Strategies

The role of melody in helping recall

The most obvious connection between language and music is that music can be used to help us remember words. It has been convincingly shown that words are better recalled when they are learned as a song rather than speech - in particular conditions.

Melody is what is important. Rhythm is obviously part of that. We are all aware of the power of rhythm in helping make something memorable. But melody, it seems, has quite a lot of attributes, apart from rhythm, that we can use as cues to help our recall. And what seems to be crucial is the simplicity and predictability of the melody.

But the connection between language and music is much more profound than this.

The evolution of language

One of my favorite books is Robin Dunbar's Grooming, gossip and the evolution of language . In it he moves on from the fact that monkeys and apes are intensely social and that grooming each other is a major social bonding mechanism, to the theory that in humans language (particularly the sort of social language we call gossip) has taken the place of grooming. The size of human social groups, he argues cogently, was able to increase (to our species' benefit) because of the advantages language has over grooming. For example, it's hard to groom more than one at a time, but you can talk to several at once.

Language, music, and emotion

I mention this now because he also suggests that both music and language helped humans knit together in social groups, and maybe music was first. We are all familiar with the extraordinary power of music to not only evoke emotion, but also to bind us into a group. Think of your feelings at times of group singing - the singing of the national anthem, singing 'Auld Lang Syne' at New Year's Eve, singing in church, campfire singing, carol singing ... fill in your own experience.

Dunbar also observes that, while skilled oratory has its place of course, language is fairly inadequate at the emotional level - something we all have occasion to notice when we wish to offer comfort and support to those in emotional pain. At times like these, we tend to fall back on the tried and true methods of our forebears - touch.

So, while language is unrivaled in its ability to convey "the facts", there is a point at which it fails. At this point, other facilities need to step in. At an individual level, we have touch, and "body language". At the social level, we have music.

Language and music then, may well have developed together, not entirely independently.More evidence for this comes from recent neurological studies.

The neural substrates of language and music

Language is a very important and complex function in humans, and unsurprisingly it involves a number of brain regions. The most famous is Broca's area. Recent research into neurological aspects of music have held some surprises. Imaging studies have revealed that, while the same area (the planum temporale) was active in all subjects listening to music, in non-musicians it was the right planum temporale that was most active, while in musicians the left side dominated. The left planum temporale is thought to control language processing. It has been suggested that musicians process music as a language. This left-brain activity was most pronounced in people who had started musical training at an early age.

Moreover, several studies have now demonstrated that there are significant differences in the distribution of gray matter in the brain between professional musicians trained at an early age and non-musicians. In particular, musicians have an increased volume of gray matter in Broca's area. The extent of this increase appears to depend on the number of years devoted to musical training. There also appears to be a very significant increase in the amount of gray matter in the part of the auditory cortex called the Heschl's gyrus (also involved in the categorical perception of speech sounds).

An imaging study₁ investigating the neural correlates of music processing found that " unexpected musical events" activated the areas of Broca and Wernicke, the superior temporal sulcus, Heschl's gyrus, both planum polare and planum temporale, as well as the anterior superior insular cortices. The important thing about this is that, while some of those regions were already known to be involved in music processing, the cortical network comprising all these structures has up to now been thought to be domain-specific for language processing.

People are sensitive to acoustic cues used to distinguish both different musicians and different speakers

Another study₂ has found that people remember music in the same way that they remember speech. Both musicians and non-musicians were found to be equally accurate in distinguishing changes in musical sequences, when those changes were in the length and loudness of certain tones. This discrimination appeared to also be within the capabilities of ten-month-old babies, arguing that the facility is built into us, and does not require training.

These acoustic characteristics are what make two musicians sound different when they are playing the same music, and make two speakers sound different when they are saying the same sentence.

So, if this facility is innate, what do our genes tell us?

Williams syndrome

Williams syndrome is a rare genetic disorder. Those with this syndrome have characteristic facial and physical features, certain cardiovascular problems and mild to moderate mental retardation.

They are also markedly social, and have greater language capabilities than you would expect from their general cognitive ability. They score significantly higher on tests measuring behavior in social situations, including their ability to remember names and faces, eagerness to please others, empathy with others' emotions and tendency to approach strangers.

This connection, between sociability, language skills, and memory for names and faces, is what makes Williams syndrome interesting in this context. And of course, the final characteristic: an extraordinary connection with music.

Mozart effect

A Canadian study is now underway to look at whether musical training gives children an edge over non-musical counterparts in verbal and writing skills (as well as perhaps giving the elderly an edge in preserving cognitive function for as long as possible). In view of the factors discussed here, the idea that music training benefits verbal skills is certainly plausible. I discuss this in more detail in my discussion of the much-hyped Mozart effect.

* I'm sorry, I know this is expressed somewhat clumsily. More colloquially, many people would say they co-evolved for this purpose. But functions don't evolve purposively - the eye didn't evolve because one day an organism thought it would be a really good idea to be able to see. We know this, but it is ... oh so much easier ... to talk about evolution as if it was purposeful. Unfortunately, what starts simply because as a sloppy shorthand way of saying something, becomes how people think of it. I don't want to perpetuate this myself, so, I'm sorry, we have to go with the clumsy.

Keyword mnemonic

The one mnemonic strategy that has been investigated quite extensively by researchers is the keyword mnemonic. This has been used successfully in a variety of learning areas, but its chief use has been in the area of learning vocabulary.

The keyword mnemonic is certainly an effective technique, particularly for learning to read in another language, as opposed to writing or talking (where you have to actively remember the words you want, rather than simply recognize them when you see them). But I wouldn't advocate using the keyword mnemonic on 1000 words, or even most of them. I would keep it for the hard words. (Read more on the usefulness of the keyword mnemonic for learning vocabulary. Find out what the keyword method is here)

Linkword

This is essentially the keyword technique, but simplified by fact that someone else has done all the hard work. Dr Michael Gruneberg, a British academic who has done a lot of work in the area of practical mnemonics (a rare concern among academic researchers) formalized the Linkword technique for learning foreign languages, and has produced Linkword books for learning French, German, Spanish, and Italian.

The books aim to quickly teach you a few hundred words of your chosen language (my own count of words taught in the German book was 355), by giving you a linking image to use. Thus, for Raupe (German for caterpillar), you are told to imagine a caterpillar with a rope attached to its middle.

As you would expect (Dr Gruneberg does know his stuff), the books are designed with an eye to fundamental memory principles. Words are grouped according to category; only ten words are given at a time; words are reviewed, etc. Simple grammar points are also included. It's well organized, and I do think it's an excellent way for a beginner to get a quick introduction to the language.

Apart from my general criticisms and warnings about the keyword technique (for which, see my article), my principal caveat is the difficulty in forming the visual images. For example, for Hummer (German for lobster), we are told to imagine a lobster with a sense of humor. Similarly, for Motte (German for moth), we are told to imagine that our personal motto is "I like moths". Personally, I don't find it particularly easy to visualize these "images". Now, I mean no criticism of Dr Gruneberg, the difficulty is experienced by anyone trying to find images to express verbal connections; some words just don't lend themselves to being images. But of course, verbal mnemonics are just as memorable as visual mnemonics, and infinitely more flexible. I assume, although he doesn't say it, that Dr Gruneberg means by "image" something more movie-like, with a sound track.

There are also Linkword courses available, in a wider variety of languages, and for some languages, at more advanced levels (this link is for a British site; here's a U.S. site).

Linkword books available from Amazon

List-learning mnemonics

The various list-learning mnemonics - the method of loci, the pegword method, the link method, the story method - can all be adapted to help you learn lists of words. In general, learning lists is not a particularly useful technique for learning a language, however, there are some circumstances in which it can be helpful.

If you do need to remember a list, my own recommendation is the story mnemonic, unless you are already expert at one of the other techniques. The advantage of the story mnemonic is that it is very simple to master.

Here's an example of its use. I'm brushing up my Latin, and like to run through the various conjugations and declensions in my head before going to sleep (it's wonderfully soothing!). To ensure I cover them all, I've devised the following mnemonics:

I love to advise those who rule that sums are fooey. [1st conjugation: amo, I love; 2nd conjugation: moneo, I advise; 3rd conjugation: rego, I rule; irregular verb to be: sum, I am; fui, I have been]

At the table the daughter awaits the master; the son awaits the god in the field where the boys go to war. The king tells the legion his name is a burden. The citizen lies on his couch in the city. [1st to 3rd declensions, with variants]

Research with children has demonstrated that the ability to learn new words is greatly affected by working memory span - specifically, by how much information they can hold in that part of working memory called "phonological short-term memory". The constraining effect of working memory capacity on the ability to learn new words appears to continue into adolescence.

But, as you grow in experience, building a vocabulary, this constraint becomes less important. Because working memory capacity is measured in "chunks" - and the amount of information contained in a chunk is extremely malleable. To a large extent, developing chunking strategies is what memory improvement is all about.

In terms of learning another language, there are essentially four possible classes of word:

• words that are already familiar because they are the same in your native language (or another known language)
• words that are already familiar because they involve words that you already know in that language (e.g., learning a related verb form, or learning a word made up of two words you already know, such as sweat-shirt)
• words that resemble a known word with similar or related meaning (e.g., Russian garlo means throat, and the word garlo resembles the word gargle)
• words that have no ready association to known words

It appears that in these first three cases, the size of your phonological short-term memory is of no significant relevance. It is only in the last case - where the word cannot utilize any meaningful associations - that your phonological short-term memory capacity becomes important.

Fairly obviously, as your knowledge of language (your own and others) grows, the more meaningful associations you will be able to make, and the fewer new words will fall into this last, difficult, category.

This suggests, of course, the usefulness of a mnemonic strategy (specifically, the keyword strategy) in the last, difficult case.

The importance of phonological short-term memory is also greater for productive learning (learning to produce a language, i.e., speak or write it) than in receptive learning (learning to read or understand a language). For productive learning, the pronounceability of the new words is very important. The more easily pronounced, the more easily learnt.

When considering what will be the most effective strategies for you, don't forget the basic principles of memory:

(1) Repetition repetition repetition

The trick is to find a way of repeating that is interesting to you. This is partly governed by level of difficulty (too easy is boring; too difficult is discouraging). The point is to find an activity (more than one, in fact), which enable you to hold on to your motivation through sufficient repetitions to drive them into your head. Bear in mind, too, the importance of:

(2) Changing context

Simple repetition (cat - el gato; cat - el gato; cat - el gato ...) is not only boring, but also the least effective way of experiencing the needed repetition. Not only do you want to see/hear words presented in a variety of different sentences; you also want to experience them in different ways - listening, reading, speaking, writing.

(3) Space your practice

(4) Seek the link

The basis for the keyword mnemonic, and the reason some words are "easy" and others not. Looking for the similarities between words, and being inventive when necessary, is crucial to easing the learning burden, and reducing the number of repetitions you need to fix the word in your memory. It can be as simple as observing that "gato" is very like "cat", or that "el borrego" means "sheep" because sheep are boring.

Coding mnemonic

Coding mnemonics are used for encoding numbers. Because words are much easier for most of us to remember, a system that transforms numbers into letters is one of the best ways for remembering numbers — as seen in the modern innovation of encoding phone numbers into letters (0800-ANSETT).

A coding system is very useful for remembering numbers, but it must be said that few people have sufficient need to memorize long numbers to make the initial cost of learning the code acceptable.

The coding system’s main value in fact is as a source of pegs for the pegword system. By allowing numbers to be encoded as easily remembered words, the number of pegs can be extended from ten into infinity. Lists of such pegwords are available in various memory improvement books.

Clearly of course, mastery of such a system requires a very large investment of time and effort, as well as a facility for image creation. But if you decide that the pegword strategy is for you, you should certainly increase its value by learning a coding system.

Such systems have been suggested for memorizing such information as appointments, and birthdays and anniversaries. There is no evidence that mnemonic strategies are particularly effective for tasks in the planning memory domain and most people find external strategies — diaries, calendars, watch alarms — more dependable and easier to use.  Find out more

First-letter mnemonics

First-letter mnemonics are probably the most widely used mnemonic. This reflects the popularity of specific mnemonics, rather than its wide use as a strategic tool.

There are two types of first-letter mnemonic: acronyms in which the initial letters form a meaningful word — such as FACE for the notes in the spaces of the treble staff — and acrostics in which the initial letters are used as the initial letters of other words to make a meaningful phrase — such as Every Good Boy Deserves Fruit for the notes on the lines of the treble staff.

First letter mnemonics are a very effective means of recalling the order of well-learned items. First letter mnemonics are a cueing strategy — they remind us of what we already know. They are therefore particularly effective as a means to overcome memory blocks — for example, for students whose minds ‘go blank’ in exams.  Find out more

The story method

The story method is another list-learning strategy. It is the verbal equivalent of the link method. Items are chained together by linking them in a story. This method is as effective as the imagery methods for learning lists. Which one will be most effective for you depends on which type of information (words or images) you deal with most easily.  Find out more

Most mnemonic strategies use visual images. But as I say in The myth of imagery, while there is no doubt that imagery can be an effective tool, there is nothing particularly special about it. The advantage of imagery is that it provides an easy way of connecting information that is not otherwise readily connected. However, providing verbal links can be equally effective.

One study that compared verbal and visual imagery methods for remembering serial items (lists of words) found that using a verbal strategy resulted in equal performance on both lists of items rated as "high imagery" and "medium imagery". The two visual imagery techniques (method of loci, and pegword) resulted in higher performance than the verbal strategy for the high-imagery list, but poorer performance for the medium-imagery list [5].

A more recent study found that connecting three nouns by imagery was more beneficial for immediate unexpected recall than relating them by sentence, however, after a week, recall was the same for both techniques [3].

It is well-established that people differ in their abilities to visualize, and clearly the usefulness of visual imagery is partly dependent on whether you are a "high-imager" or a "low-imager" (but don't be fooled by these categorical labels - people will vary along a continuum rather than fall into an either-or category).

This talent also seems to change over the course of one's life. It has been suggested that older adults in particular might be better advised to use verbal mnemonics rather than visual image techniques, as they apparently find it difficult to produce and remember visual images ([7]; [1]).

Not entirely independent of these individual differences, there is also a significant difference between the effectiveness of visual images presented to you and those you must generate for yourself.

There is also some evidence that imagery techniques are more effective in particular types of memory tasks compared to others. Herrmann [2] suggested that interactive imagery was the most effective strategy for paired associate learning (linking two items together), but a story mnemonic was most effective for free recall (remembering various items in any order).

On a related subject, a study that looked into the usefulness of bizarre imagery as a mnemonic aid found that bizarre images were remembered better in the immediate term but not the long term, and only if the images were experienced as part of a mixed list (bizarre and non-bizarre items), and the learner could control their pace of learning [4]. A number of studies have failed to find any particular benefit to constructing bizarre images, and indeed, have suggested that bizarre images take longer to construct and may result in poorer performance. Most recently, the bizarreness advantage in mixed lists was eliminated when alternative retrieval strategies were encouraged [6]. These researchers suggested that the advantage of bizarreness depends on your retrieval strategy (whether or not it is based on distinctiveness).

In sum, then, I would say that use of visual imagery is an entirely personal matter, that there is no clear superiority of visual over verbal techniques, and that (as always) it comes down to individual idiosyncracy. Don't feel pressured into using imagery if you're not easy with it. And if you are comfortable with imagery, still restrict your use of the technique to situations where the images come easily - don't spend more time on constructing images than is warranted; be open to using other techniques. There's no magic to visual imagery. Meaningfulness, organization, depth of processing are the crucial elements in learning, not the precise tools you use to get there.

The method of loci or place method

This is the classic mnemonic strategy, dating back to the ancient Greeks, and is (as evident from its continued use over 2500 years) an extremely effective strategy for remembering lists.

First of all, you choose a place you know very very well. Perhaps a familiar route, your house, or a particular room in it. Any place that you know well enough to easily call to mind various ‘landmarks’ (different fixed objects in a room, for example). You must train yourself to go around your landmarks in a particular order. With a route of course, that is easy.

Thus, to remember a shopping list, you simply imagine each item in turn at these landmarks. A loaf of bread sticking out of the letterbox; a giant apple in place of the door; the hall full of beans; a giant banana in the bath, etc.

Because the place method uses cues that are already well-known to you, it is probably the easiest of the imagery mnemonics to master.

Disadvantages

• difficult to recall a particular item without going through the list in order until you reach the item you want.
• most effective as a relatively short-term strategy (By using the landmarks again and again, you can only readily recall the last list. Earlier lists are much less easily recalled.)
• difficult to use if the information is presented too fast

The pegword mnemonic

uses numbers instead of places. These numbers are transformed into visual images by means of the following simple rhyme:

one is a bun
two is a shoe
three is a tree
four is a door
five is a hive
six is sticks
seven is heaven
eight is a gate
nine is a line
ten is a hen

The rhyme must be learned by rote until it is over-learned. Accordingly, there is a higher ‘cost’ to the pegword method than to the place method, where cues already over-learned are used.

Disadvantages

• most effective as a relatively short-term strategy (By using the landmarks again and again, you can only readily recall the last list. Earlier lists are much less easily recalled.)
• difficult to use if the information is presented to you too fast
• difficult to use effectively without extensive training.

Find out more about the pegword mnemonic

The link method

like the others, uses visual images to link items together. However, instead of linking items to a well-learned structure, items are linked to each other. For example, to remember our shopping list of bread, apples, beans, bananas, you would form an image of the bread interacting with apples in some way, then another image of apples and beans, then another image bringing beans and bananas together.

The story method

is the verbal equivalent of the link method. Items are chained together by linking them in a story. For example, A VEGETABLE can be a useful INSTRUMENT for a COLLEGE student. A carrot can be a NAIL for your FENCE or BASIN. But a MERCHANT of the QUEEN would SCALE that fence and feed the carrot to a GOAT.

Disadvantages of Link and Story Methods

• difficult to recall a particular item without going through the list in order until you reach the item you want.
• difficult to use if the information is presented too fast.
• difficult to use effectively without extensive training.

Frances Yates described the memory strategy valued by the ancient Greeks and Romans as the "Art of Memory" in her widely quoted and seminal book The Art of Memory. Today we know it as the method of loci. But the Art of Memory, as those of the ancient world and those of the medieval world practiced it, is far richer than is implied by that title.

It is known to us from three Roman sources – Cicero, an anonymous work Ad C. Herennium libri IV, and Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria. The strategy itself, although developed by many in later centuries, has always been attributed to Simonides, a Greek of the 5th century B.C. Cicero emphasizes that Simonides is given the credit for the art of memory not simply because he discovered how important order is for memory, but also because of his emphasis on the importance of visualization.

The original concept of Simonides, as encapsulated in the much-quoted and memorable story associated with this discovery, was simple enough. As the story goes (abbreviated version), Simonides was called out of a banqueting hall and during his absence, there was an earthquake and the hall collapsed, killing everyone inside. The destruction was so great the bodies couldn't be identified, but Simonides visualized where everyone was sitting, and so enabled the bodies to be identified.

Order and imagery. The twin staples of mnemonics.

But the truly interesting aspect of this is how this simple idea was developed over the centuries. And the meaning (indeed, multiple meanings) it developed.

According to Mary J. Carruthers in her wonderful work The Book of Memory: A study of memory in medieval culture, medieval European scholasticism was fundamentally memorial. Now this is not particularly surprising - books were handwritten, and obviously far less available than now.

But Carruthers points to something far more interesting - a trained memory was considered moral.

Following the Roman rhetorician Cicero (deeply admired by the medieval scholars), memory was considered to be one of the "virtues", and necessary to develop a moral character. Hence the rote learning so despised in our modern age: schoolchildren learned by heart the wise sayings of great men, so that they could also develop wisdom. Only by making moral arguments part of your character, known so well that the words are engraved in your heart, could you become moral.

I can see their point. Doubtless it is no coincidence that, today, this type of learning tends to occur only in fundamentalist religious education. Nor that its absence in education appears to have gone hand-in-hand with a disavowal of any sort of moral instruction. But the association of morality with memory is a fascinating and, to me at least, unexpected one.

Because of this association with morality, so fundamental to the medieval mind, mnemonic strategies were part of education, part of writing - books (according to Carruthers) were decorated for memorability. She even suggests that Dante's great work, his description of the circles of Hell, was actually a mnemonic device, to help people remember the places and attributes of Hell. This is not as weird as it sounds (well actually it is), because people used such descriptions as "memory places" (loci). The grotesque (to modern eyes) and shocking sculptuary in churches, paintings, drawings seen in the margins of books, all these, Carruthers suggests, were not so much because of some inexplicable twist of the medieval mind, as because they were intent on following the mnemonic principles they had been taught - provoking emotional reactions to enhance memorability.

Indeed, this is one of the (many) ideas I have found particularly intriguing: there is great emphasis from these pre-modern writers about memory, on the need to involve the emotions, to get yourself into a state as it were.

This is a particularly interesting point, because it is largely overlooked in modern memory advice (including my own!). I think the reason it is overlooked is simply because of modern sensibilities. Western culture, especially the scholastic, de-emphasizes emotion. It is therefore fascinating to read Carruthers' accounts of the emotional "states" which some pre-modern scholars seemed to find it necessary to work themselves into, when memorizing. Perhaps most interesting is that these scholars did not make the modern distinction between memory for personal events and information, and memory for "facts" - they understood that, for more effective remembering, all information had to be made into a personal event.

All mnemonic advice stresses the benefits to be gained from forming memories as “scenes” that include personal associations. Hugh of St Victor, for instance, stresses the need to impress the circumstances during which something was memorized as part of the associational web needed to recall it: the sort of day it is, how one feels, the gestures and appearance of one's teacher, the appearance of the manuscript page, and so on.”
(Mary Carruthers: The Book of Memory, p60)

Of course, the emotional component of memory also has an effect through its effect on motivation.

Another thing that struck me was how much ancient and medieval scholars understood about the practical aspects of memory - an understanding which seems to have got lost in the intervening centuries, buried beneath more arcane and complicated mnemonic strategies.

The mystique of these strategies seems to appeal to something in the human mind - the very complexity hints at something special, something magical. I am not decrying mnemonic strategies; they are certainly effective. But the more complex ones do require a great deal of training to be used effectively, and few people really want to put that degree of effort into something that, while potentially useful, is not, for most of us, as useful as all that.

But there are effective memory strategies that don't require so much effort to master, and the pre-modern scholars (at least in early times) understood the basic principles that underlie these:

• the need to break things up into manageable chunks
• the need for complete concentration (indeed it was suggested that night time was the best time to engage in memory work, because of the quiet and lack of distraction)
• the usefulness of reading aloud in a low murmur (if you ever saw the movie Yentl, you might recall the students learning the Talmud doing the same thing).

The need to break things up into manageable chunks is a piece of advice that doesn't seem to be emphasized much in the increasingly complex mnemonic schemes that developed much later, and yet it is probably the single most important principle.

As to exactly what people did to learn information, to make memorable associations, it was recognized that these were matters for the individual, that different methods suited different people (and of course, different materials and different purposes):

"All ancient mnemonic advice [counsels] that any learned technique must be adapted to individual preferences and quirks. One cannot use a “canned” system, nor will every system work equally well for everyone.”
(ibid, p64)

When you're looking for a method of learning that will suit you, emotional affinity is as important as any other factor.

References & further resources

Yates, Frances A. 1966. The Art of Memory (Amazon affiliate link)

Carruthers, Mary. 1990. The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature) New York: Cambridge University Press. (Amazon affiliate link)

Carruthers, Mary. 1998. The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400-1200 (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Amazon affiliate link)

review: http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol3-1999/n22cameron

reply by Carruthers: http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol3-1999/n38carruthers

A word of warning. Carruthers' books are not really aimed at the lay audience. Carruthers is clearly writing for her peers, those familiar with Latin and Greek, and the classic and medieval cultures.

Parts of this article originally appeared in the February and April 2002 newsletters.

How the keyword method works

The keyword method has been especially pushed as an effective strategy for learning foreign vocabulary. It is presumably equally valuable for extending your native-language vocabulary and learning technical jargon, and has also been used successfully to teach social studies facts (e.g., the products of a country; capital cities), science facts (e.g., chemical reactions, parts of the skeletal and nervous systems) and the names and faces of people.

There are two stages to the method:

• link the foreign word with an English word that sounds like some part of the foreign word (e.g., the Spanish carta sounds like the English cart). This (cart) is the keyword.
• link the keyword with the English meaning of the foreign word by forming an interactive image (e.g., carta means letter, so you could visualize a letter inside a cart).

When not to use the keyword method

If you want to understand what a word means when you come across it the keyword method is probably the best memory strategy. However if your goal is an ability to produce the word, rote repetition is better. In other words, your letter in the cart will help you remember what carta means when you come across it, but it won’t necessarily help you recall the Spanish word for letter.

Similarly, if you learn that Canberra is the capital of Australia by visualizing a can on top of a map of Australia, you should find it easy to answer “What is Canberra the capital of?”, but less easy to answer “What is the capital of Australia?”.

Remembering backwards

Although the keyword component of the word is much more likely to be recalled (the cart part of carta; the can part of Canberra), any word with that component seems equally possible.

To remember that carta means letter you need to:

• Derive the keyword from the word (cart from carta).
• Derive the interactive image from the keyword (letter in cart from cart).
• Derive the meaning from the image (letter, from letter in cart).

Clearly, the more obvious your original encoding, the easier it will be to recreate the process (cart is an obvious keyword for carta; pet is not quite so obvious for pequenos).

However, to remember the Spanish word for letter, you must:

• Retrieve the interactive image (letter in cart, from letter).
• Use the image to derive the keyword (cart, from letter in cart).
• Use the keyword to derive the foreign word (carta from cart).

While carta might seem easily derived from cart, other associations are not likely to be so easy — imagine trying to derive pequenos from pet or peck.

The keyword method is very effective for linking a new fact to a well-learned fact, but is little help in recalling the new fact itself.

Learn faster not better

The main advantage of the keyword mnemonic over other strategies for remembering information of this type, is that you acquire the information faster. But not better. Learning new words in a meaningful context is an equally effective strategy for long-term recall.

Read more:

Retrieval practice & the keyword mnemonic

Using the keyword method to learn vocabulary

Keywords for common Māori words

Most mnemonic strategies are based on imagery. There is no doubt that imagery can be an effective tool, but there is nothing particularly special about imagery. The advantage of imagery is that it provides an easy way of connecting information that is not otherwise readily connected. However, providing verbal links can be equally effective.

The critical element is that words or images provide a context which links the information. Thus, imagery is only effective when it is an interactive image — one which ties together one bit of information with another.

Visual imagery on its own is of limited value without an organizing structure, such as the method of loci or the pegword method (see list-learning mnemonics).

It is usually emphasized that bizarre images are remembered much better, but there is no evidence for this. In many studies indeed, ordinary images are remembered slightly better. One of the problems is that people tend usually find it harder to create bizarre images. Unless you have a natural talent for thinking up bizarre images, it is probably not worth bothering about.

Further reading:

for a long, scholarly article on mental imagery, you can see the entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy at:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mental-imagery/