If you have a numbered list to memorize, the best mnemonic strategy is the pegword mnemonic. This mnemonic uses numbers which have been transformed into visual images. Here's the standard 1-10 set.
I add two more:
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Difficulty in remembering people’s names is one of the most common memory tasks that people wish to be better at. And the reason for this is not that their memory is poor, but because it is so embarrassing when their memory lets them down.
This isn’t just an issue at a personal level. It’s a particular issue for anyone who has to deal with a lot of people, many of whom they will see at infrequent intervals. Nothing makes a person — a client, a customer, a student — feel more valued than being remembered.
Although I’m a cognitive psychologist and consequently think that memory and cognition is mostly about your mastery of effective strategies, when it comes to age-related cognitive decline, I’m a big believer in the importance of diet and exercise. But while we know these things can play an important role in why some people develop cognitive impairment and even dementia as they age, and others don’t, we don’t yet know with any great certainty exactly what exercise programs would be the best use of our time, and what diet would have the most benefit.
There are two well-established strategies for remembering people’s names. The simplest basically involves paying attention. Most of the time our memory for someone’s name fails because we never created an effective memory code for it.
An easy strategy for improving your memory for names
We can dramatically improve our memory for names simply by:
Visual Language, a term introduced by Robert Horn, refers to "language based on tight integration of words and visual elements". The visual elements include shapes, as well as images (e.g., icons, clip art).
What does this have to do with memory? Well, partly of course, because the appropriate use of images usually makes information more memorable, but visual language has considerably more to offer than that. To appreciate what it is, Horn has examples at http://web.stanford.edu/~rhorn/
As I said in my discussion of different scripts, the Hellenic languages use the Greek alphabet. Here it is. I’m afraid the table is a little complicated, because (a) each letter has a name, which it’s useful to know, and (b) there are some differences in pronunciation between Ancient Greek (which is still a language that people want to learn today), and Modern Greek.
Let's look a little deeper into the value of mnemonics for knowledge acquisition. By “knowledge acquisition”, I mean the sort of information you learn from textbooks — information that is not personal, that you need for the long-term.
In this context, I believe the chief value of mnemonic strategies is to help you recall information that needs to be remembered in a particular order. Thus we use mnemonics to help us remember the order of the planets, the order of musical notes on the stave, the order of the colors in a rainbow.
We must believe that groups produce better results than individuals — why else do we have so many “teams” in the workplace, and so many meetings. But many of us also, of course, hold the opposite belief: that most meetings are a waste of time; that teams might be better for some tasks (and for other people!), but not for all tasks. So what do we know about the circumstances that make groups better value?
In my article on using cognates to help you learn vocabulary in another language, I gave the example of trying to learn the German word for important, ‘wichtig’, and how there’s no hook there to help you remember it (which is why so many of us fall back on rote repetition to try to hammer vocabulary into our heads).
Movement with Meaning: A Multisensory Program for Individuals in Early-Stage Alzheimer's Disease
Those of us in the field of dementia care are reexamining our philosophical beliefs and exploring practical, hands-on approaches in our relationships with individuals living with Alzheimer's disease. We are creating innovative programs and developing a new framework for preserving the emotional health, autonomy, and dignity of those who need us to walk hand in hand with them, witnessing the process of their experiences with empathy and respect.