Bizarre images in artificial memory

Abstract

Recent work on the ancient art of artificial memory, in which first a set of places is memorized and then things or words are “;put in those places with bizarre images,”; has shown that S need not first commit a set of places to memory, but instead may successfully use a set of locations arbitrarily selected and provided by E. In the present study arbitrary “;memory loci”; and “;bizarre images”; are provided by E. Fifty Ss learned a mean of 17 of 20 words in their correct sequence in one trial, using an arbitrary list of locations as memory loci and a set of specially constructed sentences as bizarre images. Thus, neither self produced memory loci nor self-produced bizarre images are a necessary part of the artificial memory process. © 1970, Psychonomic Journals, Inc.. All rights reserved.