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Summary of Chapter 4 - Apply the Memletic Techniques
In this chapter you will discover over thirty techniques dedicated to memorizing
information and skills. These techniques will change the way you learn and remember. Some give
you immediate results. Others take time to master but also deliver bigger benefits. Either way,
you can be confident the time you spend with these techniques will improve your memory and help
you learn faster.
While there are many techniques spread throughout all parts of Memletics, this chapter
focuses on techniques you use to memorize information and skills. You use these techniques
mainly during the reinforce step of the Memletic Process.
These techniques reduce the overall amount of time you spend on learning and memorizing
material. By using them, you reduce your dependence on “rote learning”—simply reading material
over and over until it (hopefully) sinks in. The techniques may take some effort to learn,
however they pay dividends later. They help by reducing your overall study time and improving
how well you remember what have learned.
Some of the techniques I describe have been around since ancient Greek times. Many I’ve
adapted from recently written references. A few are the result of my own work and I’m publishing
them here for the first time.
To make it easier to understand and remember these techniques, I’ve grouped them into six
categories. These are:
- Associate. Use basic characteristics of memory to learn new material.
- Visualize. Use mental imagery to support goals, rehearse skills and reinforce other
techniques.
- Verbalize. Use words and writing to learn faster.
- Simulate. Simulate real-life performances using basic or advanced tools.
- Perform. Use specific techniques to learn skills and behaviors.
- Repeat. Use repetition techniques to help you lock in what you’ve learned.
The rest of this chapter covers each of these categories and associated techniques in detail.
Here is a summary of all the techniques I describe in this chapter:
| Associate |
- General association
- First letter mnemonics
- Acrostic mnemonics
- Linked lists
- Peg words
|
- Peg events
- Mental journey or story
- Roman Rooms
- Chunking
|
| Visualize |
- General visualization
- Creative visualization
|
- Mental rehearsal
- Strengthening techniques
|
| Verbalize |
- General verbalization
- Assertions
|
- Mental firewall
- Scripting
|
| Simulate |
- Basic simulation
- PC simulation
|
- Advanced simulation
- Role-playing
|
| Perform |
- Three stage skill learning
- Part task training
- Performance variation
- Overlearning
|
|
| Repeat |
|
- Scheduled review
- Programmed Repetition
|
As you can see, there are many techniques in this chapter. You may find some of them useful,
others you may not. This chapter is not a “prescription” you must follow to the letter. Feel
free to choose and use the techniques that feel comfortable. Adapt them to your current learning
activities.
Associate—link with what you already know
Before we start, here is a simple exercise. Imagine for a moment a green cat, the size of a
car, rollerblading over the Golden Gate Bridge. Seriously. Stop reading, close your eyes, and
see that image in your mind’s eye. Do this for thirty seconds. We’ll come back to this exercise
in a moment.
Previously you saw that memory is a network of neurons. The brain learns by associating new
information with existing information. It adds new networks to existing networks of neurons. We
can use this knowledge to our advantage via “association” techniques. Let’s look at another
exercise to highlight this.
> Do the creative association exercise in the appendix.
If you have just tried the exercise, you may notice it’s easier to remember the list of
fifteen items when we tied them together in a story. We associated each item in the list with
the previous one. We also associated each item with some activities we are already familiar
with, even if they don’t always make sense.
This is a simple example of association at work. Association helps you quickly memorize a
wide range of information, including lists, checklists, procedures, facts, formulas, numerical
data and more. While it may sometimes take some effort to create the association, the benefit is
longer retention.
In this section I discuss association techniques. We start out by covering some general
principles of association, as well as some basic association techniques you may already be
familiar with. We then cover linked lists, peg words and peg events. Lastly, we discuss two
Method of Loci techniques.
Many of the heavily marketed, and expensive, memory systems use association. If you are
considering buying one of these courses, check to see they are not just the same techniques in
different packaging.
Content in the book includes:
General Association Principles
- How the brain uses association by expanding existing neural networks, including
relationships, structures, hierarchies, and categories.
- What attributes of memories help longer retention, such as the senses, emotions,
situations, categorization, exaggeration and combinations. This could include using vision,
sound smell, touch, taste, symbols, movement, location, comedy, absurdity, offensive
situations, rude situations, amplification, reduction, ordering and numbering. Which emotions
to avoid, such as sadness and anger, and why.
- The steps you normally follow when first creating an association, including examples.
Covers choosing the key word, choosing target image, linking them together with a primary
attribute link, adding secondary links, and testing it out.
- Basic rules, such as purity and keeping them simple.
- Detailed example that shows how to create an association. Uses polar bears to remind us
that functions of oil are engine cooling, shock absorption, protection, cleaning, sealing and
lubricating.
- The importance of practice while learning how to associate. Association is used by those
who win the international memory championships, so with practice you can make use of
association in your own learning endeavors.
- How everyday use of association helps improve your ability to associate, similar to what
one memory author calls the “Self-Enhancing Matrix.”
- The importance of using your imagination. Younger children seem to do it well – perhaps
general pruning of neurons and synapses that occurs as we go through childhood is more to do
with our society imposing limits on a child’s imagination and creativity, rather than any
biological process.
- Some general side effects of association including higher creativity and problem solving
skills.
Basic Mnemonics
- Clarification of the word mnemonic.
- Details on two basic mnemonic techniques that you may have already come across or used.
These are first letter, or acronym, mnemonics, and acrostic mnemonics.
- An example of an aviation or flight checklist – ie how pilots use first-letter mnemonics
for checklists (the FIST pre-lineup check, for checking flaps, fuel pump, instruments,
switches and transponder)
- Another example for taking photos (how a photographer could remember to check film,
composition, focus, depth, flash, light, and surroundings, and keep the camera still).
- How acrostic mnemonics use a phrase to remember information. Examples include “Every Good
Boy Deserves Fruit” (notes on a treble clef) and “My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine
Pizzas” for represents the nine planets of the Solar System.
- How to combine them, and use of rhyme and rhythm
- Why you need to know the content behind the mnemonic before you use these techniques, and
how you can use other techniques (such as visualization) to assist this.
- A complete example of how to memorize a checklist
Linked Lists and Topics
- How a linked list uses association to link from one item from the next.
- The downside of using linked lists – breaking the chain, and how peg words overcome this.
Peg Words
- How peg words help you accurately remember numeric and list-type data with ease.
- Standard uses of peg words, such as, lists of items, phone numbers, numerical data,
specifications, personal identification numbers (PINs), and more.
- Covers what peg words are, how they are made up using phonetic sounds, and the use of
consonants and vowels?
- Includes peg words for one to one hundred (1 to 100)
- Examples of using peg words for lists, numbers, telephone numbers, and more
- Tips for using peg words
- How to use destruction to remember particular items in a peg word list.
Peg Events
- How peg events help you remember to do something at a particular point in time.
- Some typical peg events that you can start with, such as before leaving for work, before
going to bed, arriving at the supermarket, getting into the car, meeting someone for the first
time, arriving at school, docking a yacht, etc
- How create and use peg events.
Method of Loci
- The origins of the method of loci—from ancient Greek times. Orators, philosophers and
others had to rely on memory for retaining speeches and knowledge in general
- How the method of loci works—associating information with specific locations, or loci.
- Typical locations you can use. How to select them. Examples of larger structures, such as
creating mental buildings, towns, palaces and cities.
- Includes general principles, and two common techniques – the mental journey or story
technique, and the “Roman Rooms” technique.
- General principles include how to select locations and guidelines for size, brightness,
details, dynamic objects, familiarity
- Mental journey or story technique – how to associate items along a path or journey (eg a
train route). Includes basic steps to create a mental journey, as well as an example of
memorizing six key points in a sales presentation. The example links points such as delivering
savings to their business, improving product quality, addressing key concerns of staff,
reducing wastage etc, with your normal morning routine of getting out of bed, brushing teeth,
eating breakfast and walking out the door.
- Roman rooms – similar to mental journey except locations are based on objects in a room.
General principles for using this technique, as well as ideas for extending it. For example,
create your own learning campus for your topic.
Chunking
- How to use chunking to match characteristics of working memory. The guideline of using
“seven plus or minus two” items in a chunk.
- Includes a specific example for points on how to conduct good presentations.
Visualize—see your lessons in your mind’s eye
What your mind sees, it believes! There are many books dedicated solely to visualization and
mental imagery. You can use visualization for improving memory, restoring health, reducing
stress, increasing relaxation and motivation, improving sport performances, and more. Three main
uses of visualization we discuss here include:
- Motivation. Creative visualization is a great way to see a possible future and move
yourself towards it.
- Mental practice or rehearsal. Mental practice or mental rehearsal is complementary
to real practice. Mental practice can also be cost-effective and safer.
- Reinforcing other techniques. Visualization is a powerful way to strengthen other
techniques, such as association and scripting.
Visualization works because certain areas of the mind cannot distinguish between what you see
with your eyes and what you see in your mind. You can manipulate your mind and body to believe
what you are visualizing is real. Want a simple example? Read the following script then close
your eyes and visualize it.
You are in a garden somewhere, with a lemon tree, a table and a knife. Relax and breathe in
the fresh country air. See through your own eyes as you walk over to the lemon tree. You pick
the biggest lemon you can find.
Bring the lemon back to the table, and then use the knife to cut it into quarters. Take one
of the quarters, and bring it up to your nose. Smell the tangy smell.
Now, take the biggest bite you possibly can out of the lemon. Chew it and taste the lemon
juice in your mouth. Squeeze your eyes shut tight. Feel the edges of your mouth sting slightly
from the acid. Do the same with the rest of the lemon.
It’s likely that your mouth is salivating after you visualize this. Check! Is your mouth
watering? What this simple exercise shows is that many parts of your brain and body cannot
distinguish between what you see in your mind versus what is real. Your body reacted as if you
did bite into that lemon. Your mind can alter the state of your body.
Similarly, visualizing outcomes you want can change the way your body and mind react to the
environment around you. You see opportunities that you didn’t think were there before. You start
to behave and think differently. You have a better chance of achieving that outcome.
In this section I first discuss some general visualization principles. We then look at the
techniques that support motivation, allow mental practice, and reinforce other techniques.
Content in the book includes:
General Visualization Principles
- Outline of visualization, and other names for visualization such as mental imagery, mental
movies, eidetic thinking, mental pictures, and “seeing with the mind's eye.”
- Whether it’s important to see images on the back of your eyelids.
- How the words “visualization” and “imagery” are in some ways misleading. What other senses
can you include in visualization?
- Steps for visualizing, including prepare, visualize, and finish.
- The Prepare step includes good state (including positive expectancy, concentration, and
relaxation), notes to prepare, what position to take, time requirements, and how to deal with
distractions.
- The Visualize step includes tips such as verbalizing steps, whether to use an internal or
external perspective, which senses to use, whether to use interference and variability, how to
visualize with compelling inevitability, and experiments with field of vision.
- The Finish step includes some basic activities to do after your visualization exercise.
- Further tips on visualizing include whether to keep eyes open or closed, what to do with
fleeting images, being aware of diminishing returns, what timeframes to use (eg whether to
accelerate or slow down images).
Motivational—Creative Visualization
- How creative visualization can bring change into your life through your imagination.
- Outlines the five basic steps to creative visualization – set your goal, create a clear
idea or picture, focus on it often, give it positive feelings, and congratulate yourself when
you have achieved your goal.
- How to use creative visualization for specific purposes, such as confirming goals,
changing attitudes, maintaining health, and rewriting your past.
- What is creative dissonance, when does it arise, and how to work through it.
- Uses of imagery in dealing with health issues. Others have used visualization for issues
such as psychological distress, chemotherapy related distress, pain control, insomnia, and
immune system enhancement.
Mental Practice or Rehearsal
- How to rehearse an activity in the absence of physical movement.
- Examples of its use in sports through other books such as “Inner Golf” or “Inner Tennis.”
- How mental practice or rehearsal also can be applied to other learning objectives,
especially to high cost activities such as flying.
- How researchers are yet to work out why mental practice works. Some common theories are
psychoneuromuscular theory (that mental practice stimulates the same muscular pathways as does
actual practice), the cognitive learning theory (mental practice helps establish counterpart
mental nodes to physical nodes in the brain), and the symbolic learning theory (mental
practice is a coding system for new skills). Are any of these correct?
- Whether mental practice is more, less or as effective as physical practice.
- Why do mental practice? Is it more time and cost efficient? Can it go places where actual
practice is too dangerous or prohibitive? Uses examples from aviation (landing practice) and
driving to highlight specific points.
- Principles to use when applying mental practice, such as vividness, controllability,
exactness of reference, timing, and concentration.
Strengthening Techniques
- How you can use visualization to strengthen the other techniques, including associate,
visualize, verbalize, simulate, perform and repeat techniques.
Verbalize—assert your learning with words
In the Memletic State chapter, I discussed in how your internal dialogue influences your
overall performance. This is because your internal dialogue influences your self-talk,
self-esteem and self-image. You often act in a way that matches your self-image.
In this section I discuss three techniques you can use to adjust, improve and protect your
self-talk. These have a direct effect on your self-image, and therefore your behavior.
Assertions are simple statements of something you want to uphold or achieve. The Mental Firewall
helps you control self-talk. Scripting involves writing down a story that reflects a learning
objective. Let’s go through these in more detail.
Three key reasons for using the Verbalize techniques are:
- Changing negative patterns into positive patterns. A key step in achieving good
learning and task performance is to ensure your internal dialogue supports your activities.
Use these techniques to change your internal dialogue from negative to positive.
- Set a positive context. You can use these techniques to set an overall positive
context to your activities. This includes setting a positive context for general and specific
goals. This also includes setting positive expectations for mental abilities such as learning,
concentration, proactive behavior, discipline and attitudes.
- Learn and support specific behaviors. You can apply these techniques while learning
new skills and behaviors. For example, during flight training I built up a list of eighty
assertions based on previous flight reviews. These were positive statements such as “I check
map scale when looking for features” and “I ensure I engage the park brake before starting the
engine.” These had a significant impact on my learning performance.
Verbalize techniques also allow you to keep full control over the process and content, which
is different to techniques such as hypnotism or subliminal messages.
Content in the book includes:
Assertions
- What are assertions? How do you use them to reduce negative self-talk and increase
positive self-talk? How you can also use them to change behaviors.
- Includes examples of assertions.
- How often you should use assertions, and how long do they take to start working?
- Covers tips for creating assertions, such as whether to use first person, whether you
should be positive and present, how long they should be, can rhythm help, and whether to
record them.
- Covers tips for reciting assertions, such as use of relaxation, using general assertions
at the start and end, whether you should say them aloud, where to receipt them, and whether to
visualize them at the same time.
- General tips included are using them to encourage positive dialog, how to avoid seeing
assertions as being self-delusional, and whether they can be used to change someone else’s
behavior.
Mental Firewall
- What is a mental firewall, how it provides monitoring and filtering services, and how you
can use this to clean up your own internal dialog? Covers how it can monitor and filter both
your own thoughts and the comments of others.
- How to install a mental firewall in your mind, and how to configure it. No, it doesn’t
require surgery either.
Scripting
- The core concept of scripting is to write a story-like script of an outcome you desire in
the future.
- How to use this powerful tool to strengthen both assertions and visualization.
- General principles of scripting, such as whether to write in first or third person, should
you read them out loud, whether to use visualization, and whether to use other senses in your
writing.
- How to use scripting for goal setting. Includes an example goal script.
- How to use scripting to reinforce learning and performance via review scripts. What is a
review script, how to apply it to your learning activity, and other general tips.
Simulate—use tools and people to stimulate your learning
In the section on visualization we discussed mental practice, or strengthening task
performance by visualizing the task in our mind. Simulation instead uses external aids to help
you practice tasks and skills. These aids provide varying versions of the full task environment.
Simulation works because it provides many of the same cues the real environment does, to which
you need to respond to correctly.
Simulation is effective. This is why airlines spend millions of dollars on simulators to
train pilots. However, this section shows how you can gain many of the benefits of simulation by
using readily accessible equipment and people.
In this section, I talk about two forms of simulation. Task simulation is one, and this is
the focus of this section. I also talk about using role-playing, or “role simulation.”
Content in the book includes:
Key benefits and implications of simulation
- What are the basic benefits of simulation? Is it cost effective, does it provide a good
training environment, does it support variability and part task training?
- The importance of getting the right instruction, and how to avoid negative transfer.
The role of fidelity
- What is fidelity, and does higher fidelity lead to better training? What about the
importance of cues, cuing or prompting in the training environment?
Using Simulators
- Covers three general types of simulators that you can potentially use in skill-based
training. These are, basic simulators that involve simple objects and your imagination,
simulators running on personal computers, and full scale simulators.
- Can you also use the actual equipment (eg an aircraft or vehicle) for simulation purposes?
- How to create and use basic simulators, including a specific example on creating an
aircraft cockpit using standard household objects. For the aircraft example, see how to create
the yoke, throttle, mixture control, switches, flap and trim control, radios and transponders
using a desk, glasses, books, bulldog clips, saucepans, clock radios etc.
- Using PC-based simulators, not only for flight training, but also for sailing, surgery,
photography, marketing, management, military & war, cars, trucks, trains, building &
construction, ships, weather forecasting, and more.
- Also includes specific tips on using simulators, including the importance of upfront
instruction, not becoming reliant on simulation, and using it as a supplement to actual
training.
Using Role Simulation (Role Playing)
- Use other people for role playing.
- Examples where you can use role playing, such as for sailing, flight training, and
negotiation, sales and communication training.
Perform—for skills and behaviors
The set of techniques described in this section specifically help you learn skills and
behaviors. Let’s look at these in summary before going into more detail.
Three-stage skill learning is the normal way of learning most skills. To learn complex
skills, it’s usually helpful to break the skill down into parts. This is “part task training.”
You can improve your skill learning by deliberately introducing task variation and task
interference into your training, as long as it’s “in context.” You can also improve retention of
skills via a technique called Overlearning.
Sometimes you need to change an already learned behavior. This is not as easy as it might
seem. You need to follow some specific steps to “shunt” from one response to another. Lastly,
you can heighten your overall performance by modeling and anchoring.
This section covers all these techniques in further detail. Read on to find out more.
Note that if you take on a pre-designed training program for complex skills, it’s likely the
course designers incorporated many of these techniques into your lessons. There is usually still
room for you to apply these techniques yourself. If your training program lacks these
techniques, you can benefit from adding these techniques yourself.
Contents in the book include:
Three Stage Skill Acquisition
- An outline of the process of learning of a new skill, including the cognitive stage (a
declarative or verbal representation of rules), the associative stage (turning those
procedures and rules into implicit behaviors), to the autonomous stage (automatic performance
of the skill).
- Tips on how to apply this theory with practical examples. When to rely on memory
techniques, and when to reduce that reliance.
Part Task Training: Divide and Conquer
- How to learn more complex skills using part task training. Provides the basic concepts
behind this technique.
- The three general steps to follow when using part task training. Details on how to
decompose the task into manageable subtasks, practice each of those subtasks, and then
recombine the subtasks to perform the overall task.
- How to decompose tasks based on complexity or difficulty of the task, as well as the level
of integration with other tasks.
- How you can use timing or location to help decompose sequence based tasks. You may also be
able to split it by cognitive processes such as concept learning, perceptual detection, motor
coordination, rule following, and problem solving.
- When decomposing tasks is not effective, eg due to timing or overlap.
- Describes three approaches for practicing the various components – simplifying,
fractionating, and segmenting. Simplifying describes how to modify or eliminate certain task
demands, fractionating describes separate practice on task components, and segmenting
describes splitting tasks into temporal or spatial components.
- Describes four approaches for recombining subtasks into performance of the overall task.
These are pure part, progressive part, repetitive part, and backward chaining.
Performance Variation: Use Contextual Variety and Interference
- Describes how you can increase your performance and aid longer term retention of material
using task variation and task interference techniques.
- Explains how to use context to ensure optimum use of these techniques.
- Includes some comments on the effect of these techniques on performance during training as
well as the longer term.
Overlearning: Go beyond standard performance
- How to improve your retention by what is called overlearning—learning material past the
point of general understanding or standard performance.
- Can you apply this technique to theoretical knowledge as well as practical skills?
- General tips for applying overlearning.
Shunt: Changing Habits and Behaviors
- Describes a powerful technique for changing established habits or behaviors.
- Describes the five steps of the shunt technique – inspection, comparison, correction,
pre-correction, and reinforcement.
- Includes a worked example for a common bad habit – chipping or biting fingernails.
Enhancing skills and behaviors using state
- How tasks and procedures you do are influenced by your mental state at the time, and how
to change your state to provide optimum performance.
- Describes two common techniques for managing the state you are in during task
performance—anchoring and modeling.
- Anchoring description includes examples of what you can model (confidence, peak
performance, strength, happiness etc), as well as comments on when modeling doesn’t work that
well. Includes specific steps for creating an anchor, as well as examples of usage (such as
public speaking, dealing with the opposite sex, overcoming past issues, and before and after
exams. Also includes comments on anchoring during performance, as well as the use of
pre-performance patterns or rituals.
- Modeling description includes when and how to use modeling and specific steps (such as
finding an expert, eliciting their strategy, modeling it yourself, testing it etc). Includes
examples of what to elicit and model, including breathing (including rate, volume and pauses),
heart rate, posture, muscular tension, eye movements, voice, body language, general movement,
level and focus of attention, relaxation, awareness, reaction time, mental steps and
processes, etc
- Includes a specific example contrasting the state of a student pilot versus an instructor.
Repeat—techniques to lock in content
In the reinforce step of the Memletic Process, I discuss how important repetition is to the
overall learning process, with some specific guidelines for incorporating repetition. While we
aim to rely less on repetition as a learning technique, it’s still an important ingredient in
any learning program.
In this section I outline four specific techniques that rely mainly on repetition. These are
rote learning, flashcards, scheduled review and programmed repetition. The first three are
standard techniques in use today. Programmed repetition is a relatively new technique that I
believe provides great benefits for many learning objectives. Read on to find out more.
Content in the book includes:
Rote Learning
- Yes, sometimes there is information that you can only learn by repeated review.
- You should be able to keep rote learning to a minimum by creative use of other techniques
outlined in this book.
Flash Cards
What are flash cards, or Paired Associate Learning (PAL)?
- How to set them up and use them.
- General tips for using flash cards, such as when and how often you should use them, how to
organize large groups of cards, whether you should use them in a particular order, how to
handle more difficult cards, and using other techniques to help you remember them.
Scheduled Review
- How to use a review calendar or spreadsheet to keep track of all the review you should be
doing.
Programmed Repetition Tools
- Learn about a more powerful way to manage the repetition process—using software
specifically for this purpose.
- Discusses one example of this software called SuperMemo, and its potential impact on the
way you can learn and remember information.
- Provides a number of tips, in addition to the many tips already on the SuperMemo website.
A rollerblading cat? Potential issues with techniques
When we discussed the Associate techniques, I asked you to visualize a cat rollerblading over
the Golden Gate Bridge. This example highlights the simple nature of association, however many
of the techniques I’ve described in this book need practice and experience to make them work
effectively for you.
Sometimes you may find that a technique doesn’t work as well as what you expected. Or, your
associations are not so easy to recall when you need them. While these techniques help remember
content far longer than usual practices, they still need review. Lastly, it’s important not to
go overboard.
Let’s look at some common issues with using these techniques.
Content in the book includes:
- Specific ideas for what to do when a technique doesn’t work as you expect.
- Not following the basic rules, eg during association not linking items from first to
second, not being creative enough in the links, or not visualizing the association after
creating it.
- Contains a specific example to demonstrate these points, linking a camera to a bus (the
peg word for 90).
- Not following the general repetition and review rules.
- Getting carried away with the techniques, and trying to memorize everything (“the WOW
factor”)
- Where to get more help on the techniques.
Alternative Spellings
A number of key words in this chapter are spelt differently in the various flavors of
English. These include:
- memorise, memorising, memorised
- visualise, visualising, visualisation, visualised
- verbalise, verbalising, verbalisation, verbalised
- categorise, categorising, categorisation, categorised.
- behaviours, behaviour
- modelling
- organise, organising, organisation
Chapter summary
In this chapter you saw over thirty techniques you can use to memorize information and
skills. I grouped them into the six categories so you can remember them more easily. These are
the associate, visualize, verbalize, simulate, perform and repeat categories of techniques.
You saw that association is a fundamental memory skill. It underlies many of the other
techniques, and works well because it uses basic memory principles. I described for you the
basic rules of association, as well as some techniques that use it. These include basic
mnemonics, linked lists, peg words and events, method of loci, and chunking techniques.
Next we discussed visualization. You read about general visualization principles, and then we
considered how you can use it for visualizing goals and strengthening the other techniques. You
can also use visualization for mental practice.
The Verbalize techniques rely on using words, both spoken and written, to change your
internal dialog. You saw how to create and use assertions, scripts and a mental firewall to
change your self-talk and behaviors.
Simulation helps you practice skills and procedures using external aids. We looked at basic
simulators that use household objects to help you learn. We considered PC-based simulators, and
saw that you can use PC simulators for a wide range of activities, not just flight simulation.
We also reviewed simulation using other people, or role-playing.
We use simulation to help learn skills, and the next section on Perform techniques covered
skill-learning in much detail. I gave you an outline of how we learn new skills using a “three
stage skill learning” model. You then found out about part task training, a technique often used
for learning complex skills. We discussed Task Variation and Task Interference techniques, what
overlearning means, and the shunt technique for changing behaviors. You also saw how to use
anchoring and modeling to manage state during performance.
Repetition is fundamental for learning, and so the last techniques, the repetition
techniques, gave you ways to use repetition effectively. We quickly looked at rote learning and
flashcards, and then looked in more depth at repetition techniques such as scheduled repetition
and programmed repetition. You saw how software like SuperMemo could change how you remember
information for the long term.
Lastly, we covered some potential issues that may arise when using these techniques. We
looked at what to do if a technique doesn’t work, what can happen if you don’t associate
correctly, and two other points that can help you fix technique problems.
In the next chapter, we look at Memletic Styles. You will discover you own learning styles
using the styles questionnaire. The rest of the chapter looks at how to make the most of both
your dominant and secondary styles.
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