Mindmaps helps us remember
There are numerous strategies used to improve long-term memory. By itself, imagery has considerable value in helping make information memorable because, researchers indicate our minds encode images with both visual and audio tags for later retrieval. To experience the power of imagery use a mind-map, for example, the next time you need to remember the definition of a word or concept. People often use imagery in combination with other strategies for remembering complex concepts such as the uses of the chemical benzene or the spelling of words. In conjunction with a group of strategies for enhancing memory called mnemonics it is a powerful tool for improving memory performance.
Connect your old and new memories with mnemonics
Body enhanced recall
Mnemonics involve pairing to-be-learned information with well-known information. Mnemonics help us learn new information by making it easier to elaborate, segment, or retrieve information from memory. Some mnemonics involve the use of rhymes for example saying 30 days has September, April, June, and November. Others use gestures for instance the right-hand rule in physics is a mnemonics for determining the flow of a magnetic field around electronic current. Another example of a body-based mnemonic is tying a string around your finger to remember to perform a task.
In the peg method, people memorize a series of pegs on which they hang to-be-learned information or items. The pegs can be any well-known set of items but a very popular strategy involves the use of a simple rhyme. One is a bun. Two is a few. Three is a tree. Four is a door. Five is a hive. Six is ticks. Seven is heaven. Eight is a gate. Nine is a pine. Ten is a hen.
People who have mastered this rhyme can use it to learn lists of items, such as the names of authors, politicians, or terms in a social studies course. You can use this strategy for instance in the learning of the following grocery lists: pickles, bread, milk, oranges, and lightbulbs. To remember pickles one could imagine pickles stuck in a bun and so on. The technique is simple and effective.
To use the method of Loci to learn new information requires a very familiar location, such as one’s home. First, you practice each location in your home so you can imagine various drops in your house. These drops could be the sofa, coffee table, window, television, and armchair in a living room. Learners must memorize the drops so that they can recall them in exactly the same order each time. Once a person has committed the locations to memory, the method of Loci strategy is ready for use as a mnemonic. Let us suppose a person must recall five famous actors: Samuel L. Jackson, Tom Hanks, Ben Stiller, Meryl Streep, and Julia Roberts. They could imagine Jackson sitting on the sofa, Hanks with his boots propped up on the coffee table, Stiller looking out the window, Streep tuning the TV and Roberts standing in the armchair. If our list were longer, we could continue to place people in locations until we completed the list.
This post was synthesized from Cognitive Psychology and Instruction (Bruning et al., 2004).
MindMap from Graphicstock.
Mnemonics from Photopin.
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