Why do parking lots have sections with designated colors? Why do large high schools color the halls of certain areas particular colors? Do you know of any drivers of vehicles that must take time out to ponder the meanings of red, green, and yellow of traffic lights? The answer to all of these questions is that color is a great memory trigger-link. That is the premise of the CCM (Color Coded Multiplication Program) and why we say that memory goes FARR with the aid of color. Color enhances Focus, grabs Attention, increases Retrieval, and strengthens Retention. Please read the interesting article below.
Blog about learning, instructional design and use of technologies in education
How colors can enhance memory performance
Posted on January 13, 2014 by Jana Jan
In previous post How does memory work?, we saw that memory in its core is a cognitive process. Cognitive psychologists discovered different design principles to enhance memory performance and in that way remembering the information. Retrieving process depends on many variables and one of them is color. Color is the most powerful stimulus for the brain. It opens up other areas of the brain and allows greater and easier learning and remembering.
As stated in the last post, information enters our brain through eyes and ears and it is stored in the so called sensory memory. But we can pay attention only to a small amount of information. Once something has attracted our attention, it moves into our working memory. The brain notices and remembers color first!
Farely and Grant found out that colored multimedia presentations resulted in better attention and memory performance. Greene, Bell and Boyer further explained that warm types of colors such as yellow, red and orange have greater effect on attention, compared to the cool type of colors like brown and gray. The right combination of colors is also important, because it can produce higher level of contrast. Higher level of contrast attracts more attention and better visibility which influences memory retention (Dzulkifli and Mustafar).