When working with children we prefer audio mnemonics to visualization. Audio mnemonics tend to be slower, but easier to use and more stable for long-term memorization. Ten years old is the perfect age to memorize texts. A healthy and creative 10 years old will always find something nasty and funny in the text, will play …
Spaced repetition apps
Our friend and partner Gabriel Wyner is launching a new kickstarter project aimed at creating a language learning app for spaced repetition. VISIT THIS LINK which was built just for you, my readers, to participate in the project. Below I will explain about different spaced repetition apps and what makes Gabriel’s app special. Spaced repetition principles When …
Reading, rereading and ghosting effects
Quite often true memories are mixed up with false memories. Quite often this happens when we read too slow. For today’s article, you may want to read here, here, here, here, and here. This article is inteded to be an overview: each of the subjects was already discussed in some other form on this blog. …
The memory-friendly way to say no
Quite often we need to say “no”. Our language is very rich, and there are many ways to do that. Some ways are very direct, while others are more subtle. The way we choose to say “no” may affect our memory. For more information I suggest reading here, here, here, here, and here. Japanese: a …
Mental wardrobe
This is a short post to offer a very specific solution for mental palaces. here is another explanation of the same subject. Suppose you have a mental palace, with nice memorable walls and corners. I assume you are already comfortable placing markers along the walls. Maybe small objects, maybe mindmaps and maybe PAO markers. You …
Use your gut feeling to memorize better
Quite often I find myself memorizing things using my “gut feeling” as dual coding. While this is not very common, there is some science behind it. In this post, I will try to shed some light on the subject. To some extent I was inspired by this, this, and this articles. Situation memory Our body …
Massive memory structures
I am occasionally asked how can someone remember 1 mil visualizations. Now 1 mil visualizations is a lot. For comparison, The King James Authorized Bible has 783,137 words. It is enough to know ~5000 words and 5000 phrases of a foreign language to be fluent, e.g. about 100,000 visualizations should suffice per language. Practically, not …
Micro PAO
Recently PAO became the default mode of visualization we teach. I will first explain the method as we use it and then why it became so prominent in our materials. Specific markers are trigrams Most of our students have advanced degrees and read complex materials. As materials get increasingly complex, a specific marker becomes a …
Apps and creativity
Some apps help us become smarter and more creative in strange and wonderful ways. Apps and games improve problem solving skills, brain processing speed, visual skills and memory. This post is inspired by reading this article and here. Less interesting reading here,here, here. Problem solving skills It is understandable that playing strategy games we develop …
Fighting age and stress
When we are young and inexperienced we make huge progress. If feels like we will be making the same kind of progress as we get older. Unfortunately this is not true. Our evalutaion of our future self is typically over-optimistic, and as we mature we need to face the consequences. You may read the articles …