Mnemonic

A mnemonic device, also called a memory trick or memory device, is any learning technique that helps people retain or retrieve information in human memory. It typically works by linking the information to something simpler to recall. The technique uses elaborative encoding, retrieval cues, and imagery as specific tools to store information in a way that allows for efficient recall later. It helps original information become associated with something more accessible or meaningful, which in turn improves retention.

Effectiveness

Common mnemonics are often used for lists and come in auditory forms like short poems, acronyms, initialisms, or memorable phrases. They can also be used for other types of information and in visual or kinesthetic forms. Their effectiveness is based on the observation that the human mind more easily remembers spatial, personal, surprising, physical, sexual, humorous, or otherwise relatable information, rather than more abstract or impersonal material. The ancient Greeks and Romans distinguished between two types of memory: "natural" memory, which is inborn and used instinctively by everyone, and "artificial" memory, which must be trained and developed through learning and practicing various mnemonic techniques.

Etymology

Mnemonic systems are strategies or techniques consciously used to improve memory, helping people use information already stored in long-term memory to make memorization easier. The word "mnemonic" comes from the Ancient Greek word meaning "memory" or "of memory." It is related to Mnemosyne, the name of the Greek goddess of memory. Both words derive from the Greek root for "to remember." In antiquity, mnemonics were most often considered within what is now called the art of memory.

History

The general name for these devices was mnemonics, or memoria technica. They were designed to help the mind reproduce unfamiliar ideas—especially a series of disconnected ideas—by connecting them into some artificial whole whose parts suggest each other. Greek sophists and philosophers cultivated mnemonic devices, and they are frequently mentioned by Plato and Aristotle. The philosopher Charmadas was famous for his outstanding memory, able to memorize whole books and then recite them.

Later, the poet Simonides was credited with developing these techniques, perhaps only because his memory was famously powerful. Cicero, who considered the art important but emphasized order as the best memory aid, mentioned Carneades (possibly Charmades) of Athens and Metrodorus of Scepsis as examples of people who used well-ordered images to aid memory. The Romans valued such aids to support public speaking. The Greek and Roman system of mnemonics was based on using mental places and signs or pictures, known as "topical" mnemonics.

The most common method was to choose a large house, where apartments, walls, windows, statues, and furniture were each associated with certain names, phrases, events, or ideas through symbolic pictures. To recall these, a person only had to mentally search the house until finding the places where images had been placed by imagination. Under this system, to fix a historic date in memory, it was localized in an imaginary town divided into districts, each with ten houses, each house with ten rooms, and each room with a hundred quadrates or memory-places—partly on the floor, partly on the four walls, partly on the ceiling. For example, to remember the invention of printing (1436), an imaginary book or other symbol of printing would be placed in the thirty-sixth quadrate of the fourth room of the first house of the historic district.

Except for references by Martianus Capella, nothing further is known about the practice until the 13th century. Among the writings of Roger Bacon is a tractate De arte memorativa. Ramon Llull devoted special attention to mnemonics in connection with his ars generalis.

The first major modification of the Roman method was invented by the German poet Conrad Celtes, who in his Epitoma in utramque Ciceronis rhetoricam cum arte memorativa nova (1492) used letters of the alphabet for associations instead of places. Around the end of the 15th century, Peter of Ravenna (born 1448) amazed Italy with his mnemonic feats, leading many to believe he was a necromancer. His Phoenix artis memoriae (Venice, 1491, 4 vols.) went through nine editions, the seventh published in Cologne in 1608. Around the end of the 16th century, Lambert Schenkel (Gazophylacium, 1610), who taught mnemonics in France, Italy, and Germany, similarly surprised people with his memory.

He was denounced as a sorcerer by the University of Louvain, but in 1593 he published his tractate De memoria at Douai with the sanction of that theological faculty. The most complete account of his system appears in two works by his pupil Martin Sommer, published in Venice in 1619. In 1618 John Willis (died 1628?) published Mnemonica; sive ars reminiscendi, which clearly stated the principles of topical or local mnemonics. Giordano Bruno included a memoria technica in his treatise De umbris idearum, as part of his study of Llull's ars generalis.