Memories that stick with us for a lifetime are those that
fit other things we remember—but have a slightly weird twist. The
most effective memory strategy is to relate new information with something you
already know, but do it with a weird twist. This is the basic principle of
well-known mnemonic strategies, like acrostics or "Memory Palace."
The idea of acrostics is to construct a sentence in which the first letter of
each word reminds you of what you are trying to remember, as in the names of
the 12 cranial nerves:
"On Old Olympus Towering Tops A Finn
and A German Viewed Some Hops"
(olfactory, optic, oculomotor, trochlear,
trigeminal, abducens, facial, auditory, glossopharyngeal, vagus, spinal
accessory, hypoglossal).
Acrostics and all other mnemonic aids work best if you
create mental-image representations—the weirder the better. It is the weirdness that makes things especially memorable.
There are three basic techniques:
1.
Subject-Verb-Object. This linguistic sequence
comes naturally to us. It is the way we speak. The mnemonic application is to
create images for what you want to remember in a subject-verb-object form. For
example, if you want to remember to pick up some corn, milk and sausage at the
grocery store, you might mentally see yourself pushing a grocery cart in the
store, throwing in a package of your favorite sausage, pouring milk on it as if
you were watering a plant, and corn stalks sprout up as you approach the
cashier. Weird, yes. Easy to remember, yes. If you wanted to remember the
capital of Arkansas, one of the first things that might come to mind is Bill
Clinton, who was governor there. Given his scandals, you might want to throw a
rock at him. Visualize throwing a "little rock" at a picture of
Clinton.
2.
Story Chains. With this more sophisticated
method, you use the mental-image representations to create a story. You could,
for example, try to memorize the order of planets around our sun by rote
repetition: of mercury, venus, earth, mars, jupiter, saturn, uranus, and
neptune. But the weird, more effective way would be to create a mental image
story wherein you visualize the winged warrior of mercury, who is attracted to the
statue of venus; they go to the NASA image of earth to get married; they go on
honeymoon taking a suitcase of mars candy bars; they divorce and go to wail at
the Jewish (jupiter) wailing wall; they
die and you sit on a cremated urn (saturn) of their remains; you dump the
remains on the ground and it rains on you (uranus), which washes the ashes out past the pitchfork sign
of jupiter, who reigns over the sea.
3.
Memory Palace. This is one of several “peg”
systems in which memory becomes easier when you attach your image
representations to known objects, such as furniture in your home “palace.” This
is how I memorize the names of students. I may attach mental image
representations of their names to
objects in my yard and then move mentally into various rooms in my house until
I complete the class enrollment. For example, for the names Bott, Carino,
Castillo, Dillawn, Eckerdt, Flores, Garrett, Grantham, and Hans, I might see
the following in my mind’s eye:
As I leave my back door, I see a robot (Bott)
trying to hold the door shut as I turn the knob. Then as I push the button to
raise the garage door, I see the button jump off the wall to my car (Carino). As the door rises, I see my lawn, covered not
in grass but in pickles (Dillawn). Then,
going left to right, the next thing I see is my my shed, which magically has
morphed into Eckerd’s drug store (Eckert). Next I see my big cedar tree which
is growing out of a wood floor instead of the ground (Flores). Then I see my
little raised garden bed where I see Ulyssses Grant (Grantham) leading toy
soldiers in battle. Then I see my flower bush, which instead of sprouting
flowers has hands (Hans) hanging from all its branches. And so on. Students are
amazed I can do call the roll in order from memory. They would be even more
astonished if they knew I could do it backwards or in any order. The link
anchors in my “palace” are already memorized and when I see them in my mind’s
eye, the images I am trying to memorize pop into mind automatically.
I discuss these techniques
and other memory principles in great detail in my memory books (students will
love my 5-star e-book at Smashwords.com). See reviews of my books at the author
tab of WRKlemm.com.
Per Sederberg, a professor of psychology at The Ohio State
University says that "If we want to be able to retrieve a memory later,
you want to build a rich web. It should connect to other memories in multiple
ways, so there are many ways for our mind to get back to it. A memory of a
lifetime is like a big city, with many roads that lead there. We forget
memories that are desert towns, with only one road in. "You want to have a
lot of different ways to get to any individual memory."
Once you have organized new information in a novel, weird
way, rehearse it right away without distraction or interruption. New memories
net time to set up, like wet concrete. The process is called consolidation, and
without protection from distraction, a new memory may get erased or corrupted.
Sources
Memory Power 101
(New York: Skyhorse)
Better Grades, Less
Effort (Smashwords.com; https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/24623
Ohio State University. (2017, June 19). Why the
'peculiar' stands out in our memory. ScienceDaily.
Retrieved June 20, 2017 from
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170619092713.htm
