Evidence for The "WOW" factor #

Every substantive claim on the The "WOW" factor page is checked against current research. Here is each claim, how well today’s evidence supports it, and the sources. The full, de-duplicated source list lives on the references page.

Supported · moderate evidence — Mnemonic/memory techniques give you the ability to ‘memorize anything you want to’ — e.g. every specification of an aircraft or boat.

The most cited mnemonic (method of loci) does produce large recall gains for arbitrary, list-like material, consistent with the page’s ‘wow’ premise. But the same review rates the underlying evidence as low-to-very-low quality (89.2% of experiments at high risk of bias) and notes capacity constraints (e.g. a recommended ~two-item-per-locus limit) — so ‘memorize anything’ is an overstatement of a genuinely strong but bounded effect.

Sources: Ondřej (2025), Brit. J. Psychol. 116(4):930-986, doi:10.1111/bjop.12799 · PMID 40457944

Supported · moderate evidence — Mnemonic/memory techniques give you the ability to ‘memorize anything you want to’ — e.g. every specification of an aircraft or boat.

Confirms ordinary people can be trained to memorize ’tremendous amounts’ of material, but qualifies the page: the ability is not free or automatic — it requires extensive (multi-week) training and applies best to arbitrary information, not unlimited content.

Sources: Dresler-group fMRI study, bioRxiv 2025.02.24.639840 v2 · cf. Dresler et al. (2017) Neuron ‘Mnemonic Training Reshapes Brain Networks’, PMC5439266

Supported · moderate evidence — Just because you can memorize something doesn’t mean you should — it is often better to memorize selectively and reference low-value detail (e.g. a battery serial number) elsewhere; the goal is the speed and quality of learning, not the quantity memorized.

Empirically backs the page’s caution: being able to recall a memorized item is not the same as understanding or applying it. Supports prioritizing quality/depth over sheer quantity of memorized facts.

Sources: JSE (2024), doi:10.1080/26939169.2024.2334905, n=1323

Supported · strong evidence — Just because you can memorize something doesn’t mean you should — it is often better to memorize selectively and reference low-value detail (e.g. a battery serial number) elsewhere; the goal is the speed and quality of learning, not the quantity memorized.

The benchmark utility review rates keyword mnemonics and imagery as low-utility (narrow materials, short retention), reinforcing the page’s point that memorizing everything is the wrong goal — depth/comprehension and retrieval practice generalize better. Note this is 2013, but its conclusions remain the field consensus and are echoed by the 2024-2025 sources here.

Sources: Dunlosky et al. (2013) PSPI 14(1):4-58 · consistent with Ondřej (2025) BJP framing of MoL within levels-of-processing

Supported · moderate evidence — You should not use every technique; pick the ones that suit your training material (i.e. match the strategy to the material/task rather than applying all techniques uniformly).

Supports the page’s advice that strategy choice should depend on the material: a strategy that helps for one type of content can be unhelpful for another, so a one-size-fits-all ‘use every technique’ approach is not optimal. (Paraphrase of the article’s argument; effect-size specifics not quoted here.)

Sources: Pyke, Lunau & Javadi (2025) QJEP, doi:10.1177/17470218241308143 · cognitive load theory: Sweller element-interactivity framework