”. Now add up more items and ask them to buy more than 5-6 items.
- Give multiple options like, ‘pick one banana or apple, a copy or a book, a bottle or a box.’
This would make the game even more challenging as the kids now not only have to listen and use their auditory memory to remember what items but need to remember the choices as well. Encourage your child to visualize the shopping items as you ask them to buy.
4. Sound Association
This activity can be extremely engaging for children of younger age groups, where sounds of various animals and commonly known objects can be recorded and played during the class, where the child will have to identify the source of the sound and put them in categories like animals, objects, etc. This will require them to use their auditory memory to remember the sound associated with its source.
To amp up this activity and bring it up a notch, kids can be played a podcast or audio drama, and later they can be asked questions to test their auditory memory.
This activity will not only help develop their auditory memory but the students would be able to recognise important sounds.
5. Complete The Sketch
- Make a simple and comprehensible drawing of either a scenery, a play scene, a human face, etc, anything that is understandable by a child, and leave certain features undrawn in the figure.
- Call a student from equally distributed teams, respectively, and ask them to draw the incomplete features by following the auditory instructions being given. For example: Draw a vertical line over the roof of the hut, then draw another parallel line, and join them at the open end.
- Give strange and eerie instructions like making clouds color red, the sun can be blue and the house should be black. The river can be colored yellow, and the flowers must be a mix of white and grey.
This way, the students will listen carefully and try to memorize what colors are to be put where. This enhances and develops the auditory memory of the kids.
6. Press The Buttons
- Create a soundboard of numbers, where pushing of each number will create a different sound.
- Toy piano can also be used where the teacher can put numbers on each of the keys. The end result would look something like this:
- Give students a series of numbers like 9-6-1. Ask them to speak those numbers out loud. Then push the buttons in the given series, 9-6-1, and instruct the student to acquaint themselves with the sound of those numbers.
- Post this, the student will be blindfolded, and a random sequence of numbers (with the same characteristics, like 3 numbers in a group), will be pushed, producing sounds. The student will be expected to prompt when they feel that the right sequence was pushed through the memory of the sounds they heard in the beginning of the task.
This activity can be carried out in another way as well. The students can be given a random order of numbers. Say – 7,6,3,8,9,10,4 and 1. The students now have to memorise it and press the exact keys with the help of auditory memory.
7. Whisper Game
This activity involves all the kids sitting in a circle, with one copy and a pencil.
- The teacher or moderator needs to whisper a phrase in the ear of the first student.
- Next, they will move clockwise and keep whispering the same phrase in each other’s ears.
- Each student needs to write what they heard, and later the teacher will check whether they heard it right or not.
- To amp up this activity, ask students to remember all of the phrases, and later, after 5-6 rounds, they can be handed over their copies and pens and asked to write the phrases down.
This game not only helps students in building up their auditory memory but can also act as a fun group activity to break some ice.
Conclusion
We often hear names and are not able to remember them, this is what auditory memory can do to humans! Can you now imagine the kind of boost these activities can give to your auditory memory? It is important for people to practice remembering and repeating information that they hear. Hearing information and retaining it otherwise comes in natural to all humans; however, time and again, people might want to boost this skill. For this, the above-mentioned activities can come into use. Try these and let us know how well they faired for your little learner!
An engineer, Maths expert, Online Tutor and animal rights activist. In more than 5+ years of my online teaching experience, I closely worked with many students struggling with dyscalculia and dyslexia. With the years passing, I learned that not much effort being put into the awareness of this learning disorder. Students with dyscalculia often misunderstood for having just a simple math fear. This is still an underresearched and understudied subject. I am also the founder of Smartynote -‘The notepad app for dyslexia’,