Posted on 19. Oct, 2009 by Caveman
Building Strong Mental Images
The power of your memory is supported by three solid foundations: Association, Image and Location. You remember things by Associating new information with pre-exting memories in some imaginary Location or structure. The assocation is built by creating a “memorable” Image.
But how do you create a “memorable” image? You have probably heard the advice of using more than one sense to make a strong image. Stronger images using all the senses if possible provide more ways for the image can be associated and later recalled.
Tony Buzan, author of “Master Your Memory”, describes 12 techniques for strengthening your skill of making strong images and assocations. The first letter of these techniques spells the phrase SMASHIN’ SCOPE. Let’s explore these twelve tools.
S for Synesthesia and Sensuality. Synesthesia (also spelled synaesthesia) is from the Ancient Greek “syn” meaning together and “aisthesis” meaning sensation. Many great memorisers have developed an increased sensitivity in each of their senses to enhance their powers of association and recall.
Use all of your senses when developing an image:
- Vision – What does it look like? Colour? Brightness? What can you see?
- Hearing – What does it sound like?
- Smell – What is the smell? Perfume? Pungent? Chemical?
- Taste – Describe the taste sensation
- Touch – What does it feel like? Textures?
- Kinaesthesia – awareness of bodliy position and movement in space
Movement and action enhances memory. Make your images alive and moving as if they were scenes from a movie.
Association. What you are trying to remember should be associated with something you already know. Typically, this known item is a peg in your number system, or a location on an imaginary journey, or joining two pieces of information such as a the name of a country and its capital.
Sexuality. We all have a good memory and wild imagination when it comes to sex, so use it! You don’t have to tell anyone that you used strong sexual imagery to remember something.
Humour. The more ridiculous, absurb, funny and surreal you make your images, the more memorable they will become. Humour puts your mind into a playful state making you more creative and open to new possibilities.
Imagination. The images you create in your mind can be as fantastic and wild as you like. Unlike a big-budget Hollywood film, you can create blockbuster images in your memory, and can be set anywhere in the universe.
Number. Numbering adds details, order and sequence to your images. When visualising something, imagine a large quantity, hundreds, maybe thousands!
Substituting a more meaningful image for an ordinary or boring image makes a stronger memory. Use a different but associated image to aid recall of meaningless words. For example, in remembering the countries of the world, I used the word Bratwurst (a type of meat) to help me remember Bratislava.
Colour - Use all the colours of the rainbow to colour your image Don’t make your associations in black and white – make them full technicolor.
Order (or Sequence). When items are memorised in a sequence, you can recall the items by taking a mental journey through this sequence.
Positive. Make your images positive and pleasant. We are better at recalling happy images while negative memories are usually suppressed. When your images are bright and positive you will enjoy the experience of recalling them.
Exaggeration. As far as possible, exaggerate everything in your images. Exaggerate the size, action, colours, sounds and quantities.
Practice making associations using these principles. Pick any two items from this list and make an association:
Banana, Bicycle, Calculator, Electric Drill, Firetruck, Jail, Soup, Telephone, Umbrella.
In the next article I will write about creating substitute words.
Post Scriptum
Florian Dellé wrote a similar article on Memory-Sports.com:
The Perfect Association
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A post by Charles "Caveman" Cave
Charles is a technical writer and developor of training courses for a global software company based in Australia. His interests are many including public speaking, music, reading and brain skills. Charles interest in memory resulted in the memoryskills blog which has led to the collaboration on the memory-masters website.
10 Responses to “Building Strong Mental Images”
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Gereon/Phexx
19. Oct, 2009
S – a tasty letter(S)
M – a jumping _M_arshmallow
A – a cuffed _a_lien
S – the tempting _S_nake from paradise
H – _H_einz Ehrhard, Helge Schneider, insert other comedians!
I – a beautiful picture of _i_taly
N – Nobodys perfect, but in big numbers we gain in strength
S – _S_tupid Mnemonics is just like Math.. substitute complicated terms!
C – Coloured fotograph
O – Tony Buzan advertises Mindmaps and speaks of Order? ^^
P – Praying – Life of brian by monty python, always look on the bright side of life!
E – Always get something _E_xtra
Actually I memorized it by visualising the written word
Smashing Scope
and putting someone smashing a scope between the two words.
Then i manipulated every letter to perform the action it s associated with. :-) a pleasant half minute. ^^ :)
it is obvious that the memory created by using 1+ of the smashin scope senses is stronger.
so .. do as much as necessary, but as little as possible.
or .. never do less than necessary, never do more than needed
Flauwy
20. Oct, 2009
I like the way how you associated each letter to its actual meaning. This is an excellent use of the Smashin’ Scope!
Phexx
19. Oct, 2009
Hmm.. i posted a long memory help for the content above, but seemingly it disappeared. ^^ bad luck!
Flauwy
20. Oct, 2009
You did and it is there like you see above. It was waiting for moderation because it has been your first comment on Memory-Masters. Your next comment will be visible at once.
Philodoof
29. Oct, 2009
“Make your images positive and pleasant. We are better at recalling happy images while negative memories are usually suppressed. When your images are bright and positive you will enjoy the experience of recalling them.”
I cannot agree this statement. My experience is that negative images work as good as positive images. So I use for example a dinosaur for 12. The image then shows a carnivore ripping up his prey. You don’t feel that good during that image, but it works, you will remember that cruelty easy. And maybe the next one is a happy one like Osama for 03. (Yes, that can be a happy image, look here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JQcoaZHQkY ;-). I think it helps to not avoid negative images, because they increase the power of positiveness of the positive pictures, whereas they do the same to the negative ones. They intensify each other, because in your reference system the perception of feeling-range increases.
Flauwy
29. Oct, 2009
I think you are both right in a way. On hand are all emotions great to improve the memory no matter if you feel good or bad. On the other hand it shouldn’t be to intense because it is a normal reaction of the mind to lock up extreme negative memories. Maybe you don’t have problems with a dinosaur eating another animal. But what about your peg for 33 is “mom” and the word you want to remember is clingwrap? Your first association might be the unpleasant picture of wrapping your mothers face in the foil which will sufficate her. This is a true story and happened to a friend of mine (only the mental image of course). He couldn’t recall the picture because he felt terrible about it. His memory blocked this out.
The conclusion might be that there is a line you shouldn’t cross. This line can be different depending on your personality and you have to find it out for yourself.
Philodoof
29. Oct, 2009
Okay, that’s right. May it be that some people don’t have such a line? Until now, I didn’t have had a negative picture I couldn’t generally remeber.
Flauwy
30. Oct, 2009
Sure that could easily be. To be honest I haven’t found my line either, yet. ;)
magi13
30. Oct, 2009
I prefer adding emotions, be it negative or positive. Whatever first comes to mind is what I use to remember.
Adding emotions doesn’t necessarilly means that you need to understand how it is done. You just feel it that way. It could be different for each person.
Use what works for you. :3
Flauwy
30. Oct, 2009
True!