Memory techniques

Memory Techniques

Tips to help you to memorize

According to O’Brian (8 time winner of the World Memory Championships), there are 3 principles of memory:

Association: memory and creativity are based on associations

Location: there is something about placing mental images in a specific location that makes them easier to recall

Imagination: the mind remembers things that are exaggerated, so mnemonic images should be vivid and exaggerated

Dominic O’Brian

O'Brien said that mnemonic

associations should be given a specific location.

When someone's name can't be remembered, the first thing the mind does is say, "where did I meet this person?" As soon as the person can be placed in a location (e.g., "I met this person at a cafe last year"), all the other associated information about the person usually comes flooding back.

The importance of location

We can classify them in 3:

Association Organization Visual Verbal

Some specific techniques

The association technique consists to

link new information to something already known.

Thus we can use the information we have stored to give meaning to the information we just learned to memorize it more easily: Search for a context when you’re

trying to remember someone: where did he/she was born? When? What’s his/her job?

Use different senses: how does it smell? How does it looks like? How does it taste?

Association

This involves:

Chunking Categorization

Organization

Although the capacity of short-term

memory is 7+/-2 digits, it may increase if you try to remember groups of information instead. This units of information is what we call chunks. For example, the numbers 6-8- 5-0-3-1- 7, can grouped 6.85.03.17 . That makes it easily to remember!

Chunking

This strategy involves a list of words to

memorize, and you’ll have to remember the most significant of them (the word that encompasses the rest of the group).

This word in memory will give way to the second most important word in the group. This will result in a process similar to a falling row of dominoes so the most important word in the hierarchy will be used to remember the second one, and this to the next and so in succession.

Categorization Strategies

Visual

This consists on making a picture

story of each item to be connected together (it is very similar to the technique of stories, but is based on the image display).

In a list of items, this is the first figure of the first two elements vividly, and then associating each image to go to mount further.

Chained images

For example:

SHIRT PIANO HOUSE ALARM

You can imagine a clock wrapped in a shirt. Once we have this, we can think of the two top of a piano, and when we get it, think of a house containing a piano on which is the jacket that surrounds the clock ....

Chained images

Before using the technique, you must identify

a common path that you usually walk (you home, the path to your job…).

What is essential is that you have a vivid visual memory of the path and objects along it.

Once you have determined your path, imagine yourself walking along it, and identify specific landmarks that you will pass.

METHOD OF LOCI

Watch this video to see how to implement

this technique:

METHOD OF LOCI

Verbal

This is about building

stories. The evocation of an element leads to the evocation of the next and so on until completion.

This technique is appropriate when we remember a list in a certain order

It is also useful to remember number

Stories

For example, if we want to remember

007-727-180-7-10-2230-2300-2

we can invent the following story:

"The plane rose to 007 727. He saw a stewardess 1.80 and decided to ask seven cafés to talk to her. He saw his watch was 10. The plane landed at 22:30, asked her out and left at 23:30. They ate and talked until 2 am "

Stories

ACRONYMS

You form acronyms by using each first letter from a group of words to form a new word. This is particularly useful when remembering words in a specified order. It’s a very common technique:

NBA (National Basketball Associations), SCUBA (Self Contained Underwater Breathing

Apparatus), BTUs (British Thermal Units)

The memory techniques in this section, for example, can be rearranged to form the acronym "SCRAM" (Sentences (acrostics), Chunking, Rhymes, Acronyms, and Method of loci).

ACRONYMS & ACROSTICS

SENTENCES/ACROSTICS

Like acronyms, you use the first letter of each word you are trying to remember. Instead of making a new word, though, you use the letters to make a sentence. Here are some examples:

My Dear Aunt Sally (mathematical order of operations: Multiply and Divide before you Add and Subtract)

Kings Phil Came Over for the Genes Special (Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Genus, Species)

ACRONYMS & ACROSTICS

Are you familiar with Homer's Odyssey? If you are,

then you know that it is quite long! That is why it is so remarkable to realize that this, along with many ancient Greek stories, was told by storytellers who would rely solely on their memories. The use of rhyme, rhythm, and repetition helped the storytellers remember them.

It so simple: all you need it’s a melody, and something to remember

Using these techniques can be fun, particularly for people who like to create.

RHYMES & SONGS

You can use the same techniques to better remember information from courses. For example, even the simple addition of familiar rhythm and melody can help. Do you remember learning the alphabet? Click the video below:

In fact, a student demonstrated how she memorized the quadratic formula (notorious among algebra students for being long and difficult to remember) by singing it to a familiar tune!

RHYMES & SONGS