Mnemonics

Techniques

• method of loci
  • shopping list: place objects in a memorable way at home
  • memory palace
  • better memory forming when more senses are included
    • smell, taste, sounds, touch
• chunking
  • 5 $\pm$ 2 can be retained easily
  • e.g. have 9 different people, actions and places in mind for numbers 0-9
    • a 3-digit number can be remembered by a person doing something in a specific place
      • 10 people, actions, places have to be remembered/chosen for oneself only once - encoding from numbers to weird image
    • e.g. Einstein playing basketball at a coffee shop sticks better than 394
• acronyms and acrostics
• rhyming
• music mnemonics
  • e.g. ABC song

Storytelling

• humans can better remember narratives than unordered numbers
  • should be weird/horrible/funny

Empirical Evidence

• Bower & Clark (1969)

  • n = 24 … not reliable enough
  • remember words from a list
    • control group nothing, experimental group with a story behind the words
  • after 12 lists: control median 13%, experimental median 93%
    • • less inter-list interference with experimental group
  • there is an 80% difference … very fishy (too large difference with such a small sample)

• personal book recommendation if interested: Moonwalking with Einstein