If You Read One Article About Mnemonic Read this One

Memory refers to certain activities that enables us to bring our own past experiences to bear on the present. It enables us to think 'out of the box'. These activities touch every aspect of our daily lives. Without them, we are drift (aimless) in a fast-moving world that is perpetually unfamiliar, never recognizing old acquaintances (friends and relatives), unable to learn any language, or remember anything of our previous experiences; this is because the things we know are not inborn and have to be learnt.

We learn to acquire vital knowledge by studying very well; most often, we take our memory for granted, except when we feel that it has let us down or wish that it was more efficient. Even at such times, we tend to think of memory in the simplest terms, as a storehouse into which experiences can be deposited and from which they can be retrieved any time we want. But memory is not as simple as this analogy suggests, it can decay and thus involves complex data handling processes which are not yet understood in details. For instance, let us consider amnesia, a deficit in long-term memory that result from psychological trauma or brain lesion or Alzheimer's disease, a condition characterized primarily by severe memory deficit.

There are three form of memory stems - the Sensory Register, the Short-term memory and the Long-term memory. The sensory register is the initial part of the memory system in which information from the world is retained in its original sensory form for only an instance, let say less than a second. If the information is not processed further, it does not reach short-term or long-term memory. The short-term memory is a limited-capacity memory system in which information is retained, in which case it can be retained longer. The long-term memory is the relatively memory system that holds a huge amount of information for a long period, even up to a lifetime. However, some major research books on memory have other advanced subdivisions of memory, which cannot be mentioned here for the purpose of this expository.

The basic rules for memory are:

1. Looking for a pattern or device, one yourself, to help you remember what you have learnt.
2. Relating whatever you are trying to memorize to what you had already known.
3. You just need to concentrate.

Mnemonics are logical patterns, designed to help the memory. Previewing, Reading, and Reviewing are just the key stages that help in good memory recall. Without a logical organization of information in the mind memory cannot be retained for a long time in the long term memory box of the brain.

The three-part operation that aids memory (i.e, Previewing, Reading, and Reviewing) are complementary to a good memory pattern (Mnemonic); while the three-operation act as the power of better understanding of a text, Mnemonic acts as the power of retention and recall.

Meanwhile try simple experient yourself to see how mnemonic workers:

INSTRUCTION: Read the following digits below, then close your eyes and try to recite the sequence exactly the way they are presented.

1-2-3-5-8-1-3-2-1-3-4-5-5-8-9-1-4-4-2-3-3

What was your performance? You likely recalled only fragments of the digits, is it not?

Now try memorizing the sequence again, bearing in mind that it follows a pattern. This time you may perhaps have recited the digits closely because you needed time for the arithmetic, but the chances are that you managed to recite them correctly. This formal experiment raises two general questions:

• Why was your second attempt the most successful?
• Secondly, why does all these have to do with memory?

The answer to these questions are respectively:

1. Simply because you used a 'Trick' or technique of handling the information in such a way that you could accurately reproduce it later.
2. Memory makes extensive use of just such tricks. It owes much of its success and many of its failures to ingenious data handling procedures, which we employ, usually without being conscious that we do so.

Our experiment illustrates what is perhaps the most basic fact about memory; that unless detail is incorporated into a 'Particular Pattern' or related to a rule, it is rapidly forgotten. In the first attempt that you made, you probably tried to memorize the 21 digits before you spotted a problem: consequently you forget most of the details by the time you finished reading the sequence. But in your second attempt, you related the sequence to something much more compact and simple - a rule which might be expressed as follows; starting with 1, 2, 3 add each number to its predecessor to get the next number; continue applying this rule until you reach a double three.

With mnemonic, we are enabled to compress and reconstruct previous information. Compression here means breaking down into smaller parts; you could recall the details of the sequence because you were able to break them down into a simple pattern that could easily be stored and later, unpacked and reconstructed into the original information. Such breaking down and subsequent reconstruction of information is characteristic of the way our memory works.

Concentration means focusing one's mental attention on something doing. While you were reciting the digit sequence by using the additional rule, you may have struct further evidence that isolation detail is rapidly forgotten. Suppose you had 55 and 89, and you were adding them; by the time you got 144, you might have forgotten 89, which you need for the next step or in other words, you might have lost the 'chain' of figures. This can occur if one is interrupted or thinking about something else lingering over the additional process.