Mnemonic

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search For other uses, see Mnemonic (disambiguation). Not to be confused with pneumonic. Knuckle mnemonic for the number of days in each month of the Gregorian Calendar. Each projecting knuckle represents a 31-day month. A mnemonic (play /n?'m?n?k/,[1] with a silent "m"), or mnemonic device, is any learning technique that aids memory. To improve long term memory, mnemonic systems are used to make memorization easier. They do so by increasing the efficiency of the process of consolidation. This process involves the conversion of short term memory to long term memory. Commonly encountered mnemonics are often verbal, such as a very short poem or a special word used to help a person remember something, particularly lists, but a mnemonic may instead be visual, kinesthetic or auditory. Mnemonics rely on associations between easy-to-remember constructs which can be related back to the data that are to be remembered. This is based on the observation that the human mind much more easily remembers spatial, personal, surprising, physical, sexual, humorous, or otherwise meaningful information, as compared to retrieving arbitrary sequences. The word mnemonic is derived from the Ancient Greek word µ??µ?????? (mnemonikos), meaning "of memory"[2] and is related to Mnemosyne ("remembrance"), the name of the goddess of memory in Greek mythology. Both of these words are derived from µ??µ? (mneme), "remembrance, memory".[3] Mnemonics in antiquity were most often considered in the context of what is today known as the Art of Memory. The major assumption in antiquity was that there are two sorts of memory: the "natural" memory and the "artificial" memory. The former is inborn, and is the one that everyone uses every day. The artificial memory is one that is trained through learning and practicing a variety of mnemonic techniques. The latter can be used to perform feats of memory that are quite extraordinary, impossible for most people to carry out using the natural memory alone. Contents [hide] * 1 First letter mnemonics * 2 Mnemonics for numerical sequences * 3 Arbitrariness of mnemonics * 4 Assembly mnemonics * 5 In foreign-language acquisition * 6 Improving long term memory through mnemonics * 7 Mnemonic transfer * 8 Effectiveness of Mnemonic * 9 See also * 10 References * 11 External links [edit] First letter mnemonics One common mnemonic for remembering lists consists of an easily remembered acronym, or phrase with an acronym that is associated with the list items. The idea lends itself well to memorizing hard-to-break passwords as well. For example, to remember the colours of the rainbow, use the mnemonic "Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain" or the fictitious name "Roy G. Biv". Another one is HOMES to help people remember the names of all of the Great Lakes (Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior.) In electronics, color codes are used on some components, with each color representing a specific value (0-9). Numerous mnemonics exist to help remember the sequence of numbers where the first letter of each word represents the first letter of the name of the color for that number. One such mnemonic is "Bill Brown Realized Only Yesterday Good Boys Value Good Work", representing the colours black (0), brown (1), red (2), orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, gray, and white (9).[4] [edit] Mnemonics for numerical sequences Mnemonic phrases or poems can be used to encode numeric sequences by various methods, the most common using the number of letters in each word. For example, the first 15 digits of the mathematical constant pi (3.14159265358979) can be encoded as "Now I need a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics". Piphilology is the practice dedicated to creating mnemonics for pi. [edit] Arbitrariness of mnemonics A curious characteristic of many memory systems is that mnemonics work despite being (or possibly because of being) illogical or arbitrary. "Roy" is a legitimate first name, "Biv" is a very uncommon last name, and of course the middle initial "G" is arbitrary. Why is "Roy G. Biv" easy to remember in order to memorise the order that the seven colours of the rainbow appear? ROYGBIV can also be expressed as the almost meaningless phrase "Roy Great Britain the Fourth" again referencing "Roy" but using the GB national code for Great Britain and the Roman numerals for 4, viz: IV. The sentence "Richard of York gave battle in vain" is commonly used in the UK, as is "Run over your granny because it's violent". Any two of the three months ending in -ember would fit just as euphoniously as September and November in "Thirty days hath...", yet most people can remember the rhyme correctly for a lifetime after having heard it once, and are never troubled by doubts as to which two of the -ember months have thirty days. A bizarre arbitrary association may stick in the mind better than a logical one. One reason for the effectiveness of seemingly arbitrary mnemonics is the grouping of information provided by the mnemonic. Just as US phone numbers group 10 digits into three groups, the name "Roy G. Biv" groups seven colors into two short names and an initial. Various studies (most notably The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two) have shown that the human brain is capable of remembering only a limited number of arbitrary items in working memory; grouping these items into chunks permits the brain to hold more of them in memory. [edit] Assembly mnemonics See also: Opcode mnemonics and extended mnemonics In assembly language a mnemonic is a code, usually from 1 to 5 letters, that represents an opcode, a number. Programming in machine code, by supplying the computer with the numbers of the operations it must perform, can be quite a burden, because for every operation the corresponding number must be looked up or remembered. Looking up all numbers takes a lot of time, and mis-remembering a number may introduce computer bugs. Therefore a set of mnemonics was devised. Each number was represented by an alphabetic code. So instead of entering the number corresponding to addition to add two numbers one can enter "add". Although mnemonics differ between different CPU designs some are common, for instance: "sub" (subtract), "div" (divide), "add" (add), and "mul" (multiply). This type of mnemonic is different from the ones listed above in that instead of a way to make remembering numbers easier, it is a way to make remembering numbers unnecessary (e.g. by relying on the computer's assembler program to do the look-up work.) [edit] In foreign-language acquisition Mnemonics can be helpful in learning a foreign language, for example by adapting a hard-to-remember foreign word to a pre-existent phrase in the learner's native language - using folk etymology. Linguist Ghil'ad Zuckermann has proposed many mnemonics for English-speaking students of Israeli Hebrew. For example, in trying to assist the learner to remember ohel, the Hebrew word for tent, Zuckermann proposes the memorable sentence "Oh hell, there's a raccoon in my tent".[5] The notable linguist Michel Thomas taught students to remember that estar is the Spanish word for to be by using the phrase "to be a star". These are sometimes known as linkwords. In Spanish language acquisition, masculine nouns can be associated with blue and feminine nouns with red. This allows for visual images such as a foot stepping on a pie and blue filling squirting out. The Spanish word for "foot" is el pie, a masculine noun, so recollection of blue will cue recall of the gender. [edit] Improving long term memory through mnemonics Mnemonics as we know is a technique or strategy that is used to attempt to improve memory. It attempts to make information that is already stored in long-term memory more elaborate and easier to recall. It organizes new information so that we can retrieve it with other information that is similar to it. Thus meaning, organizing the information we are trying to store with similar things we already have in our memory to make it easier to recall when we need to. One method to remember things in long-term is the method of loci is a mnemonic system where items that we want to be remembered are associated with certain landmarks or locations. For example, if I list the things I do in my day and then associated a list of words that I am trying to remember with each event, it can help me to remember the word. Let's say the first two words are 'tree' and 'seven' and my day begins with me waking up and then I brush my teeth. To remember the words, I would say 'I wake up with a tree' and second, 'I brush my seven teeth'. Notice how the words I want to recall are included with the things I do on a daily basis. This is how the method of Loci works. The second method is called the peg-word method is a mnemonic system where we try to remember items that are associated with a set of mental pegs that you already have in your memory. For example, let's use the numbers 1 to 10. The two words we want to remember are bun and shoe, so we associate the number with the words. It would sound like this, "one-bun, two-shoe' and we would recite that to remember it. Another method to remember things is by narrative stories and songs. You link certain words that you want to remember to a story. Once you make a story with the words, it is easier to recall what the words are. Mnemonics slows the rate at which you hear information and allows you to encode it better. [6] [edit] Mnemonic transfer There is research which suggests that previous use of mnemonics (such as the "peg-word" strategy) increases the likelihood of subsequent uses of similar mnemonic devices, and that the success of such transferability is greater in undergraduates (and presumably, older youths in general) in comparison to younger students.[7] Four studies of undergraduate art education students predictably indicated that both mnemonic-general tactics (mnemonic devices that focused on overall styles and themes) and mnemonic-detail tactics, (mnemonic devices which focused on a particular detail specific to the painting) designed to aid in the instruction and memory of painter-painting connections, were much more effective than the control group members' own-best-method tactics (where students were directed to use "whatever works best" for themselves).[7] More importantly, results communicated that when students were instructed with mnemonic-general rather than mnemonic-detail strategies, they were often still able to identify which painter created a given work of art, even if the student had never seen or learned about the painting before, implying the students were able to infer the painter-painting relationship accurately, based on the transferred information from the previously learned mnemonic.[7] [edit] Effectiveness of Mnemonic There is research which suggests evidence for the effectiveness of Mnemonic techniques. In vocabulary memory experiments, students who applied mnemonic techniques outperformed the control groups that applied contextual learning and free learning style. The experiments were repeated in different age and group settings and yield the same result. [8]