Mental Filing Systems
Mnemonics
Let’s
begin by defining what a mnemonic is and why we would use it. A mnemonic (noun) is a key or a code that
helps us remember something. Over the
last few thousand years people have developed several forms of memory aids to
help remember things. Some of these grew
from the oral tradition of storytelling.
The most common mnemonic methods are the Link, Story, Loci, Peg and
Phonetic methods.
Link Mnemonics
The
Link (or Chain) Mnemonics method uses paired associations to link together
items. Suppose you want to remember the
following list of items – bike, doctor, tree, theater, cucumber. Beginning with bike, create a mental image of
each item that links it to the next item.
For example, visualize yourself riding a bike and a doctor steps off the
curb in front of you and you run into him.
Then you visualize a doctor climbing a tree. Hanging from the limb of a tree is a poster
advertising a show this week at the theater.
You are at a theater and when the curtain goes up there is a huge
cucumber standing on stage. Using this
method you can link together an almost endless list of image pairs.
Story Mnemonics
Story
Mnemonics adds one element to the Link method that provides for improved recall
for some people. This method weaves
together the paired associations into a story line that flows from one
association to the other. In the Link
method you visualize riding a bike and running over a doctor. Then you visualize a doctor who is climbing a
tree. With the Story method you might
modify this such that you are riding a bike and you hit a doctor. The impact throws the doctor up into the
limbs of a tree. When he reaches to the
nearest limb to climb down he discovers a theater poster hanging from the limb
and he invites you to go to the theater with him where you both are amazed when
the curtain rises revealing a giant cucumber.
Loci Mnemonics
The
Loci Mnemonics method is based on remembering things by associating them with a
known physical location. You do this all
the time but may not realize it. Let’s
say you attend a meeting at work in the conference room and 8 people, including
yourself, attend the meeting. You leave
the meeting and an hour later your boss drops by your desk and asks who was in
the meeting. You probably will recall
the participants by mentally looking back at the conference table and
visualizing who sat next to you, who sat next to them, etc. Thus you easily recite the people in the
meeting. You can use this same method to
remember an otherwise unstructured list of items. The first thing that must be done is to
memorize a set of locations that you will use over and over again. You’re very familiar with your house so let’s
use it.
Visualize
the following sequence using your own home or apartment as the backdrop. See it in your mind:
1.
You drive into your driveway or
parking spot.
2.
You exit the car and close the car door.
3.
Walk up your sidewalk.
4.
Stand on your porch at your front
door while you get your keys.
5.
Open and enter the front door.
6.
Put your coat in the hall closet.
7.
Go to the refrigerator in your
kitchen.
8.
Take your cold drink with you to your bedroom.
9.
Open your closet door.
10. Put
what you are holding on the shelf in the closet.
Now
you will learn lists of things - grocery lists, key points of a speech - by
associating them with the places in your house. This technique was used by ancient orators
as far back as 500 BC but for our demonstration let’s just learn a list of
random things – such as tomato, rock, tire, baby, sandwich, book, mountain,
goldfish, tree and sailor.
1.
You drive into your driveway and run over a
tomato – smashing it all over the driveway.
It makes a big mess.
2.
You get out of the car and when you close
the car door it won’t close because a big rock is jammed in the door.
3.
You walk up your sidewalk and a bunch of
tires come rolling across the yard and almost knock you down as you shimmy up
the walk.
4.
You arrive at the porch and as you stop to
get your keys you see there is a baby lying in the middle of the porch.
5.
You open the front door and a sandwich
falls from above and splats on top your head.
6.
………
You get the idea. Continue the
story with your own vivid images.
You
will be amazed to discover that for the next few days you will be able to
instantly recite all ten items in the list in sequence - and with some practice
in reverse order as well. Try this with
your grocery list next time you go to the store.
Peg Mnemonics
The
Loci Mnemonics method is really an enhancement on the Story method but you
build your story on a fixed framework of physical locations that you are
already very familiar with. These two
methods, along with the Link method, have been used since at least 500 AD and were
very effective for orators and story tellers.
According to Kenneth L. Higbee, PhD in his book Your Memory, the Peg
System can be traced to the mid-1600’s when an Englishman extended the Loci
method by associating numbers with a defined list of physical objects that
resembled the numbers (1 is a candle, 8 is a pair of spectacles, etc.) This method evolved into similar methods that
sometimes involved rhymes (1 is a bun, 2 is a shoe, 3 is a tree, 4 is a door). The children’s poem “One, two buckle my shoe. Three, four close the door” taught the
associations. The numbered items become “memory
pegs” upon which you hang the things you want to remember.
For
example, if you want to remember tire, boat, flag, harmonica in sequence you
associate the first peg “bun” with “tire” by perhaps visualizing biting into a
bun to discover a small tire in it instead of meat. The primary advantage of this peg system is
that you not only remember everything on your list in sequence but you can also
remember the fourth item on your list by “seeing” what item is associated with
the “door” peg. Here is the list of the
rhyming peg words:
1 –
bun
2 –
shoe
3 –
tree
4 –
door
5 –
hive
6 –
sticks
7 –
heaven
8 –
gate
9 –
wine
10
– hen
While
this rhyming approach is good, it becomes difficult to use for large lists
simply because it is difficult to find rhyming pegwords for numbers larger than
20.
Phonetic Mnemonics
The
Phonetic system is a type of Peg system that associates numbers with consonant
sounds. By doing this we are able to
have a systematic way of defining number/word associations for large
lists. This system was the result of
considerable work by memory researchers during the 1800’s and the method
described here was well-defined and widely published before 1900. The mnemonics are as follows:
1 –
t, th, d As a memory aid, “t” has one downstroke
2 – n “n”
has two downstrokes
3 – m “m”
has three downstrokes
4 – r Four ends in “r”
5 – l The
Latin numeral for 50 is “L”
6 –
j, sh, ch, soft g Reversed
j resembles a 6
7 –
k, q, hard c, hard g K looks
like it is made from a 7
8 –
f, v Script
“f” resembles 8
9 –
p, b “p”
is the mirror image of 9
0 –
z, s, soft c “z”
for zero
Only
three consonants are not used in this list; W, H and Y because their sounds are
dependent on letters next to them. They
are ambiguous.
Memory
keywords are constructed using the following rules:
·
Only consonant sounds are used
·
Vowel sounds are ignored
·
Double consonants making one sound are
treated as one (tissue has only one “s” sound)
Based on these rules we can construct a set of keywords that uniquely and unambiguously represent certain numbers. Examples are:
Tie =
1
Noah
= 2
Noel
= 25
Zoo =
0
Buzz
= 90
Popped
= 991
Using
the above approach you can create your own list of keywords that mean something
to you. To get you started, here are
suggested keywords for 1 – 20 (taken from Higbee’s book, Your Memory):
1 –
tie
2 –
Noah
3 –
ma
4 –
ray
5 –
law
6 –
jay
7 –
key
8 – fee
9 –
pie
10 –
toes
11 –
tot
12 –
tin
13 –
tomb
14 –
tire
15 –
towel
16 –
tissue
17 –
tack
18 –
taffy
19 –
tub
20 –
nose
Practice
using these with some things you need to remember and you will be amazed at the
results. Be sure to send your comments
to us via the Contact Us form on this website.
