I cannot help but think that WaniKani also provides a good memory training, at least in two ways:
(1)It makes you learn about yourself and what works best for you when you want to learn novel information/knowledge.
(2) It pushes you to recall information which you have learned.
All of this must have some effect on your memory, both on the software side of things and the hardware side of things.
So my question is: Do you guys think or have you guys noticed any transferable (meaning applicable to other fields beyond kanji learning) memory improvement thanks to WaniKani or general Kanji learning?
My personal inclination/idea from learning about brain plasticity and other related topics is that continuous exercise to remember and recall information must make relevant brain circuits work more efficiently and with more power (think of brain areas that grow due to certain occupations that require memory, taxi drivers etc.)
I donāt know about memory training itself, but WaniKani taught me to appreciate mnemonics. I used to think mnemonics were stupid and ineffective. That said, Iām still not great at coming up with my own mnemonics.
I donāt know if I actually would be literally better at learning things in other areas, but Wanikani has kind of helped me learn things about myself that Iāve never needed to focus on before regarding learning and memorization. Like others mentioned, I always disliked mnemonics and thought they were dumb, and I still donāt use them all the time, but I started to learn how mnemonics were always supposed to work with you learning the material. The terrible use of mnemonics that I always was accustomed with was āYou have to memorize this random crap in order to learn something else you could just write down a few times to remember, and now every time you think of this thing, you will also think of this random unrelated mnemonic.ā I also noticed that I have points in time where things just sort of click in place to memorize certain kanji after a few days of trying to learn it and failing to remember. Iāll be looking over the readings and meanings of kanji after a few days and just suddenly go from 30% āI just started trying to look at these kanji and have no idea what Iām doingā to somewhere around 80-90% once I actually look at them with a fresh and open mind. I think my mind just needs to be in the right kind of state in order to seriously learn something new, while trying new gimmicks like mnemonics, or writing, or printing out cards can get me to that state, once Iām able to actually accept the new information, I actually keep it, at least until I start to get it confused with a visually similar kanji.
That being said, if anyone has any advice on visually similar kanji destroying me from after I learn new ones, please call me with the advice for that. Also I donāt know anything about psychology or brain science or any of that stuff, so itād be interesting to know if what Iām talking about has any relation to that.
I donāt think thatās how it works. The overall concensus is the more you learn, the better and faster you learn. Learning benefits from having anchor points in your knowledge you can latch new information on to, and the more you learn the more anchor points you have.
Even just knowing certain words in french gave me some very useful mnemonics that wouldnāt have worked in English (or German). E.g. å²å¦ (ć¦ć¤ćć) philosophy - french tĆŖte = head ā head school
Your brain has so much storage space that thereās no way youād ever be able to fill it up! Itās actually pretty hard to measure, even theoretically, how much information the brain could hold. The bottleneck here is read/write speeds, not the storage itself.
WaniKani introduced me to SRS - I hadnāt used or even heard of it before. Now Iām considering applying this technique to other stuff I need to remember.
Has memorizing kanji improved my recall? I donāt think so, but training to remember stuff does help figure out what kind of memorization techniques work best for you.
I am not sure if wanikani helped me with my memory but it helped me with staying consistent. Iāve been studying Japanese for last 2.5 months without skipping a day. Even those days when I am not studying much grammar or practice I still always did my reviews. So I guess in the long term it helped me stay on track which makes me a better learner than I was before.
But yeah, I hope its also making my brain better at memorizing.
Thereās so much still unknown about the brain that i would be very skeptical about exact numbers. Though iām curious, where did you get that number from?
As recently as two years ago we discovered new types of cells in the brain, and itās another step to know what each does exactly. Even with some information storage calculation, you still have to account for various types of compression and other algorithms.
@Kapuska you should join our leaderboard group! We are all around ~7 and really inspired to go all the way to 60! ~Level 7 Leaderboard Group
As for the thread: Our brain will definitely improve with WK/Language Learning. Thereās a lot studies linking memory exercises/games with better mental health. Thereās also studies that suggests it would prevent or at least pospone mental health diseases.
Medical research shows that keeping an active mind can help prevent the onset of issues like dementia and other issues. As with anything pertaining to the body, exercise has a track record of keeping things in working order, so Iām sure there is a bit of benefit in other areas that rely on memory development and recall. Not only that, you develop the habits and skills necessary to learn a large amount of new material efficiently, and that skills is definitely transferrable.
