Alex and I often write about how the memory palace can encourage learners to organize information they might otherwise try to learn without creating an internal schema to understand and connect it to related information. Creating a palace provides organization to information that may otherwise be amorphous.
Memory palaces also nudge users into the practice of chunking, which is breaking down a larger pile of information into memorable groups so that it’s easier to remember. As convention, we already do this with telephone numbers.
That is, instead of thinking of telephone numbers like this,
18004377950
we group them into memorable, phonetically manageable chunks, like this:
1-800-437-7950.
You can probably easily recite a couple of area codes associated with places where you’ve lived before. It makes remembering phone numbers easier when you meet someone, because several of the chunks already have meaning to you.
This technique can be used to chunk things in a semantic way as well. Here’s an example using a simple grocery list. Of course, we’re not suggesting that you chunk your grocery list to memorize it. But, this does make my point easier to see.
Toilet paper
Canned tomatoes
Pens
Flour
Milk
Highlighters
Shampoo
Toothpaste
Paper
By chunking it semantically, the list becomes:
Toilet paper
Shampoo
Toothpaste
Canned tomatoes
Flour
Milk
Pens
Highlighters
Paper
There’s a natural chunking that occurs with each palace and within each palace. During our preclinical years, we organized new information into natural territories to take advantage of the chunking effect in addition to the benefits of spatial memory.
Here’s an example using cardiology.
Ventricular septal defect
Atrial septal defect
Patent ductus arteriosus
Tetralogy of fallot
Transposition of the great vessels
Truncus arteriosus
Tricuspid atresia
Coarctation of the aorta
In my textbook, these are presented in list form. I decided to split my palace into thirds. The first third of the palace I encounter when walking through would be the types of defects that result in left-to-right shunting. The next third would be right-to-left shunting. And the last third would be great vessels-related pathologies.
Ventricular septal defect
Atrial septal defect
Patent ductus arteriosus
Tetralogy of fallot
Tricuspid atresia
Transposition
Truncus arteriosus
Coarctation of the aorta
This strategy greatly simplified the list, and allowed me to learn my palace faster by chunking my loci within the palace. It also means that different regions of my palace have inherent meaning as well. Each time I quiz myself with Anki or do a practice test or see a clinical case that requires me to retrieve from that region of the palace, I’m reinforcing my schema for organizing these pathologies. In time, the images may fade away, but the schema will remain.
How do you use chunking to learn?