Modified: 2020-09-20
I suggested that you should take notes of your notes. That was an encoding strategy. I suggested that you use one notebook for each course. That was an encoding strategy. I suggested that you print the computer notes ahead of time. That, too, was an encoding strategy. Have you developed any personal strategies since then?
Mnemonic devices are encoding strategies and they are aids to memory.
Acrostics use chunking strategies. A typical acrostic is, "Every good boy deserves favor." That acrostic helps musicians remember the notes that fall on the lines of the treble clef. The first letter of each word stands for a note, so the notes are, in order, EGBDF. There are many famous acrostics of this kind. (On old Olympus' towering tops a Finn and German viewed some hops, is another.) Another kind of acrostic is a poem. For example:
Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November.
All the rest have thirty one,
Save February,
But in leap year twenty nine.
--Anonymous
Have you ever heard that poem before? Interestingly, I have found that few students here have.
Most rely on the knuckle method for keeping track of the months. The knuckle method is an iconic strategy. Each knuckle and each depression in between stands for a month. Touch the first knuckle, it is January and it has 31 days; touch the second, it is February and is a depression. The months on each knuckle have 31 days, the months in the depressions have 30, except for February. (You have to touch the last knuckle twice for July and August.)
Acronyms are a mnemonic strategy where words are made up, and those words encode more information. For example, the word "FACE" is used by musicians to encode the notes in between the lines on the treble clef. "HOMES" is another. Do you know what for?
More complex kinds of encoding systems exist. For example, the loci system works by having subjects encode items to remember with familiar places. Then associations between the items and the places are made. The method works because the familiar places are already firmly encoded. The rooms of your house are an example of such a familiar place. So, if I wanted to go grocery shopping I might mentally place each item I needed into a different room of my house. Then I would associate the item with the room with some kind of imagery. For example, if eggs were on the list I might put them in the kitchen by imagining a kitchen floor made of eggs. I might further imagine that I would have to be very careful while walking in the kitchen. Then when I got to the store I would remember "kitchen" and the egg floor would come to mind. The rest of the list would be composed of similar associations of items to rooms. The number of rooms I can remember will limit the size of my grocery list. However, other well- remembered items can serve as points for list associations. For example, if you know the stations of the cross, the representations of the last day of Christ's life found in Catholic churches, they will provide 14 memory points.
Another complex strategy is the link system. The link system also depends on imagery. The difference is that you construct one image composed of all of the items you need to remember. So, if we were grocery shopping again, I would group all of the items together mentally into a larger image. For example I might construct a "grocery dog." The dog's ears are two eggs, its body is a sack of flour, its tail is a stalk of celery, its head is a T-bone steak, and its legs are milk cartons. So, my list is: eggs, flour, celery, steak, and milk. I remember the list by remembering the dog, and then remembering how I made the dog.
The Peg Word system is more complicated and involves learning a long list of rhyming words. Associations are made between on of those pairs of words, the other word is the number of the item on the list. So, for "one-bun" (the first pair) the association is made to "bun" and because it rhymes with "one" that's its position on the list.
Finally, keeping a list is also an encoding strategy. I keep a paper list as well as a computerized list. That way I do not need to encode items; I just write them down. Keeping a list is a very efficient way of remembering items, but, you have to learn how to keep up with your list. If you lose your list, for instance, you could be in a lot of memory trouble.