Use descriptive words to enhance memory.
Visualization is one of our most important skills for storing information in our memories and for remembering. I love the Lindamood Bell® program because it allows kids who may not have an intuitive, visualizing mind to express that part of their brains that don’t intuitively create visual images. It also has lasted the test of time with Super-Agers in that it is a fabulous tool for enhancing your recall/memory skills. Thank you to Nancy Bell for her incredible journey through the years of training all of how to teach her approach.
The idea is simple: use 12 words to describe, create an image or visual (static or moving) in your mind’s eye and store an image. This is called Visualization. Lindamood Bell® calls it “Visualizing and Verbalizing® (V&V)” How does this apply to memory and recall abilities? Turns out folks in my practice, especially those in the left brain fields such as S.T.E.M., law, medicine and more left-oriented brainiac types have a more difficult time than the average bear as they age with the recall and use of memory for things that are outside their area of expertise such as remembering pop culture info, people’s names, day-to-day simple tasks, etc.
Here are the Lindamood Bell 12 wordS plus a few I’ve added. You can also get the handout if you email MyMemoryPal@gmail.com (put in the title, “12 Lil Words.”)
What/Size/Number or Quantity/Sound/Color/Shape/Size/Mood/Background/ Perspective/Movement/When/ Where.
I elaborate on the V&V word list with a few of my own: Emotion/Feeling/Weather, Impressions/Significance/Contrast-Comparison/Associations/Reminiscence.
Let’s start easy with a picture of a kid in the garden picking carrots (root vegetables are
What: Kid in garden.
Size: 5′ for kiddo and medium backyard with larger potager (box) for which vegetable bed the carrots are in.
Number: one kiddo, a dozen carrots, 5 potagers.
Sounds: Birds chirpping, digging.
Colors: kiddo: blue workshirt, blue jeans, brown hair. potager: dark brown, green and orange. Technically in a conversation you would be describing each object.
Shape: Kid-oval, potager-rectangular, carrots-triangular.
Mood: Winter, rainy, wet, not really a ‘work in the garden’ day.
Background: Bare, void of green, fences, trees without leaves, clouds.
Perspective: Side angle of boy kneeling to his right.
Movement: digging.
When: Mid-day, Winter. (Note when can be time of day or season.)
Where: Outside, private residence, Silicon Valley.
I elaborate on the V&V word list with a few of my own:
Emotion/Feeling: Excited to get the first crop of root vegetables.
Impressions/Thoughts: Good crop; better hurry before it rains (this sets up the ‘mood.’)
Significance: Use them in dinner meal. (purpose adds to memory.)
What might happen next: It may rain and he would get wet.
Comparison/Contrast: The carrots are larger than last year.
Reminiscent of: Last year at this time. (sets up feeling, indelible associations between two events.)
Holiday social life application (example): You are at a Channukah party and you start talking with a women named “Mira.” You don’t have to use all the words but a few end up very helpful for remembering.
What: A woman.
Sound: She had a very melodic voice.
Color: Her hair was black and her skin was very tan.
Size: She was extremely tall and very thin.
Comparison: She is approximately 3 inches taller than I am.
Association: Her name reminds me of the Snow White “Mirror Mirror on the Wall.”
The word list is another form of memory tools to help enhance images or to ‘visualize’ something you want to remember. While the associations may not be visuals per se they enhance the visualization or perhaps elicit one such as Mira looking into the mirror!
Have some fun with this over the holidays and see how you do. It’s great to start a conversation in comments here and share your experience. Maybe you too will have something to add about a trick you discovered while trying to visualize things you want to remember.
Remember me until next time,
Jenn Bulka, Memory Specialist
MyMemoryPal.com
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