Memory Tricks
My fifth-grade teacher, Ms. Berg, once commented to me that she knew a good way to remember the five Great Lakes. "John," said she, "Just picture lake HOMES, then think, 'Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior.'" Despite the fact that I am suffering the expected memory rigidity that comes with age, I remember the five Great Lakes with no problem. Why is this?
I studied memory in both my M.S. thesis and doctoral dissertation. I think that a stage information processing model helps us organize what we know about memory and its function as well or better than any other theory. Essentially, information enters a short-term or working store and then, oh my, do things begin to happen - at least we hope that they do!
To maintain memory in working storage we partake in two types of rehearsal, maintenance rehearsal and elaborative rehearsal. Essentially, the short-term store "likes" visual and auditory stimulation, while long-term store "prefers" meaning. Thus, we can maintain information in short-term store by merely repeating it to ourselves, as when one repeats a phone number mentally to remember it when the first call achieves only a busy signal.
However, to move memory from short-term or working store to long term store (in a form that can be easily recalled), we have to act on or alter the information: elaborative rehearsal. Elaborative rehearsal involves systematically hanging the information from "mere" signals to meaning units. Ms. Berg's notion fits this model admirably, and constitutes a system that is known to memory experts as an acronym, or first-letter mnemonic.
Many students do not know systems for elaborative rehearsal and will benefit from learning them. Students with average intellectual performance after about the third grade can be taught to generate their own systems; students with significant disabilities will benefit from teacher-provided mnemonics. Below I have listed some of the well-established memory tricks, or mnemonics, that have been supported by the literature. Note that the first one, the Method of Loci was mentioned by Plato and has thus been employed by mnemonists and students for 2500 years!
The Method of Loci
The method of loci involves picturing a very familiar space, such as one's bedroom, very clearly. Mentally, the mnemonist "walks through" the room the same way each time. The original loci (location) requires some practice. As the person walks through the room (the same way each time), they place a to-be-remembered object with a familiar object. For example, let us say that I have been asked to recall the main economic products of Minnesota. As I walk through my childhood room (I still use my childhood bedroom), I place a kernel of corn near my blue globe. As I turn right I come to my bed. On it I figuratively place some iron ore. The taconite pellets go on my clock radio. In this way, as I take the Minnesota products test, I merely walk through my room. Some memory experts are so adroit at Loci that they actually have to go through and remove the objects mentally in order to forget them!
Acronyms or First-Letter Mnemonics
As a professor of special education, I frequently find reason to teach the seven principles of IDEA as promulgated by Turnbull and Turnbull. Years ago I made up an acronym and a story. To remember the principles of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, one needs to be quick, in fact, so quick that you live in ZIPLAND: Zero-reject childfind, IEP (principle of the individual education program), Parental participation, Least restrictive environment, Appropriate (individualized) education, Non-discriminatory assessment, and Due process. Then, I tie explanations of the principles to the first-letter mnemonic. Years after I have had them in class, students walk up to me and say, "I still remember ZIPLAND." Does anyone recall ROY-G-BIV from physics/optics (red orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, the colors of the visible spectrum in order - way cool).
Acrostics
An acrostic is a saying that helps one recall the elements of a list. For example, I learned the strings of the guitar through the saying Every Good Boy Does Fine Everyday, I think the strings being E, G, B, D, F, E - at least on my Ovation.
The Keyword Approach
In the past twenty years, Atkinson and Shiffrin, two memory researchers introduced the keyword approach. The keyword approach ahs been employed successfully by language teachers to help their students learn vocabulary. The approach is a memory trick whereby the student learns a foreign word by mentally visualizing it in association with a known word in a meaningful way. For example, new students of Spanish learn that the word pato means duck. To help them with initial memory, they learn to visualize a duck with a pot on its head (because pato sounds like the English word pot). I use a version of this method to help me learn students names. For example, I might visualize a student named Smith working as a Smith (in the metal worker version of this).
The imagination of teachers and students s the only limitation to the number of possible memory tricks. All one needs to do is to think about ways that sounds and images can be elaborative rehearsed to generate meaning.
- John H. Hoover, St. Cloud State University
