Once at my high school we had a really interesting presentation about the brain and memory. The presenter, a visitor who I think was some kind of academic, had us do a little experiment. We each got a little slip of paper with ten words on it, but there were three options for the instructions:
- Count the consonants in each word.
- Rate each word on its pleasantness.
- Memorize the words.
We had a couple minutes to carry out our instructions, then we turned over the list of words and were asked to write down as many of the words as we could remember.
The people who’d counted the consonants, group 1, only got three or four out of the ten words. The other two groups did really well, remembering nine or ten out of ten. But the presenter said that if he came back in a month and asked us to remember the words again, group 2 would be the best—rating the words on their pleasantness is probably a better memorization strategy than whatever we did when directly told to memorize the words!
I was reminded of this experience many years later at a pub after a ringing practice, when one ringer mentioned another explaining Phobos Surprise Maximus to him as “fishy fishy dodgy dodgy”. He seemed possibly faintly resentful that this silly phrase had become the key to remembering Phobos! But silliness or humour can be a great memory aid.
Part of learning new methods as a ringer is also learning how your own memory works—what sorts of contexts, connections, and visual or verbal representations help a method stick for you. If the task of learning a particular method seems really daunting, it could be that a more specific instruction than “learn this method” would be both easier and more effective! “Rate these words on their pleasantness” certainly sounds easier to me than “memorize these words”. Most things in ringing will just take some time to learn, but as a learner or as a teacher I try not to pass up opportunities to make learning easier AND more effective!
Among Sallies and Bobs 