Method of Loci

The method of loci is a way of holding a list of unconnected facts as one drawn scene of strange objects, invented for those items rather than walked through a remembered building. A remembered fixture will not become the item — a door handle forced to stand for train is the image that fails — and a shared building mixes lists, so recall hits an object without knowing which list it belongs to. Each list gets its own invented picture instead, so objects fit the items and lists do not collide. It is reached for last, after the conceptual work is done.

Building the scene

Leftover items do encode under a reread. The picture still carries more for a list with no hook. A wooden train is gone by the next day. A train with a forest growing inside it is not. Equal bizarreness erases it. The scene travels so no location piles up. Each element is caused by the one before it, so neighbours hold an item.

A finished scene can start from any point and still hold.

A scene that only runs forwards was sequenced, not connected. Encoding happens while working out the paper. The original items sit beside it as a key.

What it is for

A scene in those notes is for leftover single-use facts such as a date or an enzyme name. The operating band is a few items to thirty or more. Three items can be one figure.

Items with causal, functional, or conceptual relationships belong in a relational structure, and where one is viable it is built instead. Higher Order Learning is that conceptual work, and it shrinks what is left. Importance Based Chunking absorbs anything that can be grouped. Layers of Learning is where leftover detail sits once the conceptual layers have taken what they can.

Leftover facts stay leftover because understood material is remembered as it makes sense, so work upstream shrinks the pile. What is stored this way comes back on demand without transferring or combining.

A leftover list is minutes. A long one is most of an hour, later items costing more. A built scene needs a handful of later looks — the next day, a week later, a month later — and then holds. Reaching for a scene on most of the material means the structure upstream was skipped.

A scene manufactures, on purpose, the interdependence that understood material already has. That is why the method works, and why it is the last tool reached for. Flashcards are the sibling outer-layer tool: cheap to make, reviewed indefinitely, against a scene that is expensive once and then holds. Rote Learning and Memorisation is the parent that holds both, and the rule that memorisation is what remains after understanding has taken what it can.

Sources

• Maguire, E. A., Valentine, E. R., Wilding, J. M., & Kapur, N. (2003). Routes to remembering: the brains behind superior memory. Nature Neuroscience. Trained memorisers recruit spatial and navigational systems; no structural brain difference.
• Dresler, M., et al. (2017). Mnemonic training reshapes brain networks to support superior memory. Neuron. Six weeks of loci training roughly doubled word-list recall.
• McDaniel, M. A., & Einstein, G. O. (1986). Bizarre imagery as an effective memory aid: the importance of distinctiveness. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. Bizarre imagery helps by relative distinctiveness — the bound on the absurdity rule.
• Dunlosky, J., et al. (2013). Improving students’ learning with effective learning techniques. Psychological Science in the Public Interest. Imagery mnemonics rate moderate in utility and narrow in scope.