Hi, I'm Michael Corayer and this is Psych
Exam Review. In the previous two videos
we looked at how we could apply memory
concepts to improving our memory and
improving our study habits and so I want
to look at one final way to do this and
this is the use of mnemonic strategies.
A mnemonic refers to a memory aid and
the way that I like to think of
mnemonics is they're sort of like
artificial retrieval cues. So what I
mean by that is they allow us to connect
new information to things that we
already know that they might not
normally be connected to. They're not
actually related but we form this
temporary connection that helps us to
retrieve these new memories. Now why
would we want to connect it to unrelated
information? That might seem strange. Well
this is especially useful when you're
first starting to learn about something
you don't have an existing knowledge
structure to connect it to. So let's say
you first start learning a foreign
language, it's very hard to just memorize
these new sounds, you don't have
something else to connect them to
because you don't know the language yet.
So what you do is you connect them
temporarily to other things that you
know, maybe mental
images that you create or knowledge that
you already have, and that allows you to
sort of get a temporary grasp on them
until you can deepen your level of
understanding. This could also be applied
to random information that you want that
you don't necessarily need to remember
long term. You know sort of semi-long
term you might need to remember for a
few days or something. Like let's say you
have a long, you know 13 digit, account
number that you want to make sure you
remember but you don't need it for
your entire life or let's say that
you want to remember a random list of
words or you want to do some sort of
memory feat like memorizing a pack of
playing cards. In order to do
this, this is where mnemonic strategies
are really helpful because you can
connect this random new information to
other information that you already know
and you don't necessarily need to
maintain this long-term. You don't need to
really do the deep processing to really
integrate this knowledge into your
existing knowledge structure right?
Because you might only want to remember
this for a couple hours or something.
Ok, so the way that we do this, these
memory aids that we use, is we usually
connect it using things like rhymes or
using sound-alikes, a word sounds like
some other word, or using mental images
So if you
you know, this idea of, you know,
in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean
blue. I mean that's a silly rhyme
but it allows you to connect that year
to this. Using this rhyme, it allows you
to connect the information Columbus to
this particular year. Now this doesn't
give you an in-depth knowledge of
Columbus's journey but it gives you a
starting point and then from there you
can connect other things to it, right? Now
you have at least one thing, you have
this year, and that can be sort of the
starting point that you build upon. Or
you might have used the
mnemonic for the color spectrum Roy G. Biv.
I mean it's this sort of meaningless
thing but by giving it a name that sort
of is a little bit more memorable. It's a
starting point. Now you can at least
remember the order of the
visible light spectrum and then from
there you can deepen your knowledge and
connect other things to it like about
wavelengths or cone types or whatever
else you want to connect to it later on.
Ok, so I want to look at what I
consider to be the most useful
mnemonic strategy and this is called the
method of loci. So the method of loci
comes from Latin for locations and this
is why you may also see this called the
roman room method or it's also sometimes
called a memory palace or you might see
it called the journey method. So what is
this technique? This is the idea that we
use knowledge that you already have to
connect new information and the
knowledge that we're going to use is
going to be a cognitive map that you
already have. We talked about this before
because we mentioned on latent learning
this idea that you form cognitive maps
of places. You go to a restaurant and you
sort of understand the layout and you
probably remember it later. Like if you
think about some place that you went to
a month ago you might still
have a pretty good knowledge of "oh yeah
we entered here and we sat over here
and there was a bar area over here" or
something and you do this, you don't
really have to, it's not like you studied it.
You didn't sit down after and say "wow I
really want to remember what this
restaurant looked like" or your friend's
house or apartment that you visited. You
sort of immediately have a knowledge of
the layout that you can probably bring
to mind pretty easily and again you
didn't go home and take notes and study
for hours, it occurred naturally.
This is what makes this method so
powerful, is that this is knowledge that
you have that's really easy to access
and that you don't have to think about
studying and now what you do is you
connect new information that you do want
to learn to this existing knowledge
structure. For instance let's say that
you wanted to remember the seven memory
failures that we've talked about. Now
this isn't going to help you to
understand the concepts behind it but
let's say you're just worried that "what
if the teacher asks me on a test to just
list a bunch of memory failures? I
want to make sure I don't forget any. You
know the pressure of the test situation,
even though I know what all of them
refer to, I might forget one. I want to
make sure I can bring it to mind." Ok, so
what you would do is you connect each of
these memory failures to a location
because this is going to give you an
order and a structure. For instance,
if I wanted to remember the seven memory
failures I would probably use my
apartment and what I would do is I would
start in one particular location and
then just mentally travel through the
apartment placing mental images for each
memory failure at each location then
when I want to recall the list I just
mentally travel through my apartment
starting at that first location and each
place will remind me of a mental image
and that mental image will remind me of
the term that I want to remember. Ok,
let's imagine that we were doing this, so
let's say I want to remember the first
one that I talked about which was
transience. Ok so, transience, what sort
of mental image does that bring to mind?
Well, I think of a transient hobo, right?
And so I picture sort of an old-time
hobo with the stick with the
cloth on the end, riding the rails
or something, a silly image but that
would be my first starting point. That's
going to remind me of transience and that's
going to be our first memory failure. So
now I just have to connect it to a
location. I start in my apartment let's
say I start in the bedroom and so I
open the door and I look and
laying in my bed there is a transient
hobo who was taking a nap. That's a
memorable image. That's going to remind
me of transience. Now I move to the next
one. So the next memory failure that we
had was absentmindedness. So what's a
mental image I can create from absent
mindedness? I might come up with the
absent-minded professor, if you've ever
seen that old film or you might think of
the more recent version of it, still not
particularly recent,
was with Robin Williams called Flubber.
He played the absent-minded
professor and so I might imagine Robin
Williams sitting at my desk doing
experiments with flubber, right? And
that's going to remind me of the
absent-minded professor and that's going
to remind me of absent-mindedness. Next
we have blocking. So I move to my closet
and I open the door and instead of all
my clothing hanging in there I picture
blocks of wood everywhere. Maybe
they're children's toy blocks or maybe
they're just blocks of wood instead of
my clothes, so that's a memorable image.
That's going to remind me of blocking. Now I
might say "well, I also might forget
what blocking refers to, I might want to
also remember this tip of the tongue
phenomenon. So now I imagine each of these
little blocks of wood has a little
tongue sticking out at me and that's
going to remind me of tip of the tongue
and that that's an example of blocking.
Ok, next I have misattribution so how
am I going to rember this? Well I might
remember this idea of you know
recognizing somebody's face but
misattributing why I remember that. So I
might think about the use of this in
eyewitness testimony and so that might
make me think of a mug shot. So I might
picture a mug shot with somebody's face
on it and that I'm misattributing this
face so it seems, it's a little
blurry. I'm not quite sure why I
recognize this person and that will
hopefully remind me of misattribution.
Now you might say "well what if I can't
come up with that term misattribution?
It's not a very common word." So I say
okay, well what can I put into the
picture to remind me of that? Well, maybe
maybe it's a mug shot of a woman's face
and she's wearing a little Miss America
crown or she's Miss Texas or
whatever and that's just enough to
remind me of this miss part and that
would hopefully be enough to trigger the
idea of misattribution. Ok, now moving
on from there, we have suggestibility.
Let's say I move to the bathroom, I open
the door and the sink is there and
there's the mirror there is broken and
there's broken glass everywhere and then
I look and there's little toy cars just
crashing into each other all over the
sink there. Well how's that going to remind me of
suggestibility? Well hopefully that's to
remind me of that Loftus and Palmer car
study, right? Where people watched this
car crash and because of the questions
they were asked this influenced their
memory and it changed their speed
estimates and they remembered seeing
broken glass that wasn't actually there.
So this now is going to hopefully remind
me of suggestibility and remind me of
this example that I could, let's say I
was going to write an essay, I could
remember all this, oh there was stuff
about broken glass, there was a car crash
and that's going to hopefully serve as a
retrieval cue for all of those memories.
Ok, next we have the idea of bias so
now maybe I walk into my kitchen and I
see, let's see I need a picture for bias,
and that might make me think of a scale
of justice, that's heavily tipped to one
side, right? That might be a good mental
representation of this idea of bias.
It's not quite fair,
it's a tipped in one direction and so
hopefully that will remind me of bias and
that will remind me that that is the
next memory failure. Then the last
example that we have is the idea of
persistence; where these memories
keep coming to mind, negative emotional
memories and so persistence might remind
me of Salvador Dali's famous painting
The Persistence of Memory, right? This is
the painting I'm sure you've seen with
the sort of melting clocks
dripping off of things and so I'm in my
kitchen, I might imagine you know that
dripping off the side of the counter and
the refrigerator there is a bunch of
clocks and hopefully that will remind me
of Dali's Persistence of Memory and that
will remind me of the idea of
persistence. Now these are all personal
images that I've come up with
that I think of the word, I
think how could I mentally
represent that and you might have very
different representations and that's
okay. The whole point is just to create a
retrieval cue to give you something that
you can make a mental image of and then
you connect that with the location.
The idea here is I don't need to
remember these memory failures in a
particular order, I mean I could
mix them up. But the idea is I can
mentally walk through, I know that I
haven't missed any, I'm not going to
forget a random term in the middle
because I'm not going to forget that you
know my closet exists. I'm not going to
forget, does my bathroom
happen before my kitchen? When I'm
walking through my apartment I'm never
going to mix that up and so that's going
to sort of force me to have a structure
and that structure is going to help me
recall the memory. So that's the basic
idea behind the method of loci and the
great thing is you can apply this to all
sorts of knowledge that you need to
remember. If you need to make a speech or
presentation and you've got 10 points that
you want to make, it's not going to help
you to make those points, it's not going to
help you with the conceptual
understanding, but you might be worried
that you know "what if I forget point
number seven in the middle of my speech?
Or
if I accidentally say point number eight
before I say point number seven
and they're related to each other, I
want to make sure I don't mix up the
order, the sequence is really important
in this particular presentation". Well
what this does is it gives you a
structure to make sure that doesn't
happen. All you do is create a mental
journey, place each of these points that
you have a mental image for, place those
along the journey and now while you're
giving your speech you can think through
those locations and say "okay right now
I'm in the kitchen and so I'm talking
about this point and then the next point
is in the living room, what was
the image I had on the couch?" and that
gives you the structure and that's just
enough to cue your memory. It's an
artificial cue but it will help. Okay
there's other ways to apply this, there's
more detailed mnemonic strategies for
applying this to numbers. One way you can
do this is just with rhymes, so each
number could be represented with a
rhyming image like one is bun, two is shoe,
three is a tree, or you can use the shape
of the number. So one is like a baseball
bat or necktie or two is a swan, it's up
to you whatever you find more
comfortable and perhaps in the future I
can make a series of videos specifically
about more advanced mnemonic strategies.
But if you're interested in learning
more I'll post some links in the video
description where you can see some books
that I'd recommend about mnemonic
strategies and these are sort of taken
to the extreme, where people do things
like compete in the memory
Olympics essentially and see
who can memorize the most playing cards
the fastest or the longest strings of
digits and things like that. It's not
particularly useful when it comes to
learning knowledge for your classes but
it does show sort of the incredible
capacity that we have to develop our
memory if we choose to do so. So
if you're interested you can look for
more on that, maybe I can make some
future videos but for now this is the
basic idea behind the method of loci and
how you can apply it to memorize new
information. Ok, I hope you found this
helpful, if so, please like the video and
subscribe to the channel for more. Thanks
for watching!