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A
little imagination
-
A
piece of paper and a pencil
-
Optional:
A timer or a clock with a second hand and someone to tell
you when two minutes are up
On the next
web page, there are pictures of 20 different things. Just as you
did in the previous memory game, you are going to click the GO
button, look at the pictures for two minutes, then return to this
page and write down as many of the things as you can remember.
This time,
while you are looking at the pictures, make up a story that has
all those things in it. If you were looking at the pictures in
the last game (
Memory Solitaire
),
you might make up a story about a cat named Charlie (which begins
with
C
) who was riding a bicycle and chasing a dog. Just
then, the cat stopped for coffee and....
You get the
idea. If the story is silly, that's just fine. Try to imagine
the story as you tell it to yourself, picturing the cat on the
bicycle and the dog running away.
OK, now try
it yourself with the pictures on the next page.
Ready,
set,
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Now
write down as many of the things as you can remember on your piece
of paper.
How did you
do this time? Click the Check button to see.
When you tell
yourself a story and imagine what's happening, you are doing a
couple of things.
First, you
are connecting the different pictures so that when you remember
one, you remember the others too. If you remember "cat,"
you have a good chance of remembering "bicycle" and
"dog" and "C" for Charlie. It's hard to remember
all the items in a list where nothing is connected to anything
else. It's easier to remember when one item is attached to a whole
lot of others.
Second, you
are making a mental picture that includes all these different
things. Making a mental picture helps you remember something later.
You may discover
that making up a story didn't help you remember all the objects
-- but it helped you remember some of the objects for a lot longer.
When you made a mental picture of the objects, you used your long-term
memory, and that picture stuck with you.
Games
Memory
©1998
Exploratorium
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