The key to memorizing something new lies in mentally placing it within a simple and well-defined structure that has already been fixed in the memory. Usually, some association makes this connection permanent – either with the structure itself or with another element conjured up specifically as a ‘fixative.’
Two and a half thousand years ago, Aristotle suggested that all learning and memory are a matter of association. Simple perceptions become associated together to form simple ideas, which are associated with each other to form more complex ideas. Aristotle identified three primary layers of association:
- contiguity
- similarity
- contrast
1. The law of contiguity means that things that occur closely together often become associated. In Ivan Pavlov’s famous experiments, dogs that heard a bell when food was presented came to associate the two so that, eventually, the dogs would salivate at the sound of the bell alone.
2. The law of similarity says that things become associated when they are similar. If you have suffered pain at the hands of one dentist, it is easy to feel afraid of the surgery of another.
3. The contrast tells us that the opposite also holds associations that are easily made between opposites, such as night and day, up and down, or left and right. For example, people fairly readily transfer skills learned from driving on the left to countries where driving on the right is the rule. Presumably, the law of contrast works because opposites generally belong to the same mental category.
Moreover, similarity and contrast are, in an important sense, dependent on contiguity because it is only possible to discern these qualities when two ideas or events are experienced close together. So, really, contiguity is the basis of all association. When you link items in a unified visual image – the basis of a number of proven memory techniques – contiguity is the principle that you are exploiting.
In addition to Aristotle’s three primary laws of association, a number of secondary principles have also been proposed. The most important of these in relation to memory is liveliness or vividness. Mnemonic images work best if they are vivid and are even stronger if they include sound, taste, smell, and touch rather than just sight. You will have more chance of remembering to buy coffee if you think of its aroma and flavor than if you merely visualize a jar or packet. Images that are colorful, humorous, and exaggerated are also more vivid and, hence, more memorable. Sexual content can add to the power of an image because most people have a high level of interest in sex. Action is more memorable than inaction, which is one reason why stories can be so effective as memory devices.
Peg systems
Imagine that you have memorized the number-shape associations illustrated below. In these images, the shape of the written number forms an association with a familiar object – a sword for 1, a swan for 2, and so on. Now imagine that you want to remember to buy two things, tomatoes, and flowers, while you are out to lunch with a friend. Take the object that represents 1, the sword, and combine it in an image with tomatoes, perhaps the sword slicing tomatoes in two. Then, take the object that represents 2, the swan, and imagine it swirling amid flowers in a lake. After your lunch:
- Mentally take 1 on your list.
- Translate it into the sword.
- Ask yourself what the sword was doing in your recent visualization.
The answer will spring instantly to mind: cutting tomatoes. Then, take on your list, think of the swan, and ask yourself what it was doing. The image should come to mind easily and remind you that you need to buy flowers.
What you have been doing here is using numbers as a visual ‘peg system. Such systems use well-known sequences, such as numbers or the alphabet, like a row of ‘pegs’ on which we can hang a list of items we need to remember. It might be a shopping list, a list of ingredients for a recipe, an agenda for a discussion, a series of tasks you have to perform, or a list of commands for accessing the functions of a new mobile phone. Of course, in such circumstances, one way to make sure that you do not forget the items on your list is to write them down or to consult a cookery book or instruction manual where someone else has already written down the procedure. But this is not really remembering at all, merely a case of deciding not to use your memory.
If you decide you do want to remember for yourself rather than relying on a written list, the first thing you need to do is to organize the pegs. A simple linear sequence is all that is required. The simplest linear sequence that most of us know is the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and so on. In fact, we know this sequence so well that we have no doubt forgotten the effort of memorizing it in the first place. But as children, we put in many hours practicing the number sequence, and it is now indelibly etched into our memories.
To create a mental list using number pegs, you place the items you want to remember into a sequence and then associate each item with the corresponding number peg, as previously described for the tomatoes and the flowers. The important thing is to combine the number pegs with the items in vivid but coherent visual scenes. Note that in the example already given, you do not merely imagine the sword and the tomatoes side by side; you imagine a positive, even dramatic, act of slicing. The drama of this action fuses the two elements so that later, when you think of the peg (the sword), you cannot bring it to mind without immediately thinking of how you imagined the sword.
Another key point is that this method only works if you commit yourself on every occasion to an unvarying set of objects to correspond with the numbers. It isn’t very clear to represent 1 by a sword on one occasion and by a pen on another occasion. Consistency is crucial. Choose your objects now and stick to them whenever you use the number-shape system.
The number-rhyme method
This is another number-based peg system, which is similar to the number-shape system, except that each of the numbers 1 to 10 is represented by a word that rhymes with it rather than by an object with a similar shape. One commonly used set of rhymes is shown above:
One is a bun. _ is a shoe, 3 is a tree, 4 is a door, 5 is a hive,
6 is Rick’s. 7 is heaven, 8 is a gate, 9 is wine, 10 is a hen.
To use this method, you link each of the items you want to remember to one of the numbers-rhyme words. So, when compiling your shopping list, you start by creating a mental image linking tomatoes and a bun. It might be an iced bun with a large red tomato on top like a cherry, or maybe a man with a big red face like a tomato stuffing himself with a huge bun. Next, you link flowers to shoes. You might think of a clown’s shoes with big yellow flowers on them or the white silk shoes of a bride holding in her bouquet – whatever is most memorable for you. Of course, you can devise your rhyming sequence.
Extending the system
You may imagine that number peg systems are rather limiting, allowing you to memorize a maximum of only ten items. However, peg systems can be extended almost indefinitely. You can extend the basic ten pegs to a hundred by devising ten scenarios within which your images can be set, for example. The first ten might all be set in an ambulance, the second ten in a bookshop, the third ten in a cinema, and so on. These settings are all alphabetical – their first letters are a, b, and c. By using scenarios beginning with the first ten letters of the alphabet, you should have no problem knowing which scenario represents each set of ten numbers, giving you 100 pegs in total. This system can be multiplied by using colored images: blue for the first hundred, green for the second hundred, and so on. Again, the order of colors can be alphabetical by their first letters.
Using numbers as pegs
The images below are just two examples of how the number shapes can be used to create memory associations – in this case, as a reminder to buy tomatoes and flowers. The range of different images that you can create is virtually limitless. The more vivid your imagination can make them, the better.
