Mental placeholders

When reading text we often generate placeholders within the text. While regular students use a marker to highlight the text and sticky notes to find the place within the text, it can be too slow and not very elegant for a superlearner. Instead we use mental placeholders.

Apparently Anna and I developed the same methods independently of each other. Anna’s explanation of the method is as following. When you generate a marker for a section (2-5 paragraphs) you should remember how the paragraphs in the section look [approximate number of lines, how complete the last line is, any special numbers or fonts within] and how the markers are linked [typically the paragraphs are linked as a list, a tree or a combination of thereof]. For each marker we also remember in which paragraph it appears. Like “third 9-line paragraph with a dog” but without vocalization. We generate the placeholder markers immediately after reading a section.

My method is simpler. I have a sort of mental map of the pages and put my own markers within. Like “75% of the text vertically, 25 % horisontally there is a star. the dog generates 5 associations as following: (1), (2),…”. Initially this looks like a totally different technique but it is not so: I analyse the layout of the pages and position of markers within the page, generate mental placeholder and add information to each placeholder.

This method is important when dealing with 3-12 pages texts. Below 3 pages of text we can easily find what we want. Above 12 pages we need additional indicators and hierarchy levels, like chapters etc. Since most wikipedia articles and scientific publications are 3-12 pages long, I use this method very often….