Spatial Memory

edit

In cognitive psychology and neuroscience, spatial memory is a record of geometric relations involving observers, objects, surfaces and information about one's environment and its spatial orientation.[1] For example, a person's spatial memory is required in order to navigate around a familiar city, just as a rat's spatial memory is needed to learn the location of food at the end of a maze. It is often argued that in both humans and animals, spatial memories are summarized as a cognitive map. Spatial memory has representations within working, short-term memory and long-term memory. Research indicates that there are specific areas of the brain associated with spatial memory. Many methods are used for measuring spatial memory in children, adults, and animals.

Short-term spatial memory

edit

In cognitive psychology and neuroscience, spatial memory is the part of memory responsible for recording information about one's environment and its spatial orientation. For example, a person's spatial memory is required in order to navigate around a familiar city, just as a rat's spatial memory is needed to learn the location of food at the end of a maze. It is often argued that in both humans and animals, spatial memories are summarized as a cognitive map. Spatial memory has representations within working, short-term memory and long-term memory. Research indicates that there are specific areas of the brain associated with spatial memory, such as the Frontal lobe. Many methods are used for measuring spatial memory in children, adults, and animals.

Measuring spatial memory

edit

There are a variety of tasks that psychologists use to measure spatial memory on adults, children and animal models. Results have shown that men are better at spatial tasks, and women are better at verbal tasks.[2] These tasks allow professionals to identify cognitive irregularities in adults and children and allows researchers to administer varying types of drugs and or lesions in participants and measure the consequential effects on spatial memory.

Method of loci

edit

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Method of Loci (Loci being Latin for "palaces"), is a method of memory enhancement which uses visualizations with the use of spatial memory, familiar information about one's environment, to quickly and efficiently recall information. The Method of Loci is better known as the memory palace technique. This method is a mnemonic device adopted in ancient Roman and Greek rhetorical treatises (in the anonymous Rhetorica ad Herennium, Cicero's De Oratore, and Quintilian's Institutio Oratoria). A lot of memory contest champions claim to use this technique to recall faces, patterns, digits, and lists of words. These champions’ successes have little to do with brain structure or intelligence, but more to do with the use of spatial memory[2] and the Method of Loci.

The term is most often found in specialized works such as psychology, neurobiology, and memory, it has been used in the same general way as early as the first half of the nineteenth century in works of rhetoric, logic, and philosophy.[3] John O'Keefe and Lynn Nadel refer to:

'the method of loci', an imaginal technique known to the ancient Greeks and Romans and described by Yates (1966) in her book The Art of Memory. In this technique the subject memorizes the layout of some building, or the arrangement of shops on a street, or any geographical entity which is composed of a number of discrete loci. When desiring to remember a set of items the subject 'walks' through these loci in their imagination and commits an item to each one by forming an image between the item and any feature of that locus. Retrieval of items is achieved by 'walking' through the loci, allowing the latter to activate the desired items. The efficacy of this technique has been well established (Ross and Lawrence 1968, Crovitz 1969, 1971, Briggs, Hawkins and Crovitz 1970, Lea 1975), as the minimal interference seen with its use.[4]

The items to be remembered in this mnemonic system are mentally associated with specific physical locations.[5] The method relies on memorized spatial relationships to establish, order, and recollect memorial content. It is also known as the "Journey Method," used for storing lists of related items, or the "Roman Room"[6] technique, which is most effective for storing unrelated information.

  1. ^ Allen, Gary L. (2004). Human Spatial Memory: Remembering Where. Manwah, New Jersey: Laurence Erlbaum Associates. p. 42. ISBN 1-4106-0998-7.
  2. ^ Terry, W. Scott (2016). Learning and Memory: Basic Principles, Processes, and Procedures, Fourth Edition. London and New York: Routledge. p. 356. ISBN 9780205658626.
  3. ^ e.g. in a discussion of "topical memory" (yet another designator) Jamieson mentions that "memorial lines, or verses, are more useful than the method of loci." Alexander Jamieson, A Grammar of Logic and Intellectual Philosophy, A. H. Maltby, 1835, p112
  4. ^ O'Keefe, John; Nadel, Lynn (December 7, 1978). The Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map'. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0198572060.
  5. ^ Carlson, Neil R. (2010). Psychology the science of behaviour. Pearson Canada Inc. p. 245. ISBN 9780205645244.
  6. ^ "The Roman Room Technique". Academictips.org. Academic tips. 1996–2016. Retrieved April 12, 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: date format (link)