Recommended Prerequisite: peg lists, memory palace, and the link / story method.
To maximize the power of any memory techniques, efforts have to made to review the material being memorized.
Most educators rely on rote memory, which includes rereading information again and again in order to retain it.
Though rote memory has its place in a well – rounded memory, mnemonists, or those who train their memory, know that active recall is the superior strategy.
What is Active Recall?
Active recall is how people with trained memories get information into long-term memory efficiently.
We have all experience the feeling of not know the answer to something and hoping that, if we think hard enough, it will just magically appear in our heads. Sometimes it works, but too often it doesn’t.
Imagine your memory is a file cabinet. When you need information, you just go back to the file where you stored the information and retrieve it. In other words, you are actively retrieving information instead of passively hoping it pops up in your head before it’s too late.
How Does It Work?
By using active recall, you are stimulating the hippocampus and creating new neural pathways that store the information into long-term memory much quicker.
Using Active Recall with Teach Memory
Note: If you have not read the posts on peg lists, the memory palace, or the story method, it is recommended you do so before continuing this post.
Imagine you have created a story to remember your credit card number. You used the shape-based number peg list to remember it, and you created a story to link the images together in a fun and memorable way.
At this point, the act of studying doesn’t involve studying words that are written on a page; rather, it requires the student and their imagination, Recall simply requires reviewing the story a few times.
When using a memory palace, delivering the information into the lon-term memory is a simple matter of mentally walking the very path where you left the information.
Eight time memory champion Dominic O’Brien states that he uses active recall within 24 hours, one week, one month, and every three months. This works for him and many others. All memory athletes have to figure out what works for them.
It’s part of the fun!
