HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015781.jpg

Body Language & Banter
91

benefit from a narrative structure. Let me give you a basic example. One
simple trick the human brain uses is chunking. Give yourself a moment
to try to learn this string of characters.

HALTNTIBMGTATLAMATLOLPOMSGTG

TRY TO MEMORIZE THE STRING WITHOUT READING ON

Now, if I divide it into chunks, you will see it includes meaningful
information.

HAL TNT IBM GTA TLA MAT LOL POMS GTG

You probably won’t recognize all the acronyms unless you are
under 10. Even then, you will find memorizing it hard, but if you put the
sequence into the context of a story then it is much easier to learn.
HAL uses TNT to blow up the IBM building in Grand Theft Auto.
“Three Letter Acronyms are annoying,” says MAT. I’m Laughing Out
Loud; Parents Over My Shoulder. Got To Go.
We find it easier to fit new information into existing structures
within our brains rather than memorizing by rote. I’ve used quite a
bit of modern Internet slang here. You’ll find young people recall this
information better than older people for whom GTG and POMS are
nonsense.
If you want to memorize something, experts recommend you
imagine bizarre images and relate them to a story pictured in the mind’s
eye. Try it and you may very well find you can still remember my sentence
in ten years time!
Let’s try something else. The following sentences are a little different,
yet the recall scores for information in the two are dramatically different:

1. I met an old tramp on 42nd Street wearing a dirty grey rain coat.

2. New York on a cold damp November day; as I cross the street
I bump into an old man wearing a dirty grey Macintosh. His
shuffling gait suggests some sordid intent. I think nothing of it,
but this brief meeting was to change my life.

HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015781