Eminem2 Wrote:aldebrn Wrote:That was exactly my problem. I was practicing only keyword-to-kanji like Heisig advocated, and waiting for the reverse to take care of itself, but it wasn't:
Interesting how different people can be. In my experience, the "reverse" does "take care of itself" (as Heisig puts it), but the keyword-to-Kanji is far more difficult.
I've been reading a little bit about how to make effective visual mnemonics and I think I may have been doing it wrong. Ken Higbee in his
Your Memory 2nd ed, page 104--107, says:
Kenneth Higbee Wrote:Research has been done on three factors that can help to make your visual associations effective—interaction, vividness, and bizarreness.
...
Visual imagery by itself is not maximally effective. To make visual association effective, your imagery must both be "visual" and involve "association." The two items you are associating should be pictured as interacting in some way with each other (one of them doing something to or with the other), rather than as merely sitting next to each other or one on top of the other. For example, if you were associating the words dog and broom it would be better to picture a dog sweeping with a broom than to picture a dog standing by a broom.
You should try to see your mental pictures as clearly as possible. For example, if you are associating the words dog and broom you should not just think about the two words together or think about the idea of a dog sweeping with a broom, but you should try to actually see the dog sweeping with the broom in your mind's eye. People who are not accustomed to visualizing (and many adults are not) may find that it helps at firs t if they close their eyes when trying to see the mental picture. It also seems to help if you make the mental picture detailed. What kind of dog is it? What kind of broom? Where is he sweeping? What is he sweeping? Picture a dachshund sweeping mud off your porch with a pushbroom; or a bulldog sweeping food off the kitchen floor with a straw broom.
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In addition to detail, three suggestions that are frequently recommended to help make visual associations effective are aimed at making them more vivid:
1. Motion. See the picture in action (the dog is sweeping with the broom, not just holding it).
2 . Substitution. See one item in place of the other (you are sweeping with a dog instead of a broom, or a broom is coming out of a doghouse).
3 . Exaggeration. See one or both of the items exaggerated in size or number (a Chihuahua is sweeping with a giant broom, or a large St. Bernard is us ing a small whisk broom).
...
Most of the studies have found no difference between bizarre and plausible images in their effectiveness, but a few studies have found that bizarre images were more effective than plausible images under some conditions, and a few have found that bizarre images were less effective. ... When bizarreness does help, it may be because bizarre images also incorporate other factors that help memory, such as interaction, vividness, uniqueness, and time. Some studies have found that bizarreness can be confounded with interaction; some interacting images may almost have to be bizarre in order to involve interaction (for example, it is hard to think of a plausible picture showing an elephant and a piano interacting).
I've just started making my stories more interacting and detailed, I will see if that improves the kanji recognition. (I'm also incorporating a couple of other memorist techniques he describes in the book, so the effects of those will be confounded with just increasing the interaction/detail, but if it works, I'll willingly accept uncertainty about the true causal factor
.)
