Introduction
Linking information to some particular elements is a kind of recall technique that can be implemented for memorizing several items in a given sequence of order. It is popularly known as the linking technique as it involves the association or linking of the given sequence of ordered items altogether for recalling them efficiently. There are several techniques for memorizing any valuable information in our day-to-day life. One technique was from our ancient past popularly known as the memory palace developed by ancient Greek people in which a person memorizes any valuable information by linking it with a palace. However, there is a more advanced technique that overcomes the limitations of the ancient memory palace technique.
This technique is popularly known as the aboriginal technique that was developed by the Australians in which a person memorizes any valuable information by linking it with a narrative element as well as a physical place together. The aboriginal technique is far better than the ancient memory palace. People mentally attach the valuable information with some physical place in both of the techniques. But the Australian aboriginal technique also includes storytelling along with the physical location. Linking elements is the basic memory training method and is considered very easy to understand and implement.
Ancient Greek Memory Palace Technique
The memory palace or mind palace is also commonly known as the loci method. In this technique, a person memorizes some valuable information by linking it to the physical objects in an imaginary room or building. The main origin of this technique includes an ancient story of the popular poet of Greece known as Simonides. Once he succeeded in rescuing himself from a collapsing building during a banquet event. He quickly identified the dead bodies of those people who didn’t survive the collapse. He remembered the position of every person that he observed while he was rescuing from that place. In this way, he defined the importance of linking our memories to any physical place in order to remember any valuable information. This technique was popularized in the modern age by the BBC series character, ‘Sherlock Holmes’ that was aired from 2010 to 2017. He used to solve his complicated cases by using this technique in his day-to-day life. The memory palace not only helps us in boosting our short-term mind but is also beneficial for our long-term memory.
Australian’s Aboriginal Technique
This memory technique was developed by the Aborigine’s generation. The Aboriginal technique includes memorizing some valuable information by linking it with some physical location by forming a narrative element that incorporates that physical location. This memory training technique is totally based on our imagination and visualization skills. If our narrative imagination is more vivid and unique it will result in better outcomes. It takes a very long time for mastering the aboriginal memory technique but it is very much effective in enhancing our long-term memory for memorizing valuable information. Yunkaporta and Reser along with a group of 76 other students researched both techniques of memorizing any information. They tested both the technique for memorizing the names from a list of 20 different butterflies.
Narrative Element in Memory Training
The outcomes of the above-discussed research were very clear. The group that followed the memory palace technique resulted in memorizing a moderate amount of names from the list while on the other hand, the group that followed the aboriginal technique resulted in memorizing a strong amount of names from the list. Several other experiments were also performed by Yunkaporta and Reser that concluded the result that the aboriginal method is far better than the memory palace technique in memory training. In this way, we can understand the importance of the narrative element for memorizing some valuable information in our day-to-day life. Linking the provided information to a narrative element also results in memorizing the information list in proper sequence.
In the above example of memorizing a list of 20 items was conducted on several other elements. There was much improvement in the outcomes of the aboriginal memory technique. The outcomes of memorizing 20 out of 20 items through aboriginal memory technique yield three times better result than before while on the other hand memory palace memory technique yielded two times better result than before. The experiment also consisted of another group of untrained students; they have no idea of either the aboriginal memory technique or the memory palace memory technique. They resulted in a very poor outcome over memorizing 20 out of 20 items from the given list. Higher outcomes from the aboriginal technique than the memory palace technique are mostly because of the additional narrative element involved in the technique. The Aboriginal technique of memory training is very complicated as it includes several additional layers of information like narrative one including stories, art, and song.
Conclusion
We have discussed two different approaches to linking information for boosting our memory capability. We also discussed several advantages of the aboriginal memory technique over the ancient mind palace memory technique with various examples. The Aboriginal technique is very easy and simple to understand. It includes creating a narrative link to the given information and linking several elements of the narrative work as a chain. So it is also known as the chaining method. We can also easily adapt this memory-boosting technique in our day-to-day life for enhancing our short-term as well as long-term memory to a greater extent. However, the method is quite very complex so it will require lots of time for getting experts into it. But it guarantees a very enhanced and effective result while we are trying to memorize some very important information in our daily work. It can be effectively implemented by work professionals, students, researchers, teachers, scientists, and several other work professions. Hence we can say that the process of linking valuable information in our daily life to some object or place along with a narrative element yields in greater outcome for boosting our memorization capability.
References
https://www.livescience.com/aboriginal-memory-technique.html
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0251710
Yunkaporta T. Sand talk: how Indigenous thinking can save the world. Melbourne, Victoria: Text Publishing Company; 2019.
