Chpater 20. Reduction Mnemonics
I was taking a college course on the psychology of human resources. It was offered by the school of business and taught by one of its more prominent faculty members. I was aware of the unwritten rule that psychology majors were not to dabble in real life applications but there I was venturing out into the unknown.
The course had lots of new vocabulary; terms I had never heard before and familiar terms with new definitions. My notes turned into lists and my lists into long strings of words. I decided to use reduction mnemonics.
I had no idea that’s what the techniques were called. I didn’t understand the theory underlying their use. And, unfortunately, no one told me how to avoid misusing them. In short, no one had told me what I’m about to tell you.
Reduction mnemonics are a special group of memory tricks. They are mnemonic (a technical term for memory aids) in the sense that they (a) aid remembering and (b) must be learned. People don’t spontaneously use reduction mnemonic. Either they have been taught to use them or (as was my case) they see others use them.
As a group, reduction mnemonics work in two ways. First, as the name suggests, they try to reduce encoding demands. They improve recall by limiting the amount of information needed to be recalled. They assume (correctly so) that remembering is easier if there is less to learn. Second, reduction mnemonics organize information into meaningful patterns. They know that an organized closet is easier to access than a cluttered one.
Three words of caution before we look at the specifics of each technique.. First, these techniques won’t solve all of your problems. Although they are often hyped as mega-brain cures, there are limits to their usefulness. Reduction mnemonics are good techniques that can greatly increase your recall of unconnected facts but they are not perfect.
Second, people don’t use them. People don’t use them spontaneously before they are trained. And surprisingly, people don’t use them after they are trained. Even after being specifically trained to use mnemonics, people don’t use them in real life. Students use them while in school but stop using them once out of school. Further, social scientists who professional study memory are not more likely to use mnemonics than the general public.
Third, people use them on the wrong tasks. Reduction mnemonics don’t work well on every day tasks. The memory tasks most people face are prospective (ie., future tasks). People want to know when to take their pills and where to meet someone for lunch. People are rarely required in real life to memorize lists of unrelated facts. But that’s where reduction mnemonics shine.
Reduction mnemonics are artificial systems and, oddly enough, are best used in artificial situations. Most people (memory researchers included) use external aids (lists, calendars, etc.) to keep track of every day bits of information. Writing things down is easier. But school is full of lists of facts. And writing them down is not always an option.
The emphasis on memorizing facts is partly the nature of school itself and partly reflects what we want graduates to be able to do. We believe that some facts should be readily available in memory. Doctors can look up some things but they should know from memory the names of bones, nerves and organs. When you go to them with the flu, you expect them to use their memories and not pull out a book to look up “conditions that cause low fever and muscle aches.” A lawyer needs to know legal jargon. A mechanic must learn engine parts, cooks must learn ingredients, and landscape architects must be able to recall the names of dozens of flowers.
The following 5 types of reduction mnemonics can be useful whenever you have to learn lists of unrelated facts. They work well for anyone who needs to learn facts for school.
- Acronyms. This technique is simply taking the first letter of a series of words you want to recall and making them into one word. To remember the 5 principles of treating most sports injuries, you might create PRICE out of Protect, Rest, Ice, Compress and Elevate. To remember what to do when you see blood, you could remember RED (rest, elevate and direct pressure).
Many doctors in training have used the same acronym to learn the 12 optic nerves. The nerves (olfactory, optic, oculomotor, trochlear, trigeminal, abducens, facial, auditory, glossopharyngeal, vagus, spinal accessory and hypoglossal) can be reduced to “On Old Olympus Towering Top, A Finn And German Viewed Some Hops.” Similarly, the acronym “Some Lovers Try Positions That They Can’t Handle” can help you recall the bones of the wrist (scaphoid, lumen, triquitrum, pisiform, trapezoid, trapezium, capitate and hamate).
The words do not have to be real words. Nonsense words will also work. In you want to recall 8 criteria for evaluating theories, you could use CUSSIT (clear, useful, small number of assumptions, summarizes facts, internally consistent and testable hypotheses). You probably encounter hundreds of nonsense word acronyms every day. Common acronyms include: RDO (regular day off), PDA (personal data assistant), RAM (random access memory), R&D (research and development), and RADAR (radio detection and ranging).
Usually the first letter of each word is used but sometimes selected letters form a new word, such as the statistical technique of ANOVA (ANalysis Of VAriance). The important thing is to make your acronym as memorable as possible. HMSEO for remembering the names of the Great Lakes is not as good as HOMES (Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie and Superior). Similarly, DCBFE (my personal list of animals I’ll never own) is not as good as BCDEF (Birds, Cats, Ducks, Elephants & Fish). If the order of words doesn’t matter, rearrange the letters until you find an acronym that works for you.
In that business class I took in college, I used acronyms extensively. I made them as memorable as possible and as full of personal meaning as I could. Then, on the day of the big test, I entered the room with the confidence that came from many hours of practicing my acronyms. And I promptly failed the test.
Oh, I remembered the acronym. It went something like: TTFINLLMMOR. But I totally forgot what it meant.
Acronyms reduce and organize facts. They “dehydrate” unrelated words into easier to recall packets. Long descriptions, such as “Light Amplified by Stimulated Emission of Radiation,” can be reduced to “laser.” But they only work if you can remember its component parts. Remembering SMMFHR is only helpful if you’re able to expand it to Sales, Marketing, Manufacturing, Finance and Human Resources. Take a hint from me: don’t put all your study time into learning the mnemonic. Make sure you spend time practicing expanding the memory hints as well.
- First Letter Blocking. A variation of acronyms is starting each target word with the same letter. The 3 C’s of diamonds selection, for example are clarity, color and carat. The 4H Club has head, heart, hands and health. And parties are best when they include family, friends, food and fun. Blockings are not as effective for recall as acronyms that make up real or meaningful words but the technique works better than nothing at all.
They work because your memory treats even a long a series of identical letters as 2 small bits of information: the letter and how many there are. Because your mind automatically collapses multiple Z’s into one, it takes less memory to represent a sting of identical letters.
Letter-blocking (words all begin with N) is widely used by speakers. It is easy to create a block of letters and speakers feel more organized when they have blocked their main points. Unfortunately, most people remember that the speeches points began with N but not the points themselves. Speakers would be better off expending the extra energy needed to create an acronym which related to the theme.
- Acrostics. Another variation on acronyms, an acrostic is a phrase, sentence or poem formed from selected letters. For example, the lines of a musical clef can be used to create: “Every Good Boy Does Fine.” These “sentences of words” are more difficult to create than acronyms but are just as effective.
The acrostic is an old technique. Epicharmus (born 540 BC) is often called the inventor of acrostics. In some of his poems, the first letters of each line formed a word. This was not his only contribution to the arts. Epicharmus was also among the first to write comedies and use plots.
Other literary acrostics include Proverbs 31 (an acrostic Hebrew poem describing the perfect wife as a “valiant woman”) and Edgar Allen Poe’s Elizabeth Rebecca poem. More modern uses include love songs (“L is for the way you look at me”) and school children’s works on baseball, Christmas, Mother, Spring and Australia.
Creating an acrostic has 3 steps. First, list the target words (Mars, Venus, Earth, Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto). Second, select the first letter of each target word (MVEMJSUNP). Third, select new words to form a sentence (My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pickles).
Again the caution is to practice the target words (the ones you want to remember) as well as the cue words in the sentence. Also, if word order isn’t set, rearrange the parts to make the acrostic more memorable. For example, to remember the 5 reduction mnemonics, you could use the acrostic PANAF (peg-word, acronym, number-letter, acrostic and first letter blocking) or the acronym Pat Answers Never Are Free.
- Peg-Word systems. A more complicated reduction mnemonic is a list of cues which are easily visualized. The cues (memory pegs) are memorized over and over until they become second nature. Once the pegs have been stored in long-term memory, they can be used to “hang” things which need to be recalled. Each individual item needing recall is associated with a specific peg.
There are several lists of pegs. Many books on memory tricks rely heavily on peg-word systems, so you can choose which pegs you want to learn. A common peg list uses relatively common words for pegs. Instead of 1, 2 and 3, the “hooks” are bun (usually a hotdog bun), shoe and tree. Four would door, 5 is (bee) hive, 6 is sticks, and 7 is heaven (angel). For 8-10, the pegs are a gate, a mine (gold or coal), and a hen.
If you wanted to make a mental list of 3 things to buy at the grocery store, you would hang each target on a peg. If you wished to be recall eggs, lettuce and orange juice, you’d hang each from a separate mental hook. Eggs could be mentally pictured on a hotdog bun. A head of lettuce would be pictured inside a shoe. And a quart of orange juice would be pictured hanging from a tree. If a harmonica was item 10, it would be associated with the hook “hen.” The combined picture would include both the target(harmonica) and the peg (hen).
The next trip to the store new items would be associated in short term memory with the hooks. Once the hooks have been learned so well that they come easily, they can used and reused with new items. Using this system, the objects can be recalled in any order by remembering the combined image of the target and memory hook. And the system can be used for long or short lists.
Peg-word systems are described in many memory training books but rarely used in real life. Most people who want to recall a list of items find it much easier to write them down. Remembering where the list has been placed is much easier than learning the pegs thoroughly or attaching images to them on a regular basis.
- Number-Letter mnemonics. Like peg-word systems, number-letter mnemonics closely embed the hint and the target. Each number is converted to an objects that has a similar shape. The number 1 is long and straight and does look something like a tie. And if you try you can imaging that a 2 looks like a swan, 3 is a tree, or that the number 10 looks like a bat and ball beside each other.
The down side of this technique (peg-word systems is that they tend to be all or none aids. If you remember the picture of a priest riding a swan, you’ll likely recall the target is the beginning of a joke (“Two priests walk into a bar…” But if you forget which kind of animal it is or what is riding on it, you will remember nothing. There is no way to sound out solutions or get partial credit.
Memory wiz Jerry Lucas (also known as Doctor Memory) uses this example of 3 times 3 equals nine to teach the times tables to children. Notice that tree times tree equals mine.
This is one of the best uses of peg-target systems. Rather than re-using visual pegs to remember things you could write down, number mnemonics teach information you want children to keep in long-term memory. Similar systems are available for individual letters of the alphabet and for teaching phonics.
