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<\/a><\/p>\nHere’s how the strategy works. If I want to remember several words, I visualize them along a path that I know well: say, the walk from my house to the square where I do all my shopping.<\/p>\n
To recall<\/em> the words, I simply walk along that path again in my mind. This combination of visuals — the more striking the better — will help me remember even a long list of unrelated words.<\/p>\n This method gets lots of love, most famously in Joshua Foer’s\u00a0Moonwalking with Einstein.<\/em><\/p>\n Surely we should teach it to our students, no?<\/p>\n We always look for boundary conditions\u00a0<\/em>here on the blog. That is, even good teaching ideas have limits, and we want to know what’s outside those limits.<\/p>\n So, for the “method of loci,” one question goes like this: how often do you ask your students to memorize long lists of unrelated words?<\/p>\n If the answer is, “not often,” then I’m not sure how much they’ll benefit from building a memory palace.<\/p>\n Dr. Christopher Sanchez wondered about another<\/em> limit.<\/p>\n The “method of loci” relies on visualization. Not everyone is equally good at that. Does “visuospatial aptitude” influence the usefulness of building a memory palace?<\/p>\n The study to answer this question is quite straight-forward. Sanchez had several students memorize words. Some were instructed to use a memory palace; some not. All took tests of their visual aptitude.<\/p>\n Sure enough, as Sanchez predicted, students who used a memory palace remembered more words than those who didn’t<\/a>.<\/p>\n And, crucially, palace builders with HIGH visualspatial aptitude recalled more words than those with LOW aptitude.<\/p>\n In fact, those with low aptitude said the memory-palace strategy made the memory task much harder.<\/p>\n This research finding offers a specific example of a general truth. Like all teaching strategies, memory palaces may help some students — but they don’t help all students equally.<\/p>\n This finding also leads to some important questions.<\/p>\n First<\/strong>: If a student has low visuospatial aptitude, how can we tell?<\/p>\n At this point, I don’t have an easy way to diagnose that condition. (I’ve asked around, but so far no luck.)<\/p>\n My best advice is: if a student says to you, “I tried that memory palace thing, but it just didn’t work for me. It’s so HARD!” believe the student<\/em>.<\/p>\n Second<\/strong>: does this finding apply to other visualization strategies? More broadly, does it apply to dual coding theory<\/a>?<\/p>\n Again, I think the answer is “probably yes.” Making information visual will help some students…but probably not all of them.<\/p>\n This next question alarms me a little; I hardly dare write it down. But, here goes…<\/p>\nPalace Boundaries<\/h2>\n
One Answer, Many Questions<\/h2>\n
The Big Question (I Can’t Look…)<\/h2>\n