Verbal Mnemonics

Techniques to Improve Memory: Verbal Mnemonics

Verbal Mnemonics are memory techniques using verbal aids to enable us remember things more easily. Research has shown that asking people to make up a story that links together a list of words makes later recall of those words much easier.

Although verbal mnemonics have not met with the same popularity as the visual imagery Opens in new window techniques, several verbal or non-visual strategies have been devised to improve memory.

The most widely used verbal mnemonic is a method for remembering how many days there are in each month of the year. For example, most Brits and Americans use a rhyme Opens in new window to do this (i.e., “Thirty days has September …”). In other parts of the world, many people use their knuckles, with the knuckles themselves representing the long months and the dips in between representing the short months. Still other countries use suffixes Opens in new window and prefixes Opens in new window to remember the long and short months. Every country using our calendar system has a mnemonic for remembering months of different lengths.

Verbal Mnemonic Methods

The first-letter mnemonic is a method in which the initial letters of words in a sentence are used to recall information in a particular order. For example, many people in the United Kingdom use the mnemonic EGBDF when learning the notes on the lines of a musical staff. The letters are incorporated into a sentence such as

After learning the sentence, one uses the initial letters for notes, so the note on the first line is E, the note on the second line is G, etc. An amiable author once said “My granddaughter recently taught me a first letter mnemonic for remembering the order of the planets from the sun:

A variation on this theme is to use a whole word to remember the information so that the notes in the spaces of the musical staff spell out the word face.

Harris (1984) suggested that first-letter mnemonics are useful only when the to-be-remembered material is well known but difficult to recall in the correct order. They can however, be used to learn new material (Wilson, 1987).

Another variation can be used to remember a list of digits such as a credit card number: One can make up a sentence in which each word consists of a number of letters corresponding to the numbers to be remembered.

Wilson and Moffat (1984) argued that first-letter mnemonics work for two reasons:

1. because the information is being chunked and chunking has long been known to increase recall (Miller, 1956) and
2. because it reduces the number of competing responses.

Another verbal mnemonic is the story method which involves elaborating words into a story to improve recall for people with and without brain lesions (Crovitz, 1979; Gianutsos & Gianutsos, 1987; Wilson, 1987). Crovitz used the “airplane list,” in which 10 words are embedded in a story with each word linked to the next.

The list of words to be remembered was umpire, nose, iceberg, vase, elephant, refugee, skylark, imp, tree, and yak (the first letters of these make the word university, which coincides with the first-letter mnemonic methods). For the story method, the words were made into a story based on the procedure used by Crovitz (1979):

Clearly, the story method combines both verbal and visual techniques, adding to it a lasting impression.

Similarly, one can remember a fact by devising a mnemonic sentence for that fact. For example, the sentence “the id is hid” helps one remember that the id is unconscious, or as every musician knows, “every good boy does fine” helps one remember the names of the notes on the musical scale.

Other verbal mnemonics include using popular sayings and poems as memory aids to remember a variety of things, such as when to the turn clock forward or back (“Fall back, spring forward”).