Metaphors of the Mind
This small, portable item represents your working memory because it can only hold a few items and things can easily fall out.
What is a school bag?
Most people’s attentional octopuses have this many arms, representing the number of "slots" in working memory.
What is four?
This ancient technique involves mentally placing vivid, outrageous images in a familiar place like your home to remember lists.
What is the Memory Palace?
These physical connections in the brain, made of dendritic spines and synapses, are formed in long-term memory through practice.
What are brain-links?
Having a television on in the background while studying is metaphorically like putting one of your octopus's arms in this.
What is a sling?
This storage unit represents long-term memory because it is massive, but it can be hard to find what you need if it's unorganized.
What is a locker?
Your octopus can only hold on to information for this long—usually 10 to 15 seconds—before it begins to slip away.
What is ten to fifteen seconds?
Adding this to a mental picture makes it "stick" even better in your memory.
What is movement?
Simply understanding a concept is not enough to create a brain-link; you must also do this.
What is practice?
This tiring habit involves jumping back and forth between tasks, like homework and a smartphone, which wears out your octopus.
What is task switching?
While pictures are easy to "tape" to a locker wall, abstract facts are compared to this substance that is difficult to squeeze into a tube.
What is toothpaste (or fact paste)?
This is the primary way you "wake up" your attentional octopus so it can grab new information.
What is by focusing (or paying attention)?
This is a special sentence or phrase where the first letters help you remember a list of words.
What is a mnemonic?
Psychologists use this term to describe the amount of mental effort being used in working memory at any given time.
What is cognitive load?
This US Memory Champion proved that even a "perfectly normal" kid who forgets hot dogs on the stove can develop an extraordinary memory.
Who is Nelson Dellis?
This "friendly" creature lives in your prefrontal cortex and uses its arms to hold information in your conscious mind.
What is the attentional octopus?
When your octopus arms are "slippery," it means this happens to the information you are trying to hold.
What is sliding away (or being forgotten)?
Your brain is naturally fantastic at remembering these two things, like the way to your school.
What are places and directions?
You have to do this over and over to turn a new idea into a permanent brain-link.
What is practice?
This is often the most difficult and unenjoyable stage of learning because brain-links haven't formed yet.
What are the earliest steps (or the beginning)?
When you are in diffuse mode, this happens to your attentional octopus, though its arms can still zap away to create creative connections.
What is falling asleep (or dozing off)?
Once you have built a strong brain-link, your octopus only needs this many arms to pull that complex idea into working memory.
What is one?
In this learning method, you explain a difficult concept to an inanimate object to see if you truly understand it.
What is the Rubber Ducky method?
Someone who has built a huge "library" of strong brain-links is called by this title.
What is an expert?
This type of recall, often involving flashcards, is the best way to ensure information is safely stored in the "locker."
What is active recall?