Welcome to The Memory Palace: The Place Where People Come To Dream

Before I start, I’d like to just refer back to my previous posts on the value of emotions in learning. After reading my ‘Self-Taught Teacher’ post, a friend of mine recommended that I look up something called the affective context model; which I Googled and immediately recognised. To be more specific, it was this video that I recognised. I had seen this video on memory a while back, but I forgot (does that count as situational irony?); anyway, credit where credit’s due, this guy gives a slightly more scientific explanation of what I've been discussing. Thanks to Chris as well, for reminding me of it.

Today, I want to continue with my little series on memory by passing on a memory retention technique I first read about in Derren Brown’s book ‘Tricks of the Mind’. Just for the purpose of testing, and to give you a way of judging exactly how well the method I am about to teach you works, I’d like you to take thirty seconds to try and memorise as many things as possible from the list below. Please don’t just skip over them and keep reading, actually read them and try to remember them. It won’t take long and it really will help you to appreciate the method I’m about to discuss.

1. Camera
2. Mug
3. Birthday
4. Book
5. Guitar
6. Cat
7. Pencil
8. Anniversary
9. Apple
10. Toilet roll
11. Hammer
12. Newspaper
13. Milk carton
14. Donkey
15. Snow globe
16. Easter
17. Ninja
18. Dinosaur
19. Duster
20. Paper

Now you’ve had your thirty seconds or so to memorise the list, put it out of view (turn away or minimise the window for a minute) and try to remember as many things as you can without looking at the list. It might help here to write the items down on a piece of paper or in a word processing program if you don’t have paper and pen to hand. Go ahead; I’ll still be here when you get back.

So how did you do (write down how many you got; you’ll want it later)? I suspect you didn’t remember many, and almost certainly not all of them; if you did, you must be either some kind of autistic savant, or a liar. Or you already know a similar method to the one I am about to impart.

Today, I want to continue with my little series on memory by talking about the loci system of remembering things, often referred to as the memory palace. The loci system is a way of remembering things by placing them into a mental projection of an environment, or ‘loci’. For example: You might try remembering a shopping list by picturing the items placed around a room; Cheese on the armchair, celery on the bookshelf, and so on. Once you have sufficiently locked in these images in your mind, you can then return to that image at a later date to recall the information.

The trick to this system is really the locking in of the images, and there are a few tricks that will help in this respect. As I’ve mentioned before, emotions are a great aid in remembering things and, by making your images emotionally striking, you can improve your recall of items in an environment. You might, for example, imagine a large cheese cartoon character sitting in the armchair, smoking a pipe, and reading War and Peace (funny enough?); or a giant stick of celery being used as a bookmark in one of the books on the bookshelf. Try to make the images vivid in your mind; imagine colours as being very bright, and try to add smells or sounds. Try to make the object large, not so large it takes over the room and interferes with other items being remembered, but large enough to fill a chair, cupboard, or window for example. The image also really needs to be interacting environment in a memorable way for it to be attached (such as the cheese being in the armchair and the celery being in the book).

It’s also a good idea to try and stick to existing places. The problem with inventing rooms yourself is that it can be hard to create a solid consistent image, meaning that something you use as an anchor in that room might be there on one occasion but not there the next time you imagine it, because you haven’t set it as a definite feature. That’s not to say you can’t invent your own rooms, but you need to really lock down the contents and layout before you can use it as a loci. For the same reason, you should also avoid attaching things to features that are inconsistent in the real environment. Generally large furniture isn’t moved around too much, so things like sofas, bookcases, and fridges tend to be safe bets. Don’t attach the image to something like a book or a lamp (unless you know that that lamp always is, and will be, there) since these things can be easily moved or even taken out of the room. It might be worth pointing out something mentioned in the video on affective context that I linked at the top of the page. In the video it mentions the idea that something like the train journey to work will essentially be averaged out over time so that we end up mostly remembering the things we see consistently. This rule could be applied to a room you see often. If you’re asked to recall the layout of a room you will most easily recall objects and features that are always there. This is a good thing to consider when picking your locations.

So where do you start? Well I’d say start with your home. This tends to be the place most people have a strong mental image of simply because they’ve spent a lot of time there over the years. You can also use any other particularly memorable place such as the house you grew up in, the school you went to, or even just an especially impressive or interesting building that you‘ve visited. All that matters is that you have strong memories of the location. I play a lot of video games numerous times and, whilst I haven’t personally tried it, it should be theoretically possible to use virtual spaces such as these to aid in memory. In fact, the neurochemical reactions that games can create could help to provide a rich environment for planting your information. You could also be certain that the environment, in most games at least, would not change over time and could be revisited as often as required. Anyway, that all just sounds like an excuse to play videogames, but it would be an interesting experiment.

So now you have an idea of what kind of rooms to use, and images to create; let’s put your memory to the test. Look back up at the list you tried to remember before and, as you go down the list, imagine yourself actually standing in your loci, and begin anchoring the different items around you. Be sure to make the item and it’s interaction with the environment memorable. It may help to start with the feature immediately to your left and work clockwise around the room attaching items to each memorable feature. If the item isn’t really an item but something like an event, you should try and come up with a memorable image which represents that event to you. If you find you start to run out of features in a location, don’t strain to remember extra ones. Remember: the whole point of this is to make memorising things easier; if you have to struggle to remember the thing that is supposed to remind you, it’s not going to be any use. Instead, simply walk to the next room. It doesn’t have to be real-life adjoining room, just the next memorable location. You could even step out into the street or into a park. Continue doing this until you have placed all of the items from the list. I’m intentionally avoiding any specifics here because only you will know the most effective places and images for you. Now grab another piece of paper and test yourself again.

How did you do? If you find that there were any things you couldn’t remember, you may need to come up with a more memorable image. If you forgot a location, don’t use it again, it’s not memorable enough for this purpose. Compare your new score with the number you memorised before. How do they match up? Is there a big difference? There should be. The first time I did this I found I was able to easily remember every item on the list whereas before I could only remember about a handful. The images do fade over time and if the information isn’t important you can just allow this to happen; but I found you should be able to remember your list for maybe a week or so depending on how often you think about it. On the other hand, if it is information you will need often, you will find it gets locked in deeper every time you remember it. The biggest problem with this method is that it can still be difficult to remember numbers. You might be able to attach an emotional reaction to a giant number 2 (brings a tear to my eye actually) but what’s funny about 45,768? There is a relatively simple way to deal with this issue but I’ve gone on long enough for today, so I’ll leave that for a future post.

Feel free to post your before and after scores in the comments below; it would be interesting to see how this worked for different people. And be warned: I will be coming around to your house and testing you soon, so don’t forget or you’ll have me to answer to.