Memory Tricks (List Memorisation)

[Snow Turtle]

Just thought I'd like to share a little something that I've learnt. It's quite useful for remembering random list of items. Maybe it'll help with your shopping! (Just kidding there)

It's called Method of Loci.

You basically imagine something really clear in your mind (for example home) and assign the items to each room with it's silly quirks for emphasis. You then proceed to walk through each room recollecting this information.

Example:
Front Garden: Giants shouting "Agree"
Entrance: Blurt
Livingroom: Cakeeees
Fancy Diningroom: Piano

It's a pretty neat trick. For someone with terrible memory, I found it amusing that I could mess up my friends statistical data, recalling about 34/45 words when the average is about 12 normally. The only downside is that your so busy focusing on remembering words: You don't display the normal recency effect of recalling last things said/shown.

 

[Shimmy]

I know another one, make a list of 10 items that you can easily associate with the numbers 1 to 10 (because they sound alike, have the same shape as the numbers, rhyme with the numbers etc.) Then visualise whatever list you have to remember with the items corresponding to the numbers.

 

[teslashock]

I know another one, make a list of 10 items that you can easily associate with the numbers 1 to 10 (because they sound alike, have the same shape as the numbers, rhyme with the numbers etc.) Then visualise whatever list you have to remember with the items corresponding to the numbers.

Yeah I remember doing exactly this when I was a freshman in high school (like 7 years ago) for a psychology class. We were told what object to associate with each number, based on rhyming. My "grocery list" was apples, newspaper, coffee, butter, shampoo, potato chips, baker's chocolate, cotton balls, coca-cola, and orange juice. Here was my list, 1-10, the objects I associated with the numbers, and then the item on the list.

1-bun: apple (I pictured an apple sandwiched in a hamburger bun)
2-shoe: newspaper (I pictured newspaper stuffed into a shoe)
3-tree: coffee (I pictured coffee beans growing on a tree)
4-door: butter (I pictured butter used to greasen up the hinges on a door)
5-hive: shampoo (I pictured a woman with a towel over her wet hair, in the shape of a beehive)
6-sticks: potato chips (I pictured potato chips on the end of sticks, being roasted like marshmallows at a campfire)
7-heaven: baker's chocolate (I pictured baker's chocolate being eaten by angels in the clouds)
8-gate: cotton balls (I pictured cotton balls stuffed into the holes in a chain-link fence)
9-swine: coca-cola (I pictured a pig drinking coke out of a troff)
10-hen: orange juice (I pictured a hen laying an orange, rather than an egg, then sitting on it to crush it into pulp/juice)

Of course the list would probably start to get confusing if you used it as a mnemonic device all the time. Is coke number 9 on the list this time, or is it bread?

And also, after you pass 10, it's hard to find things that rhyme with the numbers, so you'd have to have a better way of associating the numbers with the objects on your list.

I find it interesting that, after 7 years, I still remember the grocery list off the top of my head. That's how effective the mnemonic device is.