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It is the mark of an educated mind to be able
to entertain a thought
without accepting it.
Aristotle, 384 - 322 BCE
Greek philospher

Guides for memorizing series

Memorizing using imaging

Memorization using mental imaging, or image-naming:
creating relationships between the name and
the physical characteristics of a person

Simply invent any relationship between the name and the physical characteristics of the person.
For example, if you had to remember someone you met with the name Shirley,
you might keep the name in memory by noticing that she has (or has not!) "curly" (rhymes with Shirley) hair.


Use our exercise to draw images to practice visualizing vocabulary words

"...visual inspection and verbal elaboration — resulted in improved memory results,
according to Kirchhoff (2006).
"Those individuals who used the first two strategies often had better memory performance than those who used them rarely or not at all," said Kirchhoff. "There's a great deal of variability in strategy use when people are free to choose their own learning techniques. We also discovered that individual people use multiple strategies to learn new information."

Memorization techniques:

Acronyms | Acrostics | Rhymes | Loci | Keywords | Image-naming | Chaining

More helpful thought processing guides:

Concentrating | Thinking critically | Thinking creatively | Radical thinking |
Thinking aloud/private speech | Mind/concept mapping | Thinking like a genius

Flash exercise contributed by Karoline Dehnhard and Dr. Brad Hokanson, Interactive Media (DHA 4384) School of Design, University of Minnesota. Revised and edited by Joe Landsberger