mnemonics

n. (used with a sing. verb)
A system to develop or improve the memory.

(nĭ-mŏn'ĭks)
n.

A system to develop or improve the memory.

Consider the mnemonic sometimes given to a right-handed child who has difficulty in remembering which hand is called 'right' and which 'left'. 'When you write, you write with your right hand, and the hand that is left over is left.' The puns appropriately link the confused items of knowledge, and the whole is anchored to the act of writing, which the child can readily carry out or imagine (even if he or she can only draw!). The mnemonic organizes the information in a way the child can grasp, and provides a procedure for working out, when in doubt, which is 'right' and which 'left'.

In general terms, mnemonics are mental techniques aimed at helping us to learn and remember specific items of information. They provide organization in terms of which we can more easily comprehend and remember information that has, as we say, little rhyme or reason for us. Mnemonics contrive meaning, sometimes of a quixotic sort, for information we find relatively meaningless and, because of this, they are sometimes called 'artificial memory'.

To illustrate further, consider the problem of remembering the number of days in each month of the year. A commonly used mnemonic runs, 'Thirty days hath September; April, June, and November; all the rest have thirty-one; excepting February alone; which has twenty-eight days clear; and twenty-nine in each leap year.' This jingle helps by rearranging the information, categorizing it, compressing it, and introducing rhythm and rhyme. A less widely used mnemonic consists of counting each successive month on our knuckles. Long months fall on the knuckles, short months on the hollows between. Once more, organization makes the information easier to grasp and remember.

The mnemonics just mentioned achieve organizations which are relatively conventional and publicly comprehensible. But many mnemonics devised by individuals for private use achieve an idiosyncratic organization involving the person's unique background of experiences, visual imagery, and other features that are not readily communicable. Sir Donald Tovey, for example, was a highly accomplished musician who happened to assign a number to each location on the musical stave. When he wanted to memorize any telephone number, he translated each successive digit into the correspondingly numbered location on the stave, and remembered the resulting tune. Idiosyncratic mnemonics may work well for the individual concerned, but if he tries to explain them publicly they seem tortuous, arbitrary, and even laughable. They also imply that he cannot easily comprehend the information. Because of this, mnemonics are discussed less than they are used, and there is a lack of systematic data on their uses and abuses in everyday life.

The most familiar mnemonics are ad hoc, opportunistic, and contrived by or for an individual who is having difficulty with some specific information. However, throughout history, mnemonic systems have been devised to provide standard, generalizable techniques for memorizing such things as random lists of words or historical dates. Each of these systems is paradoxical: it enables anyone who masters it to carry out impressive feats of memory, but of a kind that is rarely useful in everyday life. Such systems have been used mainly for entertainment, and their strengths and weaknesses are best illustrated by the Method of Loci.

The Method of Loci was known in classical Greece, described by Cicero in 55 bc, and discussed critically by Quintilian a century later. Used by stage performers into the present day, it has, in recent years, been studied experimentally by psychologists. It enables us to accomplish the kind of memory feat in which a randomly chosen list of nouns is read out one at a time, memorized at a single hearing, and later recalled in exact sequence. Under appropriate conditions, the Method works spectacularly well. But it is useless for most practical purposes.

The Method has two main ingredients, loci (places) and imagines (images). The loci are mentally pictured places arranged in a strict sequence with which we make ourselves familiar — for example, distinctive landmarks on a journey. The first landmark might be a particular church, the second a baker's shop, etc. These loci provide the pre-arranged topography into which the list of nouns will be pigeon-holed, one at a time. When we hear the first noun, we mentally picture the thing it represents and relate this, by interactive imagery, to the first landmark.

Suppose the first noun is 'tiger'. We might visualize a huge tiger scrambling over the façade of the church and ripping off the roof with its powerful claws. The many perceptual-like attributes of the imaged tiger and the imaged church facilitate our bringing the two together into lively interaction. We are free to devise whatever interactive imagery best suits us, but the more animated and distinctive the better. Having thus associated the first noun and its locus, we dismiss the scene from our mind, and deal likewise with the second noun and the second locus. And so on.

Memorizing is thus broken down into a succession of small subtasks. Each subtask involves interactive imagery which associates a presented noun with its locus, and the several subtasks are held in sequence by the prearranged loci. When the time comes for recall, we revisit each landmark in turn. When we mentally picture the church, this brings to mind the tiger which is attacking it. When we move to the baker's shop, this prompts recall of the second image, and hence the second noun. The entire procedure may seem absurd. But its efficacy has been repeatedly demonstrated, not only by stage performers but also by ordinary people who have been instructed in the Method and given a little practice in applying it.

The Method has limited utility because it requires certain task conditions, of which three deserve mention. The presented words must be readily translatable into mentally pictured objects. The words must be presented slowly, not faster than one every three or four seconds. The Method breaks down if we depart from considering, at any one time, only one imaged object and its corresponding locus — for example, if we allow ourselves to notice relationships among the presented words. Now, such task conditions rarely arise in real life — for instance, the Method cannot be used in the word-by-word memorization of naturally spoken speech. In brief, the Method is an exhibition piece which, as Francis Bacon observed in 1605, is 'not dexterous to be applied to the serious use of business and occasions'.

The Method is of psychological interest on two main counts. First, it shows that mental imagery is a powerfully effective means of learning and remembering, at least under certain conditions which have not yet been fully explored. Second, it sheds light on how people handle information. It shows that intellectual skills may be redeployed so as to accomplish unfamiliar feats: the Method does not require us to master any new component processes, but merely to select existing processes and sequence them in a new way. Again, if the Method is modified, new accomplishments become possible, such as our being able to recall instantly the noun which occupied any given location in the list. It is also surprising that an individual can, without confusion, use the same set of loci to memorize different lists; but, although such has been demonstrated to be the case, the explanation is not yet known.

In general, mnemonics take many forms, all aimed at contriving some comprehensibility for information that is relatively incomprehensible to the individual concerned. On a theoretical level, the chief importance of mnemonics is that they illumine, almost in caricature, what is involved when someone is said to 'comprehend' something, or find it 'meaningful', or 'understandable'. On a practical level, mnemonics clearly have both uses and limitations. Some of these are highlighted by the abilities and inabilities of S. V. Shereshevskii; he was a skilled professional mnemonist who tended to use the Method of Loci off-stage as well as on it (see Luria 1969).

The best way to learn and remember information is to 'understand' it. Most people appreciate this fact. But they may sometimes want to have in their head information which is not readily 'understandable'. When this happens, the trick is to recognize that a mnemonic is indeed a substitute form of comprehension, and to deploy and devise our mnemonics intelligently, with due regard for what they enable us, and do not enable us, to achieve. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, it is generally the case that the people with most need of mnemonics tend also to be the least able to devise them intelligently and evaluate their advantages and disadvantages.

(Published 1987)

See also remembering.

— Ian M. L. Hunter

Bibliography
• Ericsson, K. A. (1985). 'Memory skill'. Canadian Journal of Psychology, 39.
• Hunter, I. M. L. (1964). Memory.
• Luria, A. R. (1969). The Mind of a Mnemonist.
• Yates, F. A. (1967). The Art of Memory.

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The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: a method or system for improving the memory

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