Page 229 - Nutrition Counseling and Education Skills: A Guide for Professionals

Which is easier to store and later retrieve—something one hears, something one sees, or something one
both sees and hears? People retain visual plus verbal images and messages better. Some people use imagery to
aid retention by picturing something in the mind.2,11 Can you picture the USDA ChooseMyPlate food guide,
or a food product label, for example?

There are various strategies to help people remember. The professional can summarize in the middle and at
the end of a presentation. Repetition and review are helpful for retention. You may put an outline on a
handout or project an image to organize information. Get people involved in talking with active instead of
passive learning activities. Present information in a clear, organized fashion, not as isolated bits of
information. Then, ask the person to translate the information into his or her own words or solve a problem
with it, such as plan a menu or summarize what was said so that material provides personal significance.

People also remember stories, metaphors, and examples better than isolated facts. In teaching employees
about food sanitation, for example, stories of actual outbreaks of foodborne illness are helpful. When teaching
about modified diets, examples of actual client cases may be used. In a discussion of fiber with a client,
examples of whole-grain breads and cereals, fruits, and vegetables may be discussed. Learning requires people
to make sense of information, to sort it in their minds, to fit it into a neat and orderly pattern, and to use
current information to help assimilate the new.7,8,11

Long-term memory requires connections of new knowledge to known information. Information is probably
stored in networks of connected facts and concepts. Each piece of information in memory is connected to
other pieces in some way. We remember things by association. The word “apple,” for example, may be
associated with fruits, red, or tree. You would be unlikely to associate it with a cat.

The following is an example of a partial knowledge network on water-soluble vitamins:

Water-Soluble Vitamins

Vitamin B Vitamin C

Niacin Ascorbic acid

Functions Food sources Functions Food sources

Vegetable Animal Vegetable Fruit

Cereal Pork Broccoli Orange

If a person already has this network and learns something new about vitamin C—for example, that raw
cabbage is a good food source of vitamin C—it is easy to file it into the existing network by association. If,
however, a person knows nothing about vitamin C, it would be much more difficult to file the new
information into long-term memory. The result is that it may be forgotten.

The following is an example of a knowledge network on food sanitation:

Salmonella Germs/Bacteria Staphylococcus
Food sources Clostridium botulinum Food sources

Food sources

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