Especially Difficult Memorization Tasks. Lesson 13.

 

Some memory work seems more difficult than others. We have already covered learning math. Here we will consider such tasks as expanding vocabulary, learning foreign language, and remembering dates and places, and music.

Vocabulary

The obviously important factor in thinking is vocabulary (or, in math, number fluency). Everyday thought is conducted with words. A limited vocabulary limits the range and rigor of thought. Sadly, young people generally have limited vocabularies. I see this every year even with upper-division college students in a course where I require them to write essays. They frequently use words that don't match the ideas they are trying to convey and fail to use words precisely. Children who grow up in culturally deprived homes are handicapped because they are exposed to the limited vocabularies of their parents. Teachers and parents should make it a point to expose children to new works and to instill a commitment to using words precisely.

Research suggests that some review sessions need to be widely spaced by two months or more from the initial learning. The amount and spacing of foreign language vocabulary learning has an enormous effect on how well the material is retained years later.  In one study, 300 English-foreign word pairs were studied with either 13 or 26 relearning review sessions at intervals of 14, 28, or 56 days. Retention was tested for 1, 2, 3, or 5 years after the end of training. Although longer intervals between learning a review impaired acquisition slightly, this was offset by substantially higher long-term retention.  Thirteen review sessions spaced at 56 days yielded retention comparable to 26 sessions spaced at 14 days apart.

One experiment related to flash cards has examined the role that retrieval had on the ability to recall that same material after a delay of a week. College students were to learn a list of 40 foreign language vocabulary word pairs, which were manipulated so that the pairs either remained in the list (were repeatedly studied) or were dropped from the list once they were recalled. It is like studying flash cards: one way is to keep studying all the cards over and over again; the other way is to drop out a card from the stack every time you correctly recalled what was on the other side of the card.

Number of self-testing events and their spacing are influenced by the number of retrievals that are correct. It helps to repeat self-testing on cards already correctly recalled. In one study where students studied flash cards of 35 Swahili-English word pairs, the students were asked to practice until they got the vocabulary correct using either the entire stack or five stacks of seven cards each. Researchers instructed students to study the flashcards until they had gotten each translation correct either once, five, or 10 times, before taking a final quiz a week later. Getting the stack correct five times was three times more effective for the final quiz than getting the stack correct only once. Also, study of one big stack was better than five little ones.

A related study examined the correctness effect when college-aged students were asked to study for a week a pack of 48 paired Swahili vocabulary words with their English translations. To facilitate learning, students were taught to use a cue (word, phrase or concept) to link both words of a pair. Students controlled how many times they felt they needed to repeat study of a word pair until they reached 1, 3, 6, or 9 correct retrievals. Immediately after finishing the learning, students gave an estimated rating of how well they thought they had learned the material. On an examination given one week later, gains in correct answers were larger with more correct retrievals during the study period.

Student predicted judgments of their learning are important in real-world study because such judgments govern how long students will practice what their assigned learning. Judgment of learning success was found to depend on the number of self-testing events, their spacing, and the number of correct retrievals.

Another study established that best learning occurs when students can correctly recall items multiple times during the initial learning experience. In that study, students studied 70 Swahili-English word pairs either 1,3,5,7,8, or 10 times during encoding. For example, a cue and target pair were initially presented to study for 10 seconds. Then during practice the cue was presented and learners were given eight seconds to show they could recall the target. Incorrect recalled targets were given a four-second restudy opportunity before moving on to the next word pair. Pairs continued to be rehearsed until they reached the assigned level of correct remembering (1, 2, 3, etc.). The subjects were divided into two groups, one taking an exam within 25 min after study and rehearsal and the other one week later. Results revealed best final exam performance when the test-item presentation intervals were long and when the final test occurred 25 min after the study and rehearsal. Almost none of the word pairs were learned when the learning occurred when the intervals were short and the final test was delayed for a week. The best final learning occurred when the initial learning practice retrievals were correct and when more time elapsed between each recall attempt (6-minute lag versus 1-minute lag).

There are some other general strategies for building vocabulary. I have a couple of ideas based on memory principles.

            Learn word prefixes and suffixes. Prefixes and suffixes are great aids. “Pre” suggests before or ahead of time; “ism” suggests a state of being, “re” suggests back or again, and so on.      

            Learn word families. Many words come from the same family. If you know what one word in the group means, you can get the general idea for the others from the context in which they are used. The other words will be easier to remember because they are similar to the word you already know. Here are some word groups.

            despise, despicable, despot, despotism, despoil

            habit, habitat, habitation, habitual, habitué

            jet, jettison, jetstream, jetty, jet set, jetlag, jetsam

            line, liner, lineman, linear, line drive, line-up

            parent, paternal, pater, patriarch, paternity, patrician, patricide

Create images for strange new words. Examples:

            Gazebo: see yourself staring (gazing) at the ugliest boy (bo) you ever saw standing in a             building that only has a roof, no walls. Feel disgust.

            Adumbrate (meaning incomplete understanding or explanation): see a “dumb brat” with a dunce cap, sitting in the corner partially hidden by a screen. Sense the pain he must feel at being so ostracized and tries to hide.

            Daguerreotype (an early photographic process on metal plate): visualize a picture on a sheet of metal and you have stabbed it with a dagger because you hate it so much.

            Perspicacious (meaning especially insightful): see yourself working up a sweat (perspire), scratching your head with question marks around it, then jumping up with a eureka  moment when you realize you figured it out.

Foreign Language 

In this globally interconnected world, many people want to learn a foreign language. In my own case decades ago, I stumbled through Russian and French because they were required for my Ph.D. Most recently, I am trying Spanish, because I live in Texas.

            Some things I know that help learning foreign language is the use of flash cards for vocabulary (using images, not just the words).

            Another thing I know is the value of strategic approaches and planning. For example, I first have to confront my negative attitude (negative attitudes impair learning). I have a negative attitude about the irrational things in language. Take the gender business in Spanish and many other languages. Why does everything have to have a sex identification, like male and female endings for inanimate objects? That is just plain stupid! Irregular verbs are another problem. When I was in high school, I learned Latin, which wasn’t so bad, because it was a much more orderly language than the modern languages that “evolved” from it. Latin wasn’t broken. Why didn’t people leave it alone?

            My first strategic realization was that I had to get over my pique. Who was I punishing with my negative attitude? Certainly not the people who created the irrationalities in the language. No, my attitude would be a de-motivator for me to learn. So, I tell myself, “Get over it.”

            Next, I think about some basic principles that might expedite my learning. You don’t have to be a professor of modern languages to know that certain key components in language include the following:

1.       Meaning of words. Here, try to recognize cognates (words similar to English words you already know. For other words, try to think of mental images that represent the meaning.

2.       Gender identification. Fortunately, you can usually predict whether a word is male or female just from the meaning of the word. Most macho-type words are male; soft, feminine type words are usually female. Unfortunately, there are exceptions, which you just have to memorize by brute force.

3.       Verb conjugation. Look for patterns. All “regular” verbs have the same pattern. In Spanish, all verbs end in AR, ER, or IR. The conjugation pattern is similar. For each, you drop the infinitive ending and add endings to the stem of the word. For AR words, the ending is either o, as, a (singular) or amos, ais, or an (plural). For ER words, the endings are o, es, e (singular) or emos, eis, en (plural). For IR words, the endings are o, es, e (singular), or imos, is, en (plural). Even irregular verbs have generally predictable patterns, except for a couple of endings.

4.       Counting. Here, again, look for patterns. In Spanish you have to brute-force memorize the first 19 numbers, but thereafter predictable patterns emerge.

5.       Articles, like “a,” and “the.” In Spanish, you only have to remember “un” for “a.” But, since the article has to be a gender match to the word it refers to, you have to add an “a” (una) to refer to female words. If you are referring to a definite person, you must use “el” or “la,” depending on the person’s gender. Plural references add an “s” (as in “los/las”)

Pronouns, like I, you, he, etc. In Spanish, there is a definite pattern that includes gender recognition and singular vs. plural. It becomes easier to remember if you organize words in a table.

	Female	Male	Male or Male/?
This That These Those	esta      esa       estas esás	esto or este eso or ese	estos esos

 

Well, you may not want to learn Spanish, so I won’t expand further. My point here is that learning is greatly facilitated when you look for patterns. Memorize the patterns, and it is easier to memorize the specifics.

            The point is this: structure your learning material in ways that work best for you. Develop a strategy. Look for patterns. A strategic approach should also include developing ways to categorize things in the most useful way for memorization.

Dates and Places

There is a number coding system that makes it easier to remember numbers. This is especially useful for remembering dates. The code is as follows:

The principle is to first convert an integer (0 through 9) to a letter that is a consonant. Then insert vowels between the consonants to create a word that can be imaged. Words are constructed by insert vowels, which are neutral and do not affect the scheme. Think of vowels as wildcards. So, in the example above, 44 stands for “rower,” with the word constructed by inserting appropriate vowels between the two r’s that represent number four.

A set of rules determines how to construct number-associated images. The rules dictate what letters and sounds go with numbers 1 through 0, as follows:

 

Number — Letter or Sound — Mnemonic Aid

1 — t or d — each letter has one down stroke

2 — n or kg/gn — two down strokes (kn/gn have same sound)

3 — m — three down strokes

4 — r — last letter of word “four”

5 — L — Roman numeral  for the five in 50

6 — j,  ch, sh,   soft g — reverse J looks like 6,

7 — k, ck, hard g or c — attach a flipped 7 to a straight line on its left

8 — f, ph, v — F joined with another upside down F

9 — p or b — backwards p or a rotated b look like 9

0 — z, s, soft c — Z as in zero, soft c as in cent

 

It may seem like a lot of trouble to memorize these rules, but once done, it gives you a lot of memory power. You can construct all sorts of images based on these rules (see number-image list below for 1 to 100).

The words, all nouns, that you make up from these consonants can be a single word that includes all the consonants or several words that are sequentially linked. The number system can be useful for long-term remembering of some things, like dates, for example. If you wanted to remember that the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776, you could build a memorable picture as follows: a number code for 1776 could be dog (17) and cage (76). Couple this with whatever image comes to mind for the Declaration, such as the liberty bell. Now picture your dog sleeping in its cage crate, being awakened by the ringing bell. For the link to July 4, you might want to add a firecracker image that goes off after the bell rings, like a Pavlov experiment where the bell rings, unconditioned firecracker stimulus goes off, and dog responds with jumping around in his cage.

The other use for this system is to create an easily remembered peg list. To convert this to a numbered peg list, you make up words using these rules. For example:

 

1  tie 2  knee 3 ma (mom) 4 rye 5 law 6 jaw` 7 key 8 ivy 9 bow 10 toes 11 tot 12 tin 13 dam 14 door 15 tail 16 dash (-) 17 tack 18 dove 19 tub 20 nose

21 nut 22 nun 23 Nero 25 nail 26 nacho 27 neck 28 knife 29 knob 30 mice 31 mat 32 moon 33 mummy 34 mower 35 mule 36 match 37 mug 38 movie 39 mop 40 rice

41 rat 42 rain 43 ram 44 rower 45 roll 46 roach 47 rock 48 roof 49 rope 50 lace 51 lot 52 lion 53 lime 54 lure 55 lily 56 leash 57 log 58 lava 59 lip 60 cheese

61 sheet 62 chain 63 jam 64 cherry 65 jail 66 judge 67 check 68 chef 69 ship 70 case 71 cot 72 coin 73 cam 74 car 75 coal 76 cage 77 cake 78 cave 79 cap 80 fez (hat)

81 foot 82 phone 83 foam 84 fur 85 file 86 fish 87 fog 88 fife 89 fob (watch fob) 90 bus 91 bar 92 bone 93 bum 94 bear 95 bell89 fob (watch fob) 90 bus 91 bar 92 bone 93 bum 94 bear 95 bell 96 beach 97 book 98 beef 99 pipe 100 daisy

 

Although the list has 100 pegs, they are relatively easy to memorize because they are constructed by a rule. If you know the rules for converting numbers to letters, you can even generate your own word peg in case you forget.

There are even more powerful uses of this code than remember numbers or dates. Suppose you are trying to memorize a textbook, page by page. Suppose on page 47 (rock) the page explains alpha rhythms, showing an EEG trace, and pointing out that they occur mostly when eyes are shut and that alcohol and sedatives lower the frequency. So, to remember this, you visualize a rock floating on ocean waves that look like the graphs you saw in the book. You only see this image when you shut your eyes. Imagine opening your eyes and the rock/wave image goes away. Shut your eyes, see the rock/waves again. Then imagine drinking a beer, and the waves get larger and slower (i.e., fewer of them).

You could go through a whole textbook like this. How would you deal with several textbooks? This problem, not easily solved, is how to un-remember what is on the pegs. After all, you use the pegs over and over again for different items. Actually, this did not seem to be a problem when I was using this system to memorize magazine content. Clearly, this system works best only for items you just want to remember for a short while.

Music

Music is hard for most people to learn. You not only have to memorize the notes, their timing, and sequence, but you have to train the body parts like fingers, lips, and tongue to execute the notes.

            “You’ve probably heard the old joke: “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?” “Practice, practice, practice!” Well music practice does take time, and it’s probably not a satisfying answer for people looking to learn music quickly. But surely there are techniques and strategies to expedite the process. Here’s one method I’ve created using related memory principles:

1.     Skim the whole score to identify hard and easy parts and phrases that repeat. Then start at the beginning, memorizing in chunks, one or a few bars at a time, depending on the capacity of your working memory. After memorizing a bar or phrase, see if you can play it without peeking. Musicians do not learn a new piece from beginning to end all at once. They often start at the beginning of a piece and learn a small section until they get it right. Then they learn the next piece. Then they practice stitching the pieces together. They repeat this process until they get to the end.

2.     Memorize the mechanical acts needed to play the notes (keys on a piano, valves on a clarinet, etc.). Learn one hand at a time. Look at the hands and keys while playing.

3.     Play what you have just memorized from memory and repeat until you feel it is mastered. Play one hand at a time, then play with both together. Don’t peek at the score until after you have played the section. Check for any errors in your recall.

4.     Play the chunk slowly at first, then test the tempo by playing with a metronome.

5.     Move to a different chunk and repeat steps 1-3. Add one bar or phrase at a time. Mark sections of the score as they are learned.

6.     Join the latest chunk with those previously learned and play from the beginning.

7.     In the next practice session, rehearse what was learned in the previous session before moving on to new material.

Sources:

Bahrick, H.P., Bahrick, L.E., Bahrick, A.S., & Bahrick, P.E. (1993). Maintenance of foreign language vocabulary and the spacing effect. Psychological Science, 4, 316–321.

Klemm, W. R.   Memory Power 101. (New York: Skyhorse).

 

 

Delibrate Practice. Lesson 12

 

In prior lessons we learned some of the key principles of memorization:

·       Lesson 1: encoding, consolidation, retrieval, reconsolidation

·       Lesson 2: getting motivated

·       Lesson 3: paying attention

·       Lesson 8: making associations

Photo by Jonathan Chng on Unsplash

We will learn how to implement these principles in this lesson on Deliberate Practice. Anders Ericsson and his colleagues came up with the idea of deliberate practice during the 1990s, based on their study of musicians. The researchers saw that deliberate practice requires considerable time investment, but it is more than just repeating what you are trying to master. It is not “drill and kill.” It is practice in which you:

·       Have a clear long-term objective in mind.

·       Plan what you need to do in detail.

·       Monitor how you executed the plan, with attention to specific details.

·       Noticing what to avoid and what to repeat in the future.

·       Apply corrective feedback to adjust the plan if needed and remind yourself what you need to do different next time.

·       Affirm and reward yourself for progress.

·       Get coaching from an outside source, like a teacher.

·       Keep raising the standards for acceptable performance. 

When I transitioned from a D student in the 4^th grade to an A student in the 7^th grade, I think the change was made possible through deliberate practice. Though I did not understand much about deliberate practice, I did intuitively use some elements of it. Penmanship class was likely the turning point, because deliberate practice is baked into the learning. When I looked a drawing of a cursive “a” and tried to duplicate it, the results were tangible and immediate. I had to think about where my drawing missed the mark and what I needed to do to make it look better. I had to keep repeating the process until what I produced looked like the instructional example. Aside from the utility of learning cursive, this may be the most beneficial example of teaching penmanship in school. Few schools do that these days.

 

Until you have mastered the learning goal, deliberate practice is a cyclic process that is repeated again and again. Most everyone has had this kind of learning experience at some point, usually when they are trying to perfect some kind of physical action. If you were in school band, for example, you used deliberate practice to memorize sheet music and master your instrument. If you were in a sport, you used deliberate practice in perfecting the movement skill sets.

If you did not have these experiences, here is one you can try right now: To perfect learning how to stand on one foot in a yoga pose, you could just do it repeatedly without thinking about what you have to do to make it work. Try it. You will see that does not work well. Now try it again, focusing on a visual spot far away and think about what muscles in your foot you have to activate to keep you balanced. These deliberate tactics will train you much faster to master this task.

Deliberate practice is not limited to physical movements. It is equally applicable to mastering school work. The practice objective might likely be to perform better on exams or to develop competence you know will be required in later courses.

Study sessions need to be strategic. That is, at the time you are studying, you need to think about what you need to do to make your memorization better. You may need to pump up your motivation level. You will need focus and self-discipline to work outside your comfort zone. Perhaps you need to invent better mnemonics. You need to think about how often to repeat self-testing forced recall. You need to contrive ways to apply what you are trying to learn. You need to take practice quizzes and solve related problems. You need a way to check on the completeness of your understanding. You need to have a way to check on the correctness of your recall and establish criteria for satisfactory mastery.

Next Lesson:

Especially difficult learning tasks

Sources:

Clear, James  (n.d.) Deliberate practice and how to use it. https://jamesclear.com/deliberate-practice-theory

Keep, Ben (n.d.) Deliberate practice in the classroom. The Learning Curve. https://www.the-learning-agency-lab.com/the-learning-curve/deliberate-practice-in-the-classroom

Learning and Memorizing Math. Lesson 11

There was a time that I thought that understanding math was more useful than memorizing it. A certain amount of memorization is essential, especially for lower-level math. For example, you need to memorize the multiplication table up to 9 x 9 in order to be able to multiply two four-digit numbers.

In elementary and high school, this was not an issue for me, because I did not have to work very hard to understand or memorize it. In college, however, they threw engineering calculus at me, and that was a very different story, not so easy. This was in second semester of my freshman year at the University of Tennessee. I struggled to understand the formulas and going into the final exam, my grade was an F. In desperation, I gave up trying to understand the calculus concepts. Instead, I memorized all the formulas we had covered in the course and the kinds of problems that each could solve. I made a 100 on the final exam, which converted my F to a C. While the memorization served a useful purpose, my lack of understanding would surely have doomed me if I had been in a curriculum that required more advanced classes later.

Now, many decades later, I discover that a similar experience happened to the author of an article published by the Dana Center. The author, Monette McIver, liked math before she went to college, and it was relatively easy. But college math was too challenging, and she too realized that maybe she should just focus on memorizing what was necessary rather than trying to understand. She actually got an undergraduate degree in math that way. She laments having to do this, however, because she really wanted a career as an engineer, and she did not end up with needed level of understanding.

So, what should you do when faced with overwhelming math challenges? I say, memorize it, in order not to be overwhelmed, but as you move along, keep striving for understanding. And seek out the teachers who are good at explaining the math. While the modern focus on understanding math, as in “New Math” and “Common Core,” is commendable, it too often leaves students confused, and they don’t learn the basics either. There is a certain utility in memorizing multiplication tables, even if you understand the principles well enough to build a table. The trick is in discovering what should be memorized to free you to apply that knowledge for higher-level problems. Here are some basic principles that might help:

1.     Use the math you do know to help you figure out the math you do not know. For beginners, work on developing number sense. For example, when asked to solve 7 x 8 question, someone with number sense may have memorized 56, but they would also be able to work out that 7 x 7 is 49 and then add 7 to make 56, or they may work out ten 7’s and subtract two 7’s (70-14). Alternatively, know that 7 x 8 means 7 rows of 8 or 8 rows of 7, to enable you to realize that 7 x 7 = 49 plus 7 makes 56. Mnemonics are very helpful with the memorization: for example: 56 = 7x8 is the numbers 5 6 7 8 in order.

2.     Solve many problems at the level you do understand. This will reinforce the memorization, and seeing the same issues in different contexts will gradually build up understanding.

3.     Try to identify, understand, and memorize the really crucial concepts and definitions that underlie many other math ideas. Examples include words like function, theorem, angle, tangent, sine, cosine, derivative, integral, matrix.

4.     Learn a special case of a math concept first and then generalize to more abstract extensions as your understanding improves.

5.     Whenever feasible, make drawings to illustrate a concept.

6.     Find good learning sources. Many are on the Internet. One of the best sites is Kahn Academy

7.     At the appropriate age, master algebra. It is fundamental to most of higher math.

8.     Develop mnemonic devices, but only for basic ideas and don’t overdo it. The point is to use memorization as an adjunct to mathematical thinking, not as a substitute for it.

In one lesson, I can’t cover much mathematics, but I will choose a fundamental of trigonometry to illustrate my point to identify what is useful to memorize and what you need to think through. To remember the core ideas of a triangle, the features you need to memorize are labeled in the figure below.

First, realize that the lines are measures of distance (a,b,c,). For future reference you could think of lines a and b as y and x axes of a graph, but this is not relevant here. The lines could be labeled anything. Notice also there are three angles (1,2,3). They also could be labeled anything. Mathematicians like to use Greek and for angles, they often use theta (θ). Angle #1 is a special angle, called a “right” angle. I don’t know why it is called “right,” but you might think of it being the right angle to focus on in a triangle: because it is 90^o by definition, the sum of the other two angles is also 90.^o Can you figure out why the other two add up to 90? On a scratch sheet, draw two triangles stacked against each other to form a square and a horizontal line running from top left to bottom right. The box has four 90^o angles if you remove the diagonal line. On the right you see that if you flip line b to form a straight line, you have created a 180^o angle, and if you keep on moving the line around, you create a circle of 360^o. I have no idea why a circle is defined as having 360 degrees. Some mathematician early knew it would be useful to carve a circle up into angular pieces and for what ever reason decided 360 would be a good number (not too small, not too big).

See that there are three boundaries, a, b, and the longest one, c, which is always defined as the hypotenuse. At about this point, you should be asking, “What is the point of all this? What is the ultimate objective?” The answer is that trigonometry allows you to calculate certain dimensions without actually having to memorize or even measure them.

At this point you must memorize that in a right triangle the longest line (c) is called the “hypotenuse.” Each of the two variable angles has a line opposite to it and the other non-hypotenuse line is called the adjacent side. Sine is arbitrarily defined as opposite/hypotenuse, cosine as adjacent/hypotenuse, and tangent as opposite/adjacent. In the diagram above, the sine of angle 3 is a/c, the cosine is b/c, and the tangent is a/b. With these ideas firmly cemented in memory, you are now free to explore the mathematical consequences and uses.

Sine, cosine, and tangent are just names; they could have been called anything. But they are useful because they are a way to label the ratios of the lengths of any two sides of the triangle. If you divide the denominator of the ratio into the numerator, you calculate the length of the third side without having to measure it.

You could, for example, measure on of the angles with a protractor and now instantly know the degree of the other angle that is not the right angle of 90.^o If angle 3, for example is 35^o, then angle 2 is 55.^o

Note also that the two non-right angles are complementary. They sum to 90^o and moreover, the sine of one is equal to the cosine of the other. The equations can be consolidated, as follows:

Sin 35^o = a/c, Cos 55^o = a/c, therefore, the sin of any angle, θ, = cos 90 - (θ).

With these few examples, you can see the usefulness for learning math of combining some memorization with reasoning.

                                 

Next Lesson: #11. Deliberate Practice

Sources:

https://www.khanacademy.org/math/geometry/hs-geo-trig/hs-geo-complementary-angles/v/sine-and-cosine-of-compl

 

McIver, Monette. (2018). Memorization versus understanding. Better approaches to teaching mathematics. May 26. https://www.utdanacenter.org/blog/memorization-versus-understanding-better-approaches-teaching-mathematics

Learning from Lectures, Readings. Lesson 10

 Effective learning takes much less time if you “study smart.” To “study smart,” you need to approach learning in a deliberate way. To study smart, think about the strategies and tactics you need to be using to master a learning challenge. Be aware of any need to change strategies and tactics that are not working well for you.

Best learning occurs during lectures and videos if you make it a point to be alert and aware. The best approach is to think about what you are trying to memorize. Ask yourself questions about the information, such as:

·       What is missing that would be useful to know?

·       What do I not understand?

·       Where can I get this explained better?

·       How can I apply this information to what I already know, to other parts of the course, to other courses, and to different kinds of problems?

·       What new ideas does this give me?

Think about the information in different ways, in other contexts. Think about how the information relates to what you thought you already knew. What is new about it that you need to incorporate into your knowledge arsenal? 

Readings

Anybody old enough to be taking these lessons on improving learning and memory knows how to read. Right? Not necessarily. First, we have to address how students are taught the mechanics of reading. Significant numbers of people were not taught phonics, which was the traditional way of teaching literacy for hundreds of years in almost all languages. Then some educators thought learners could just skip the phonics stage and move directly to “whole-language.” The basic idea of whole language reading is to prevent learners from breaking down sounds in a word individually, but to fix the eyes on whole words and associate them with prior knowledge.

I think that the correct way to literacy is to begin first with phonics. Then as learners master the sounds of the alphabet, they can sound out strange words and decode their meaning. Once phonics is learned, whole language becomes a way to read words, rather than consciously sounding out each syllable. The International Reading Association (IRA) has supported the inclusion of phonics in the whole language approach to literacy.

Actually, this still leaves the problem of plodding along one word at a time. Optimal reading requires clusters of multiple words at a time, speeding the amount of material accessed. Thinking about word clusters imparts linguistic meaning faster and better than plodding through one word after another.

To see word clusters properly, you need to train you eyes to pop along from one fixation point in a line to the next point to the right, then the next, and so on. You might not know that everything the eyes see, whether it is text or nature scenes, results from quick snaps of eye movement from one fixation target to another. These quick jumps are called saccades. The trick is to expand the size of the visual target that is seen with each snap, that is, increase the number of words you see at each snap of the eyes from fixation point to the next fixation point. Just by trying to do this, you can increase the number of words seen at each fixation. At first it may just be one or two words. Soon, your eyes will take in four or five words with each snap of the eyes. This kind of training requires deliberate practice, but if you think hard about what you are trying to do, it starts to become automatic. Good readers take in a whole line of text in a book, for example, in two to three eye snaps. Tests show that readers with average reading speed can double or triple their reading speeds with no loss of comprehension.

Key points to remember:

·       Preview the reading material to get a feel for what it is like.  Note the heading and subheadings. Think about the overall scope of what is covered and not covered.

·       Think about your purpose ahead of time. Ask yourself, “What am I supposed to get out of this reading?” “What am I supposed to understand and remember.”

·       Skim first, looking for the paragraphs that matter the most. The first and last sentences in a paragraph usually provide the best clues as to which paragraph is most important.

·       Make yourself interested in what you must read. You punish yourself by allowing boredom.

·       Adjust your pace according to the denseness and difficulty of information.

·       Try to reduce the number of times you skip back to re-read. If this is a problem, work on your concentration and focus. Don’t let you mind wander when you read. Definitely, do not multi-task.

·       At first you may want to move your finger or a pointer underneath each line to guide your eye snaps. But as you practice and get better, try to eliminate this crutch.

·       Do not move tongue or lips to simulate saying the words inside your head. If you tend to do this, make it a point to hold the tip of your tongue against the roof of your mouth.

·       At each eye snap, THINK about what the words, as a group, mean.

·       Make sure you actually see all the words at each fixation point. If you can’t see all the words at each fixation, decrease the number of words you expect to register until you get better at this.

·       As you realize you are getting better at these eye snaps, increase the speed of snapping.

·       Pause from time to time to reflect on what you just read. Ask yourself to recall the information you just read. Ask yourself how you could and should use the information. Ask yourself how the information fits you existing knowledge and understanding. Ask yourself what you still do not understand? Ask yourself what information you need or want that has not been covered yet.

·       When you finish, DO SOMETHING with what you just read. Self-quiz. Write notes. Report to others what you just read. Use the information in a different way.

 

If you search on the web for “learning how to speed read,” you will find numerous explanations of how to improve reading mechanics. There are even computer apps that help train your eyes attend rapidly presented words, one at a time in rapid succession. See the review of 10 of these apps at https://bookriot.com/best-speed-reading-apps/. Many apps use the RSVP method in which words are presented at a preset speed. Sprint has a free browser based trainer that allows you to increase the number of words presented each time, which helps you learn how to expand the size of the visual field. However, this method fails to teach you how to snap your eyes across a minimum number of fixation points per line of text (see video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmDMrxUSXKY). I have not found any apps that train you to do what really matters: snap your eyes appropriately across each line of text and engage larger and larger visual fields with each snap.

Lectures

Many of the thinking aspects mentioned above for reading apply also to learning from lectures or on-line videos. Lectures and videos may demand more attentiveness that reading because it is not so easy to slow things down or pause or go back to reconsider information that did not register well. To help information register more effectively, it helps to do some advanced preparation. Good teachers may give you a reading assignment related to the lecture. The more you learn from this pre-reading material, the more you will comprehend and remember from the lecture.

This brings up the point that the goal for lectures or videos is to learn as much as you can at the time. You may not get a second exposure to an unrecorded lecture. A classroom environment presents a special challenge. Once there, you are more or less trapped and your time is pre-committed. As long as you are in class, you might as well bring your A-game so you get the most out of your time commitment. Students who are charged up, fully expecting to aim to remember everything presented in class, are the most likely to remember the most. Be as engaged in discussion if it is allowed. In my experience both as a student and an instructor, I have found the best kind of engagement is asking good questions silently to yourself or of the teacher when questions are solicited. Asking good questions requires deep thinking and deep thinking is the best kind of memory rehearsal. Such thinking and the Q&A that follow obviously can help understanding.

Everything learned in class is something you don’t have to study much after class. Besides, being fully engaged in classroom activities makes class more interesting —certainly more useful.

Get “up” for class, expecting to remember everything.

It should go without saying that you need to be rested. Sleep is vastly more important for learning than you probably realize. Not only does being rested keep you from wasting your time by dozing in class, but memory of what was presented in class is largely consolidated that night as you sleep.

Students should take notes during the lecture or watching a video. But in my experience, they get little good advice on how to take notes. Perhaps this is a good time to re-read lesson 5 on note taking. Note-taking is the standard process whereby information is transferred from the teacher’s notes to the student’s notes (sometimes without passing through the mind of either). The problem is that students are too busy writing notes and not busy enough thinking about what the teacher says and means. Good teachers hand out note outlines before class so students can pay attention to the lecture and get engaged with

Such “skeleton notes,” give the student freedom to leave out things they already know or can figure out. This approach really pays off when it comes time to study for exams.

Note taking should be minimal. Follow the principles given for reading. The idea is to think about what is being said, asking yourself or the teacher questions, expressing the ideas in your own terms, making mental images, and so on. What do you do in case you miss some key information while doing all this thinking?  If the teacher permits, use a tape recorder and use variable speed, so you can slow down for difficult parts and speed up through parts that are not particularly useful.

Next Lesson: Lesson 11. Learning and Memorizing Math Concepts

 

 

Lesson 9. Mnemonics

In prior lessons we learned some of the key principles of memorization:

·       Lesson 1: encoding, consolidation, retrieval, reconsolidation

·       Lesson 2: getting motivated

·       Lesson 3: paying attention

·       Lesson 8: making associations

in Lesson 12 we will learn how to implement these principles with Deliberate Practice. Here in this lesson, the objective is to teach you some mnemonic tricks that add to the effectiveness of using memory principles (Figure 1).

 Figure 1. Mnemonics assist all the stages of the memorization process.

The most basic feature of effective mnemonics is the association of what you are learning (the new) with what you already know (the old). Unfortunately, this association process does not always occur automatically. Mnemonics provide an explicit way to expedite the use of specific tactics designed to promote the creation of these associations.

“Memory athletes” are people who compete in memorization contests. For example, they compete to see how fast they can memorize the sequence of cards in as many as four decks). They compete to see who can memorize the longest string of random integers. Such feats are accomplished by people whose basic memorization ability is no better than yours or mine. They achieve such astonishing feats as memorizing four decks of cards in less than five minutes or memorizing strings of 80 or more digits. Nobody can do such things without mnemonics.

While you and I probably have no interest in such things as memorizing long strings of digits, we would like to be more effective at memorizing practical things we need to know. Mnemonics can empower us just as they do they memory athletes.

I identify seven known mnemonic approaches.

1.    Common-Sense Thinking

The word, “mnemonics” is defined as systems for improving and assisting the memory. The most powerful of all seven mnemonic approaches is just plain thinking about the material being memorized (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Thinking  hard in different ways about

 what you want to memorize is a very powerful memorization aid.

Every new bit of information has meaning. Thinking about that meaning improves your understanding and may give you new ideas. What is not so evident is that the process of thinking is actually promoting memorization in an automated way. Thinking embodies all the key principles of memorization. Thinking inevitably creates associations, strengthens encoding, and provides time for consolidation. As you think, you are paying special attention to memory targets, increasing your motivation as you realize practical applications, retrieving the information in working memory, and re-consolidating it with the new ideas as they emerge from thought. If you add one of more of the other mnemonic approaches during thinking, you are engaging the principle of deliberate practice.

2.    Acronym

Use the first letter of each word to create one set of letters, forming an  acronym. Ex:  U.S.A. for United States of America.

3.  Acrostic

Use the first letter of each word of a concept or item you are trying to remember to create a string of words. Ex:  All Cows Eat Grass (the white keys on a piano)

4.          Categorization

Group similar items together. Remembering any item in a category often will help you recall the others in that same category. Example: for a grocery shopping list, group vegetables (celery, potatoes, carrots), dairy (milk, cheese, ice cream) and so on.

5.          Subject-Object-Verb (SOV)

Imagine a picture of someone or something doing something to a target or object. Example: state where President Clinton grew up (picture political opponents throwing little rocks at Clinton … “Little Rock” is generally known as the capital of Arkansas).

6.          Memory Palace

Visualize (create a mental picture for) each item you want to remember and mentally place that item’s image on or in mental images of a place with which you are familiar (like objects in your room, parts of your bicycle, etc.). Example to memorize the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, using objects in your living room: #1 Freedom: Picture yourself oiling the hinges of your front door so it opens freely. If you need more detail, see yourself enter speaking about something controversial (speech) with a group of friends (assembly), each carrying a different religious symbol (religion). #2 Bear arms: See the chair next to the door filled with guns. #3. Protection from soldiers camping out in your house: See yourself moving the sofa to block the door so soldiers outside can’t come in. #4 Unreasonable search and seizure: See yourself turn off the lamp next to the sofa, so nobody can see what is on the end table.  #5 Criminal protections: See the sofa filled with jurors who see you enter the room (grand jury), See a double image of the sofa and jurors (double jeopardy). See a judge sitting on the floor  instructing the jury (due process, fair trial). #6 Jury trial: See the glass table in front of the sofa (public transparency). See your lawyer spin the table round and round rapidly (right to a lawyer and a speedy trial). #7: Jury trial rights for federal crimes: See the coaster on the coffee table that looks like the U.S. logo jump into the lounge chair next to the sofa (federal charges require a jury trial too). #8 Protection against unusual punishment: See yourself convicted, and the bailiff tries to throw you into the roaring fire in the nearby fireplace. #9 Other non-specified rights: See yourself being free to click through TV channels on your remote. #10 State rights: See TV screen showing map of U.S. red and blue states during a Presidential election to remind you that it is the states that have all other powers not specified for the federal government.

Story Chain

Imagine a picture for each item you want to remember and mentally place it into a story that you make up. Example, to memorize the order of planets: You could image having a Mercury car run over your toe (Mercury), having a vein burst on top of your foot (vein for Venus). Then you fall down on the ground (earth). A “first responder”drives up in a Jeep (Jupiter), not an ambulance, and gives you a Mars (Mars) candy bar to make you feel better. You need to urinate, and he gives you an urn to sit on so you won’t be so conspicuous (sat and urn for Saturn). The urine rains down from you know where (you and rain for Uranus).  A second responder dressed like the god Neptune takes the urn and empties it into the nearby sea (Neptune). Then a stray dog that looks like Disney’s Pluto (Pluto) comes over to lick your face and comfort you.

While each of these seven techniques can be applied using words or language, the most effective approach is to convert words into mental images (like the Clinton image mentioned above). Once you create your own mental images, memorization becomes easier and more reliable—even fun! Some of these tactics may seem dumb or a little silly, but often the dumber and sillier they are, the more powerfully they promote memorization.

Memory Palace and Story Chain techniques are especially powerful. Successful “memory athletes” use them to compete in international contests designed to see who can memorize the most in the shortest amount of time. Without these techniques, their memorization ability would be no better than your own.

Two advantages of these memory aid techniques are not so obvious. One advantage is that these techniques exercise and develop your creativity. You must imagine mental pictures that work for you. The more you use these mnemonics, the easier it becomes to imagine useful images.

The other advantage is that you have to think about memory targets in order to construct relevant mnemonic images. As mentioned, the thinking itself is a powerful memory aid.

For each given memory task, choose the technique that seems to work best for you and that best fits the task. Make up your own scheme based on what is easiest for you to remember and what works best for you.

Once you construct a mnemonic for a given learning task, force yourself to recall it three or four times the first day. Repeat that forced retrieval once a day for the next four or five days. Remember: forced recall is essential to effective memorization. Moreover, recall is most powerful if you say it aloud, write it down, or draw it.

 

Next Lesson: Lesson 10.Learning from reading, lectures

Source: the eBook, Better Grades, Less Effort 

Lesson 8. Making Associations

 

We have all heard that the key to memorization is associating new information to be memorized with related information that we already have memorized. Why does this work? How does it work to form memories?

Perhaps the first point we should make is that associations can be made passively and unintentionally or with deliberate attempt. Let us examine each way in turn.

Unintentional Associations

Ivan Pavlov was famous for discovering this kind of associative learning. He called it conditioned learning. The term was later modified to “classical conditioned learning,” because another form of passive associations was discovered that was called “operant conditioning.”

You may have heard about Pavlov’s study of dogs. He was initially studying digestion, and collected saliva and stomach juices to see how they responded to food. What he observed, not surprisingly, was that when hungry dogs smelled or saw food, they anticipated eating it by secreting saliva and stomach juices. This did not have to be learned—it’s an unconditioned response. It was just a natural, built-in response. What was surprising was that when the dog caretaker entered the room, the juices were released, even if the caretaker was not bringing food. They had learned to associate this person with food delivery. The two things went together. So, Pavlov made a more formal test of this “conditioned learning” by pairing a different kind of cue with food delivery. For example, he might ring a bell and then the food was brought in. If that situation were repeated several times, the dogs started salivating when they heard the bell. They were now learning a new association: bell ringing meant that food was likely to show up.  In general, the key is to pair an unlearned response with an association cue and repeat the cue often enough that the brain learns that the two things go together.

Operant conditioning was spawned by the discovery of Edward Thorndike, a contemporary of Pavlov. Thorndike observed that learning occurs from realization of the consequences of behavior. That is, behavior that is followed by pleasant consequences is likely to be repeated, and behavior followed by unpleasant consequences is less likely to be repeated. Procedures for optimizing this kind of conditioned were developed later by J. B. Watson and B. F. Skinner.

Several principles of operant conditioning have been discovered:

1. Rewards seem to be more effective than punishments.
2. The animal must do something that can be associated with subsequent reinforcement, even though the animal has no foreknowledge of what it is supposed to do.
3. Learning complex repertoires can be developed in which the final desired behavior can be shaped through a succession of small steps in which elements of the final behavior are sequentially produced. As each step is learned, the trainer builds on that by adding the next logical small step.
4. Reinforcement needs to be provided each time the desired behavior occurs.

Intentional Associations 

Associations are much more powerful if you make them consciously and intentionally. This approach puts the learner in charge of her own learning. The learner gets to choose which associations are the most powerful association cues, and that likely varies from person to person.

The reason that intentional associations work to improve memory is that memories are stored as a network of related items. These items are part of a shared whole. Any one item serves as a cue for retrieving other parts of the memory network. Dragging out one item in the network often drags the whole network of memory items into conscious awareness.

Even so, certain principles apply here.

Pick Relevant Associations

Associations can be made with a person, place, object, situation, or emotion. Pick whatever works best for the item you are trying to remember.

Use Images

The most important act is to use images rather than words as the associational cues. Images contain detail in a way that is automatically associated with other elements in the image. Thus, it is especially important to select images that clearly and rather directly capture the essence of what you are trying to remember. Note the image used here of overlapping circles of slightly different shades of color. The point of association and shared relatedness is obvious.

You can make up your own images or use images that are already established for certain mnemonic systems. Mnemonics will be explored in detail in Lesson 9.

Why do images make the best associations?  

 

“A picture is worth a thousand words for scientific reasons: The brain processes visual information 60,000 times faster than text. Forty percent of all nerve fibers connected to the brain are linked to the retina. Visual information comprises 90 percent of the data that comes to our brain, suggesting that our neurological pathways might even prefer pictures over text.”- Quoted from https://www.planview.com/resources/articles/what-is-kanban/.

Make the Association Concrete and Vivid

Vagueness won’t work well. Make associations that are clear, distinctive, and clearly relevant to what you are trying to memorize.

Tie the Association to the Key Item to be Remembered

Suppose you have to catch an airplane at 2 A.M. in the morning. The number two is the key element. How can you link that to flying in an airplane? You might think of airplanes as have two wings. Suppose the flight is 4 A.M? You might think of a big jet with four jet engines. Suppose the plane leaves at 3? You might imagine looking into the cockpit and seeing three people (perhaps pilot, co-pilot, and navigator).

Make the Association Personal. Add strong emotions.

Relevance is key. Making an association personal gives it more relevance. Because emotions are processed in the same part of the brain that forms memories (the hippocampus), emotional associations become strongly embedded in memory.

Repeat a Newly Created Association Right Away

An association has to be encoded, just like an original item to be remembered. So, once you have created the association, repeat it several times right away, and then a few more times later in the same day.

 

Next lesson from “Memory Medic”  to be posted soon: Lesson #9: Mnemonics

Follow my “neuro-education” group on Linkedin at https://www.linkedin.com/groups/4883556/

To check out my four books on learning and memory, see my web site: WRKlemm.com

 

Lesson 7. Strategic Approaches

 

Different learning tasks typically benefit from a prior analysis of how to approach the task. You wouldn’t want to approach learning mathematics the same way you would learn history. Because it is not feasible to specify an approach of all possible learning tasks in this short lesson, I will suggest some more general ideas.

Steps

Step 1. Assessment. The first thing to do is over-all assessment of the task. That is, identify how much you already know, which parts of the task are not even understood at the moment, which ideas and factoids you can figure out, and which you will have to memorize.

Step 2. Tackle the confusion. For the parts you don’t understand, go to whatever teaching resource needed to explain it. Why try to memorize something you don’t understand? In fact, the very process of trying to understand helps to form memory. Commonly, multiple explanations are needed in order to find the one that “clicks” with your capacity to understand. Sometimes asking a question in a web browser field will take you directly to a site that explains what you are looking for. Sometimes Wikipedia works. Sometimes Kahn Academy works. Use what works for you.

Step 3. Isolate what requires memorization. Why memorize trivia? Why memorize information that you can easily figure out? Save your brain energy and power for difficult memorization tasks.

Step 4. Develop a task-specific memorization tactic and/or mnemonic. When confronted with a learning challenge, ask yourself, “What is the best way for me to memorize this? What associations and cues will help? What that I already know makes this easier to understand and remember? Can I develop a mnemonic that makes this easy to recall?

Some General Tactics

Encoding.

Encoding refers to conscious registration of the information you are trying to memorize. Perhaps you have heard of the phenomenon known as “inattentional blindness,” wherein you can see things but not realize your eyes have seen them, and your conscious mind is unaware of them. The point is that you are only conscious of targets of attention. Conscious awareness strengthens encoding. Be aware. Focus, focus, focus.

Encoding is also strengthened by thinking about relationships and associated cues that can be attached to targets of attention. Recall what I said earlier in the lesson on concept maps.

Spaced Learning.

Students like to cram for exams. They often do this the night before an exam, studying late into the night and thus making themselves sleep deprived, which only compounds their mental performance on the exam because sleep deprivation makes it difficult to think straight.

The more fundamental problem is that memory formation takes time. The process, called consolidation, is like wet cement: impressions take a while to set up. After all, long-term memory is stored in the gene activation, protein synthesis, and growth of new neuronal membrane and synapses. Spreading out the study allows time for these processes to occur and complete robust consolidation. Also, the passage of time allows for relevant new thoughts and associations to attach to the memory and thus strengthen it.

Applications.

Using what you have just learned, especially soon after initial encoding, enriches the encoding, creates new associational cues, and allows the learned material to stay active long enough in neuronal circuitry to enhance the consolidation process. When application occurs in contexts other than that of initial exposure, it creates new frames of reference cues and may even broaden the depth of understanding. Furthermore, new handles for retrieval emerge.

Forced Retrieval.

Many students study by “looking over” their notes and learning resource materials. This creates the illusion that they are improving their memory. However, research has shown that strong memories require one to force retrieval. For example, if you are studying flash cards, you look at the question side of the card and mentally quiz yourself on what you think is on the answer side of the card, before you look at it to check for accuracy. The reason that forced retrieval works is that each time you retrieve a memory, its encoding can be strengthened by adding new associations and thoughts. In any case, once retrieved, the memory has to be reconsolidated, which adds to the strength of information storage.

Deliberate Practice.

In lesson 12, I will explain this more completely. For now, just realize that effective study requires not only forced retrieval, but also awareness of what you are retrieving and error checking and correction as needed.

Mnemonic Devices. 

These will be covered in Lesson 9. They can be extremely powerful. People who compete in memory contests rely exclusively of mnemonics. These contestants are just normal people who do not have a natural “photographic memory.”

Flash Cards. 

In a study by Katherine Rawsom at Williams College, students studied 35 Swahili-English word pairs on flash cards. The students were asked to practice until they got the vocabulary correct using either the entire stack or five stacks of seven cards each. Researchers instructed students to study the flashcards until they had gotten each translation correct either once, five, or 10 times, before taking a final quiz a week later. Getting the stack correct five times was three times more effective for the final quiz score than getting the stack correct only once. Also, study of one big stack was better than five little ones.

Students had predicted just the opposite. They expected studying smaller groups of flashcards would be more helpful than studying the big stack, and they expected no real benefit from studying cards more than once. Those who had studied the small stacks expected to remember nearly 60 percent of words, yet they recalled only 17 percent. In general, students were incorrect in two ways: 1) they give too little value to learning strategies that are difficult (using multiple sessions on the big stack), and 2) they give too much value to strategies that were later documented to be less effective.

 

Next Lesson from “Memory Medic:” Lesson 8. Making Associations

Follow my “neuro-education” group on Linkedin at https://www.linkedin.com/groups/4883556/

To check out my four books on learning and memory, see my web site: WRKlemm.com

Lesson 6. Concept Maps.

Facts and ideas can be mapped in ways that show how they relate to each other. The map drawing usually begin with outlined notes, because few people can think fast enough to construct a map in real time during a lecture or video. In simple mind mapping, basic ideas are stated within circles, forming word clouds, and arrows are drawn from “parent” to “daughter” clouds. A useful addition is to write in brief text along the arrows that explain what the relationship is, as illustrated in Figure 1.

Fig. 1. Simple concept map for the relationship of cells and their organelles. Cross-linking is not shown because it is not particularly useful for this simple information cluster.

Each circle object in the map can be expanded to whatever level of detail is required. In the map above, for example, from “History” you could add a circle for “Hooke” with a labeled connecting arrow saying “the first pioneer was.”

Think with Concept Mapping

Recall lesson 4, where we made the point that thinking about what you are trying to memorize makes the memory process easier and more reliable. Memory becomes easier when you think about the context and ancillary information associated with your memory targets. If the material you are trying to learn is complex, it often helps to convert your notes into concept maps. In concept maps, you draw circles or other geometric shaped word clouds to act as containers for key information, and then you think about how the various items in the circles relate to other items to create concepts. You draw connections among the various circles and write in a few words to state the nature of each relationship.

This process is like so-called mind mapping, except that concept mapping captures information as nodes in an interconnected network, unlike the tree-like structure of mind maps that have one central idea with multiple branches. Concept maps allow multiple cross-connections among the various idea nodes and typically emphasize multiple inter-dependent relationships among the nodes.

The basic task is to think about the relationships among the linked word clouds. A good practical way to automate thinking is to make concept maps as you read, listen to lectures or watch education videos. With pencil and paper write down key words in different locations on the page for major facts and ideas as you encounter them in the learning material and draw a circle around them. Then, perhaps after the lecture, video, or reading, examine each item one at a time and draw a line to any of the other items to which it is associated. Along each line, write in a few words to state what the relationship is. For example, you might link idea A with idea B with the description “makes me ask,” “led to the wrong idea that,” “leads to the truly original idea of,” or whatever might be appropriate. Note that comments work best if they are based on active verbs. This learning strategy is useful for several reasons:

1. Maps give the learner a “bird’s eye view” of the big picture.

2. Learners must engage with the material (i.e. be especially mindful) in order to draw the  

map of key concepts.

3. Learners have to organize information in meaningful ways, a process that requires them to  

think, which facilitates memory storage and retrieval.

4. Information is displayed spatially, which in itself facilitates storage and retrieval. 

Memorizing things by mentally relating them to their location in space promotes remembering because the part of the brain that forms lasting memories (the hippocampus) is also the part of the brain that creates subconscious mental maps of objects in space.

How to Make the Maps

As with creating regular notes, doing it by hand is more engaging and more likely to be memorized easily. However, with maps created by hand, you can’t move objects around; you must erase and write back in. However, that is less of a problem if you have a computer with draw capability. Another option is to create an initial step of placing sticky notes on a wall and moving them around physically to see what is the best spatial layout.

Map construction can be facilitated by computer. There are many elegant computer programs, and some quite satisfactory programs are free (search Google for “free mind maps”) (I like X Mind). Most programs make it easy to move ideas around in the map and make multiple, non-linear links. Not all programs allow elaboration along linking lines, and you may have to write it in by hand. 

Actually, I think maps are a better memorization aid if they are hand-drawn, because that makes the process more personal, more flexible, and perhaps more engaging. If you change your mind about something you put in the map, you either have to erase it or re-draw the map. One option is to draw the map by hand at first and then re-do it later by computer.

Too much text annotation adds to clutter. Clutter is inevitable with broad topics that involve many ideas. Some computer programs create a map that requires a huge sheet of paper to get printed, and you can’t get it all on an 8.5 x 11 sheet without compressing the text so much it is unreadable. The solution here is to make multiple maps, one an overview of the whole thing (main ideas and first- or second-order sub-topics. Then each major sub-idea can have its own map.

Maps to Study By

Maps used for study purposes need to be kept compact and simple. Memorization is facilitated by using icons or drawings to represent ideas is more effective than a lot of text. Some computer programs even have a library of icons you can select. Just make sure the icons are effective representations of the text they substitute for. You might want to use text and a representative icon, but base your memorization rehearsals on the icon.

Concept maps not only direct you to think about and organize academic content, they also promote memorization because concepts are laid out in spatial arrays.

The study emphasis should be on the relationships. That will automatically help memorize the factoids in the word clouds and stimulate your thinking to develop new understanding and insights. Also, make it a point to note the spatial location of key word clouds.