Color and memory

[MichaelHall]

I read a bunch of academic papers with the goal of deciding on which colors to use for my notes. I use Sketchnotes (notes heavy on drawings) for online courses and books. The studies have left me a bit confused, but basically, color is good for forming memories and recalling later.

 

Experiments show that natural photos are remembered better with the original colors than black-and-white versions. Artificially added colors are in between.

 

However, contrast seems to be important for recall. The highest contrast is black on a white background. (Or the reverse.) Some studies were unable to find any improvement by using a colored background for text. One study's researchers concluded that a red background enhanced recall, while blue enhanced creativity. One study found that blue text on a yellow background resulted in better recall than black on white. Consistency is important: if you learn in color, you will do best if tested with the same color usage.

 

Colored backgrounds reduce recall for color objects compared to black or white backgrounds. So colored paper may be counterproductive.

 

Gender differences sometimes appeared in the studies. One study found that males remember better with warm colors (red, yellow, orange), while females do better with cool colors (green, blue). On the issue of whether to use colored ink or highlighters, one study found that males remember better with colored text, while females perform better with color highlighted black text. In my experience females tend to be more likely to employ highlighters, and so, plausibly, they may be more responsive to highlighted text.

 

In general, the authors of the papers believe that warm colors should enhance recall, but their reasoning is often indirect: they point out that warm colors have been shown to cause emotional arousal, and strong emotions create strong memories. Only occasionally was a direct link found between warm colors and memory recall. One study found the opposite: it found cool colors were best for recall. It was by far the most detailed and rigorous study. However, it may have had a flaw. In the paper, they show one example of their test pictures: three versions of the same picture: blue color, yellow color, or gray scale, all on a black background. The problem is that they also used white in the pictures, and the poor contrast of yellow next to white made it hard for me to even correctly see the example yellow image. The studies that found the opposite may have also been flawed, however, since the experimental setups were laughably far from actual study materials.

 

(Sorry for not supplying citations. I wasn't planning to write this when I did the reading.)

 

So how should we use color in notes? Most Sketchnote artists use black ink and then lay on color highlights. If we apply the lessons learned from the experiments, you'd think red highlights would be best. However, I find black and red Sketchnotes wretched.  And I find black and blue (and gray) Sketchnotes appealing. Orange, black and blue is a possibility. But too many colors makes it hard to extract information. 

 

Your thoughts on color schemes?

 

As for fountain pens, I have a favorite pen, and using the same pen for all text and drawings has some appeal. However, it's difficult to find a black ink that you can use with highlighters or brush pens without smearing the black.

 

[arcfide]

I have thought about this as well and I think that the main issues with these studies, and one of the reasons that you see such conflicting information is that the studies are not able to actually isolate color as the causal factor in the issue. I suspect that the color used is actually relatively incidental in the effects that they are able to see. Using other, more foundational learning sciences research, you can find information about the cognitive elements that are tied into learning and recall. If you study those cog. sci. papers, you'll see that there is a connection between those ideas and how individuals will engage with color. However, that won't be the same across all populations, though it might hold true within specific populations. 

 

This means that the correct answer is to understand the cog. sci. behind recall and memory, and then utilize colors as a way to enhance that within your own sphere based on your emotional and historical background. 

 

For instance, if using a certain color is likely to trigger a certain emotional response in you, this could have an effect on your ability to learn, one way or another. Additionally, the degree to which you mind is conditioned to colors through exposure matters, which means that it is very likely the case that over time the colors that you will need to use in order to get maximum effect will likely change over time. Just as an example, if everything that your brain sees is red text on a white background, suddenly seeing black text or blue text will trigger as a novelty experience and such experiences are prioritized in your mind as more important to remember. This "normalization" effect is repeatable across a range of mental experiences. Additionally, we know that certain mental states are better or worse for learning outcomes, so if a certain color combination at a certain time has a tendency to trigger such states, it might help you. 

 

My attitude personally towards all of this is that the use of color tends not to be particularly useful for me for recall. I pick a single color and use that throughout anything that I am doing, because I have found the single more important element is engagement with the topic at hand. The more I am focused on other things, the less I can focus on the thing at hand. This means that I also take very minimal or non-existent notes when I am in lectures, because I get more out of intense focus on the lecture in the moment and asking questions rather than taking notes. However, I do significant journaling and researching on paper after a lecture or while working through problems, often requiring that I write in reasonable sentences, because it forces my brain to try to reframe the knowledge that is sitting in my head into something concrete and communicable, which, again, increases my engagement with the ideas. As much as people hate to hear it, it is constant, repeated, continual mindful and focused engagement with a topic which enhances recall, fundamentally. You must combine repetition with the heightened and focused emotional and mental states necessary to trigger "relevancy thresholds" in your brain. Additionally, the less distraction there is in what you are doing, the more focused those memories can be, and the less your brain is likely to "trigger" on tangential items that might be harder to create down the road. 

 

All this to say that I generally pick a single ink color that has the properties that I want so that I will always feel relatively positive and happy about using that color, never frustrated, or at least minimally frustrated (there is not an ink in the world that isn't a little frustrating at some point). For some people, that is a solid black ink with a fine line pen (they get distracted or annoyed with shading or lack of contrast). For me, it tends to be an ink that allows me to confidently "feel calm" during the writing, which allows me to write good letters (I don't like ugly handwriting when I'm taking notes) with a pen that allows me to feel good. I keep trying different colors and inks to see which ones feel best to me, and a few of them are consistently good enough that I've used bottles of the stuff. Those would be, throughout my fountain pen experiences: Montblanc Permanent Black, Platinum Carbon Black, Platinum Blue Black, Waterman Black, Montblanc Sepia, Sailor Blue, Montblanc Midnight Blue (IG), Herbin Encre Authentique (I used this in dip pens). I've not come close to using up a full bottle of ink in my other lines, but I have used bottles of those inks up fully or nearly fully, and used them as my primary ink for a long period of time. You'll notice some pattern here, that I tend towards black or blue black inks (Platinum Blue Black and Sailor Blue are right on the edge of a muted blue/blue black). However, for a long time, Montblanc Sepia was my one and only ink that I used constantly, during an intense academic time in my life. 

 

The inks above are all pretty different from one another, and I did not use them all in the same pen or at the same time in my life, but they all have in common that I felt very good when using them, and that they were minimally frustrating for me to use while I was using them. They all made me feel pretty happy when using them, which I consider important to doing good work. However, they didn't make me so giddy that I lost focus and could only stare in wonder at the ink. I think that matters more than the particular color that you are using. 

 

I've never found highlighting or color coding to be the least bit useful. I have found rewriting to be quite useful. 

[ParramattaPaul]

I have to ask myself if personal experiences with colour, colour preferences, cultural and ethnic perceptions, and even learned uses of colour, memory techniques, etc. may significantly influence individual memory forming, retention, and long-term recall outcomes.  Has that been adequately explored by the referred-to studies?

[A Smug Dill]

8 hours ago, MichaelHall said:

Your thoughts on color schemes?

 

11 minutes ago, arcfide said:

… there is a connection between those ideas and how individuals will engage with color. However, that won't be the same across all populations, though it might hold true within specific populations.

 …‹snip›… 

For instance, if using a certain color is likely to trigger a certain emotional response in you, this could have an effect on your ability to learn, one way or another. Additionally, the degree to which you mind is conditioned to colors through exposure matters, …‹snip›… Additionally, we know that certain mental states are better or worse for learning outcomes, so if a certain color combination at a certain time has a tendency to trigger such states, it might help you.

 

I agree with @arcfide.

 

Approaching it from the *cough* pseudo-science angle of NLP^†, it's important to separate (the concepts of) specific triggers, e.g. particular colours or colour schemes, and indicators, from underlying process structure. Most people share a great number of internal processes (e.g. recall, learning, fight-or-flight response) in structure, but the triggers for those ‘same’ processes could be vastly different from one individual to the next. That's the idea behind people having and/or favouring different ‘learning styles’; and that some individuals would react with fear or stress to certain stimuli while others don't.

 

The association of particular stimuli with certain internal processes can be a conditioned response, whether that is done unconsciously or deliberately, inadvertently or intentionally. 

 

If you're doing the colour-coding (primarily or solely) for your benefit, then you'd be best advised to calibrate which colours or colour schemes work for you, never mind whether it works for anyone else or what works for anyone else. You improve the effectiveness of that approach by studying yourself as the subject and your own responses, much as you would learn about what you like in fountain pens and inks, or the writing experience, instead of going with what is purported to be a representative group of your peers like, on the assumption that “(a large number N) people can't all be wrong”, and assuming that you're either already, or ought to be, aligned with them in your personal requirements and preferences. The solution is to try different things (usually at your expense of time, effort and material cost) for yourself, one by one, and evaluate the benefit or value you gain from each, to decide what would work best going forward; never mind what you spent on discovering what doesn't work well for you, and that you didn't have a good time trying those out. I think it is a sound approach to prioritise testing those things that work for seemingly a large number of your peers, when it comes to investing limited resources in the discovery and calibration exercise; but there is no true, equally effective alternative to testing as widely as possible.

[MichaelHall]

3 hours ago, ParramattaPaul said:

I have to ask myself if personal experiences with colour, colour preferences, cultural and ethnic perceptions, and even learned uses of colour, memory techniques, etc. may significantly influence individual memory forming, retention, and long-term recall outcomes.  Has that been adequately explored by the referred-to studies?

 

The papers I read did not touch on those issues except maybe as a passing untested thought. Some papers were systematic reviews of large numbers of other papers, so I probably didn't miss a major study along those lines.

 

1 hour ago, A Smug Dill said:

Most people share a great number of internal processes (e.g. recall, learning, fight-or-flight response) in structure, but the triggers for those ‘same’ processes could be vastly different from one individual to the next.

 

A major shared thesis of the papers is that humans are hardwired to be alerted by bright, gaudy colors. Red, orange, and yellow are often associated with dangerous plants and animals, especially in contrasting patterns with black. Even in the one study that found cool colors were better than warm for recall, they found that response time for the recall task was strikingly reduced for warm colors relative to cool or black. Many of the papers said warm colors are associated with avoidance behavior. I would guess fast reactions and avoidance may not be the best thing for difficult study materials, as opposed to the simple recall tasks of the studies.

 

One of the studies speculated that their lack of detecting any difference for yellow and blue recall may have been because the print shop used a bright hue of blue for the printed materials. Poison dart frogs are often cool colors. Many are electric blue with dark blue and black. Some are a neon teal and black. Perhaps our hardwired responses are to bright colors, not warm colors per se.

 

3 hours ago, arcfide said:

I pick a single color and use that throughout anything that I am doing, because I have found the single more important element is engagement with the topic at hand. The more I am focused on other things, the less I can focus on the thing at hand. This means that I also take very minimal or non-existent notes when I am in lectures, because I get more out of intense focus on the lecture in the moment and asking questions rather than taking notes. However, I do significant journaling and researching on paper after a lecture or while working through problems, often requiring that I write in reasonable sentences, because it forces my brain to try to reframe the knowledge that is sitting in my head into something concrete and communicable, which, again, increases my engagement with the ideas. As much as people hate to hear it, it is constant, repeated, continual mindful and focused engagement with a topic which enhances recall, fundamentally.

 

For Sketchnotes or really any note style, you can ink in black (or any one color) during the lecture and then go back later and highlight your drawings and important text with color. One of the main ideas of Sketchnotes is to create something that you would want to review again later. I go a step farther by scheduling reviews of my notes: spaced repetition.

 

1 hour ago, A Smug Dill said:

If you're doing the colour-coding (primarily or solely) for your benefit, then you'd be best advised to calibrate which colours or colour schemes work for you, never mind whether it works for anyone else or what works for anyone else. You improve the effectiveness of that approach by studying yourself as the subject and your own responses, much as you would learn about what you like in fountain pens and inks, or the writing experience, instead of going with what is purported to be a representative group of your peers like, on the assumption that “(a large number N) people can't all be wrong”, and assuming that you're either already, or ought to be, aligned with them in your personal requirements and preferences.

I'm a big believer in using study results, when the cost of adopting the solution is very low and I don't have much reason to favor another method. For example, one study found that mind mapping does not improve performance but that the people who did it felt that it did. So, I see no point in mind mapping, easy choice. Another example: a study found that players wearing red tended to beat teams wearing blue (for randomly split office workers playing soccer/football). So I often wear red to the office. It's entirely possible that this red effect is limited to team sports, but there isn't really a cost to try, because I haven't gone so far as to buy a whole new wardrobe.

[arcfide]

Here's a study that you might find interesting: 

 

Improving Students’ Learning With Effective Learning Techniques: Promising Directions From Cognitive and Educational Psychology – Association for Psychological Science – APS

 

Best, Worst Learning Tips: Flash Cards Are Good, Highlighting Is Bad | TIME.com

 

This study also covers drawing and the like. The point being that I don't think the studies consistently show the kinds of results that people want when it comes to color psychology, at least in general right now. For example, the studies demonstrated increased psychological arousal with the bright colors doesn't imply that they are good colors for generalized memory recall. In fact, they could be the exact opposite, quite plausibly. And then there are the other studies showing potentially negative effects of the use of bright colors (such as highlighting). 

[ENewton]

11 hours ago, arcfide said:

All this to say that I generally pick a single ink color that has the properties that I want so that I will always feel relatively positive and happy about using that color, never frustrated, or at least minimally frustrated (there is not an ink in the world that isn't a little frustrating at some point).

 

I take a similar approach.  I almost always use a dark muted purple, in order to feel relaxed and contented as I write.  The one exception to this rule is that I use black for Japanese calligraphy; in that case, using the traditional color deepens the experience for me. 

[MichaelHall]

5 hours ago, arcfide said:

Here's a study that you might find interesting: 

Thank you very much. When I speak of highlighting, I don't mean the classical method of highlighting text in a book. I am thinking in terms of adding color to handwritten text. However, my approach does share the idea of emphasizing the most important parts, which one of your papers argued might be counterproductive, because it may interfere with drawing connections and thinking about the content as a whole.

 

You might find interesting that my note style uses both of the proven learning techniques in the articles. Take a look at some of my notes for a Udemy course:

 

The articles advocate spaced repetition and also recall/testing. I use a flashcard program that uses spaced repetition. For this page, you could imagine that there is a flashcard with just the text, "Applied Machine Learning without coding using Orange 3", though in truth I haven't fully indexed this page yet. So when I see that flashcard, I look up this page. That handles the spaced repetition part. The recall or testing part is handled by the questions on the left page. So, when this page comes up for review, I would cover the right page with a sheet and try to answer the questions on the left page, sliding down the sheet to reveal the answers, which are underlined in electric blue.

 

The inks/colors are Platinum Carbon Black, Platinum Pigment Blue, Kuretake gray and blue-gray brush markers, and a light blue colored pencil. Note the transfer of black to the facing page (left). It wasn't from being wet. I have ordered R&K Dokumentus Schwarz (black) in hopes of solving the ink transfer problem. There is also some bleed-through from the brush markers.

 

In the future, I plan to switch to black text. The higher contrast makes black easier to read, and I suspect that translates to easier to remember. However, there is an ink that just makes me feel good: Atmospheric Cloudy Day by Lennon Tool Bar. This dark teal is more legible than Platinum Pigment Blue. It's another possibility.

 

Also, I notice that most Sketchnote artists print text rather than use cursive. Print text is indeed more legible. On the other hand, studies suggest writing cursive facilitates fluid thought. Because I will write each page once but read it many times, I will favor printing.

 

Other than printing and darkening the text, I think I will keep this general style. Probably I will stick with blue shading, but I bought a pastel orange brush marker to experiment. It might even be good to use different shading colors for different subjects or even at random (but only one color plus black).

 

[ParramattaPaul]

I see one aspect here that has not been mentioned, but is relevant.  That is that a behaviour, such as using a different colour or pen to emphasise something that needs to be recalled attaches a mental -- possibly subconscious -- 'exclamation mark' to the memory itself.

 

That... 

14 hours ago, MichaelHall said:

A major shared thesis of the papers is that humans are hardwired to be alerted by bright, gaudy colors. Red, orange, and yellow are often associated with dangerous plants and animals, especially in contrasting patterns with black.

... is a component of one's primordial, genetically-programmed, survival instincts, as is that one's peripheral vision alerts to motion.  The question is; how well does this, a survival instinct, translate to learning?

[MichaelHall]

22 hours ago, ParramattaPaul said:

The question is; how well does this, a survival instinct, translate to learning?

 

Most color-n-memory research papers reference this paper: Blue or Red? Exploring the Effect of Color on Cognitive Task Performances (2009). (You can get the full paper there by clicking where it says "File pap.pdf DOWNLOAD" and also supporting materials in the other download link.) Here is the abstract:

 

Quote

Existing research reports inconsistent findings with regard to the effect of color on cognitive task performances. Some research suggests that blue or green leads to better performances than red; other studies record the opposite. Current work reconciles this discrepancy. We demonstrate that red (versus blue) color induces primarily an avoidance (versus approach) motivation (study 1, n = 69) and that red enhances performance on a detail-oriented task, whereas blue enhances performance on a creative task (studies 2 and 3, n = 208 and 118). Further, we replicate these results in the domains of product design (study 4, n = 42) and persuasive message evaluation (study 5, n = 161) and show that these effects occur outside of individuals’ consciousness (study 6, n = 68). We also provide process evidence suggesting that the activation of alternative motivations mediates the effect of color on cognitive task performances.

 

That's a lot to unpack. Starting at the end, they are doing a mediation analysis, which means they test whether color changes "motivation", which in turn changes performance on tests. "Motivation" is avoidance (usually red) or approach (usually blue). They say the difference in performance for red and blue in past studies is because red boosts recall while blue boosts creativity.