Better Than The Memory Palace? Deep Dive Into A Scientific Study With Dr. David Reser on the Superiority of the Australian Aboriginal Mnemonic Technique

AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL MNEMONICS

Case Study: Australian Aboriginal techniques for memorization:
Translation into a medical and allied health education
setting.

Much recent content on this site centers on memory techniques to help bartenders (at any level of development) memorize more quickly and accurately. These techniques / methods help with the memorization of everything, short and long term, from guest check and inventory numbers, to customer names, recipe ingredients and exact pour amounts, drink histories and anything else you need or find useful.


The content of Dr Anthony Metivier’s YouTube video documentation is reproduced below. I’ll be referring to this study as time goes by and I learn better what the exact defining characteristics of the aboriginal method are.


Note: At any time during this rather lengthy video, feel free to jump ahead in it to find more interesting points directly related to Aboriginal “Narrative” Mnemonics. The Neuroscientist being interviewed by Dr. Metivier is not a specialist in memory or memory techniques, though he is well aware of them. Please also feel free to drop to the bottom of this page where I’ll leave my own first impression opinion on what this Aboriginal Narrative approach is, from my personal perspective.



“Dozens of people emailed me recently about some news articles stating that an Aboriginal memory technique is better than the Memory Palace.


You know what?


It might just be.


But our knowledge of how and why it might work requires nuanced understanding of what the study actually says – along with as many voices as we can get to help us explore it.


That’s why I reached out to Dr. David Reser at Monash University. Here’s his profile:

https://research.monash.edu/en/persons/david-reser

Dr. Reser on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/dreser_neuro​

The original study:

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0251710

From what I can understand, this study is incredibly interesting and bodes very well for future studies and your own application of the aboriginal memory technique. I can only hope more will emerge.


In fact, I’m hoping to follow with a second interview with Tyson Yunkaporta. Until then, here’s an existing interview with him about his book Sand Talk:

In brief, this study showed that the Aboriginal technique performed better than the Method of Loci after a certain period of time. Tests after longer periods of time had fewer participants, so it feels like the study is less conclusive until further data from future tests arrive.


There are several other factors this conversation brought out that bring nuance to the role of the participants and what their preparedness suggests. I think the role of terminology also comes through and it is an interesting opportunity to think through how and why terms emerge as such.


In all things, the Memory Palace technique for studying and anything else was always just a term. And anything that adds to our knowledge of how to memorize anything better, faster and with great joy should be embraced. I can’t wait to learn more about this methodology, see future studies and give some of the ideas a try.


I hope this discussion helps you consider the role of science in discovery, the role of mind in learning and starts you on a deeper journey with all the memory traditions around the world.


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WHAT IS MY PERSPECTIVE, MY “TAKE”, ON ALL OF THIS? BASED ON MY UNDERSTANDING, HOW WOULD I DEFINE THE NARRATIVE APPROACH? 


Memory Palace fans believe that humans memorize spatial locations extremely well. The Loci method of associating an object, concept, whatever to an object in a location, and then associating another idea to a second object in a location is how the the memory palace method works. The links between each location and each thing memorized varies from weak to strong, but forgetting one thing won’t have any effect on whether the previous thing or the thing after is able to be recalled or not. That’s a good thing.

Part of what the location and narrative method seems to be using is an elaborative encoding (expanded background made up or true story) method that I’ve been finding effective, which is telling a story to help me link things together,

Here’s an example, using the
Italian Wedding Cake Recipe:
Noah is driving a stolen van (2 oz Stoli Vanilla)
My friend Coco (a Peruvian I know) has a hatchet in his head because Noah hit him in the head to steal the van from him. Coco is thus 1/2 oz (hatchet = 1/2 or “split in two with a hatchet”) of White cr de Cacao.
Coco’s daughter is getting married, his heart is broken (hatchet in the heart – “Amore” Love Amaretto) 1/2 oz Amaretto.
Coco is wearing a nice tie with Cranberries and a Pineapple on it. Ties represent the number 1 – So 1 oz Cranberry Juice & 1 oz of Pineapple Juice.
what Glass though?? Coco is telling the couple to be married that they must drink from the Grail to sanctify their marriage – That grail is a martini glass with a filthy cherry in it (a luxardo cherry will do).






There is some narrative portion to that Italian Wedding Cake recipe above. There’s definitely an elaborate story element to it, but it’s lacking location. 


In the video at the start of this post there was an interesting finding  which was that objects memorized were better memorized in order using the Aboriginal method. Having done some further independent reading on this method (not part of the data in the study) I suspect that I may be able to chain a dozen or so drink recipes (through their narratives) to various locations in a journey, focusing not on the locations so much, as on the narratives. 


Why Is This Advantageous – Why WOULD it Be Advantageous? 


Mnemonics are not a “one and done” process, but require rehearsal. The human brain has a built in forgetting curve – it’s a fact of nature. Rehearsal is required at intervals, and optimally timed intervals may not be conveniently available on a daily basis with our busy schedules working for others.


Using a narrative approach combined with chaining narratives to steps in a journey allows multi9ple narratives to be practiced in the mind, one after the other, without having to reach for a list or a flash card.


That alone doesn’t make it whole lot different from the loci method though. We’re still linking a narrative to a set location, though I know from experience that most people using peg/link systems aren’t using narratives. I suspect that the Dominic PAO method has more narrative potential for most people (it certainly does for me), but that’s because I use it that way. 


HERE’S WHAT I SUSPECT ENHANCES THE CHAIN – THE CHAINING OF THE NARRATIVES TO ONE ANOTHER


In my own research there is a progression of narrative from one location to the next. They’re not mutually exclusive of or segmented from one another, even though each one is distinct from the other. 


I’m excited to see what more will be revealed from this research. Thanks for reading. Good luck on your memory journey, wherever you need to apply it.