Memory Techniques

106 flashcards by MentisLibrary

Build a memory palace, encode numbers with the major system, and use spacing and retrieval the way the research says to. Techniques are credited to the researcher or source behind them wherever the effect has a named one.

Method of loci
Placing items to be remembered at specific locations along a familiar route, then walking the route mentally to recall them.
Memory palace
The common modern name for the method of loci, in which the route is a building you know well.
Why does the method of loci work?
Spatial memory is unusually strong and well preserved, so attaching arbitrary material to remembered places gives it a durable retrieval structure.
Building a memory palace
Choose a familiar place, fix a route through it, and select distinct stations in a repeatable order.
What makes a good memory image?
Vivid, exaggerated, moving, interacting with the location, and involving more than one sense.
Reusing a memory palace
A palace can be reused after the old material has faded, or kept dedicated to one body of material.
The major system
A code that converts digits into consonant sounds, so numbers can be turned into words and images.
How do you use the major system?
Convert digits to consonants, add vowels freely to make a word, and turn that word into an image.
Why does the major system use sounds rather than letters?
Because the code maps to consonant sounds, spelling does not matter, which makes far more words available.
The peg system
Pre memorizing a fixed set of images tied to numbers, then hooking new items onto those pegs.
Rhyming peg words
A simple peg set built on rhymes: one is bun, two is shoe, three is tree, four is door, five is hive.
The Dominic system
A system in which each two digit number maps to a person and an action, using letters rather than the major system's sounds.
The PAO system
Person, Action, Object: each number or card is assigned all three, so three items compress into one composite image.
The link method
Connecting each item to the next with a vivid image, forming a chain.
The story method
Weaving the items into a single narrative in order.
Acronym mnemonics
Forming a word from the first letters of the items to be remembered.
Acrostic mnemonics
Forming a sentence whose words begin with the target letters.
The keyword method
Learning foreign vocabulary by linking the sound of the new word to a familiar word, then imagining that word interacting with the meaning.
Chunking
Grouping individual items into larger meaningful units so that working memory holds more total information.
Why does chunking increase capacity?
Working memory is limited by the number of units it holds, not by the information inside each unit, so richer units carry more.
Chase and Simon's chess study
Chess masters recalled realistic board positions far better than novices, but the advantage largely vanished for randomly arranged pieces.
Spaced repetition
Reviewing material at increasing intervals rather than in one block.
The spacing effect
Learning distributed over time produces better long term retention than the same total time massed together.
The forgetting curve
Ebbinghaus's finding that retention drops sharply soon after learning and then more slowly.
Who was Hermann Ebbinghaus?
The nineteenth century psychologist who made memory an experimental subject, testing himself on thousands of nonsense syllables.
The Leitner box
A physical spaced repetition system using numbered boxes: a card answered correctly moves forward, a card missed returns to the first box.
The SM-2 algorithm
A scheduling algorithm that adjusts each item's review interval based on how easily it was recalled, using a per item ease factor.
Expanding retrieval
Testing at gradually lengthening intervals, starting soon after learning.
The testing effect
Retrieving information from memory strengthens retention more than restudying it for the same amount of time.
Retrieval practice
Deliberately pulling information out of memory as the primary study activity.