The development of a new mnemonic technique: The Autobiographical Method
Background
While the Method of Loci increases memory performance in younger people, it is less suitable for older adults. We are developing an alternative to the Method of Loci that is based on autobiographical stories instead of navigating a route through a familiar environment.
Click here to learn why the Autobiographical Method is promising for older adults
Goal & Main Research Question
The objective of this study was to develop a new mnemonic technique that leverages a form of memory that older adults excel in - remembering stories about their own lives. We compared four different presentation modes of the Autobiographical Mnemonic Technique to find out which one works best.
Methods
115 students wrote down a story from their lives split up into 10 sentences and then, under varying conditions, attempted to memorize lists of 10 random words each by incorporating them into the sentences from their autobiographical story.
The students were divided into the following groups:
- The first group inserted the to-be-remembered words into their story by re-typing the story with the words integrated.
- The second group only saw to-be-remembered words one after the other and had to incorporate them into their story without their typed story on the screen.
- The third group saw their whole story together with a to-be-remembered word on the screen.
- The fourth group each saw one of their sentences along with a to-be-remembered word on each screen.
- The fifth group was a control group that wrote down an autobiographical story but received no instructions on how to use it.
Results
Our results showed that autobiographical stories are effective mnemonic scaffolds when used as in Group 1 and 4.
Group 4 was able to connect the sentences one by one with a word with little effort and thus achieved a similarly good learning success as group 1 without having to re-type the story with the words integrated.
Groups 2 and 3 performed worse. Re-reading the sentences or studying the words without the story did not improve memory.
Relevance
Our results show how autobiographical stories must be presented along with study items to enhance memory performance.