Making a Salad With My Lawnmower

The method of using mental imagery to help remember is so useful and important to help me to remember important, and sometimes not so important things. After reading the lesson on Visual Imagery, it became so clear to me that I was already practicing this in my every day life. Visual imagery is also known to serve as a powerful retrieval cue for memory. In fact, one method that has been used to improve memory is based on the relationship between mental imagery and memory (Pennsylvania State University, 2014 Lesson 12 P8).

I have a pretty good memory but as time goes on it does seem to falter, just a bit. The lesson notes explain the idea behind the method of loci is that we can relate items we want to remember (parts of a speech, grocery list, etc.) to a location that we know well (Pennsylvania State University, 2014 Lesson 12 P8). This is exactly what I do when preparing a trip to the store. Just recently the grocery store that I go to completely rearranged its store. The cereal wasn’t where it used to be or the bread, and the same with the paper towels. Before the overhaul, I could do my shopping with my eyes closed because I could visually see every item that I needed and it’s location in the store when I made my list. According to Roland & Friberg, they explain how the occipital lobe is involved with the processing of incoming sensory information and parts of the temporal lobe are involved with object recognition. They found that when we are mentally visualizing something, our perceptual system behaves as if we are looking at the real thing (Roland & Friberg, 1985).

Now I had to use a map of the store that the store manager handed out during the “Grand Re-Opening”. Re training my brain to remember how the new store was laid out was tricky and I still have trouble sometimes. But, I have trained my mind to find things that I use often as opposed to seldom items.

The notes explain an amazing way to remember things by creating a visual cue with a place that is familiar like my house, the street I live on or any cue that would spark my memory to an item that I want to remember. By visually imagining places of familiarity with what ever I want to remember will to put together a memory as to remember what ever it is I want to remember like my door as a box of cereal or my garage filled with eggs. So when I get to the store (say that’s my destination) I will imagine walking into my front door and remember that I need cereal or pulling into my garage and think, “eggs!”

This type of memory recall can have an extreme impact on the brain and creating some very significant cues for remembering. It will be fun for my next trip to the grocery store to think of my lawn mower when I need to pick up items for a salad.

 

Reference:

Goldstein, B. (2011). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research and Everyday Experience, 3rd Edition. Wadsworth, Inc.

The Pennsylvania State University (2014). Commentary. Lesson 12: Visual Imagery. Retrieved from https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/fa14/psych256/001/content/13_lesson/08_page.html

2 thoughts on “Making a Salad With My Lawnmower

  1. Breanna Michelle Meade

    I enjoyed your post because using visual imagery is something I need to do each time I go to the grocery store, as well! Most of the time I am simply trying to visualize my list because I am the type of person who writes the entire list, only to leave it at home when I go to the store! In order to remember what items I need, I try to visualize what I was looking at on my desk while writing the list and thinking of what to buy. I also try to visualize what my fridge looked like that morning when I opened the door, and, more specifically, what was missing.

    If this process fails, I even use the process of working backward, or “starting from the goal state and work backward step-by-step until we reach the initial state” (Pennsylvania State University, 2014, Lesson 13, pg. 10). That is to say that I think of exactly what meals I planned to cook with the things I planning on buying before I forgot my list at home and then break them down by the ingredients necessary. It is funny that I have more systems for remembering my grocery list than anything else. Perhaps I should find a way to not forget my list instead?

    Aside from just grocery list items, can you think of anything else you use visual imagery for? I feel that I used it for most of my daily life. For example, I often forget what I am doing when I am halfway down a hallway at work and try to recall what I was just looking at when I decided to go do whatever it was I was doing. Another example is simply remembering what I need to do that day. I will know that I need to go to the doctor, school, and work that day, but in order to not forget any of the things, I focus on having three things to do that day. I visualize the number three and think about it repeatedly throughout the day. This helps me to not forget to do any of those three things.

    References
    The Pennsylvania State University (2014). Commentary. Lesson 13: Problem Solving. Retrieved fromhttps://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/fa14/psych256/002/content/14_lesson/10_page.html

  2. Kimberly M Sholley

    Hi Wendi, it made me happy to read your post about your visualizing of the grocery store because I do the exact same thing. I even go so far as to organize my list in order of the isles at the store (sad, but true). About a year ago, our local Kroger took over the neighboring CVS and completely turned my grocery world upside down, so I can sympathize with you there. I’ve been fascinated for a while with visual imagery and memory tactics. Did you know there’s an annual memory competition, both in the US and worldwide? It’s crazy to think people devote their lives to memorizing strings of numbers or letters. Here’s a path to a rather fascinating article where the author trains for a memory competition, just for fun: http://lifehacker.com/5897708/how-to-train-your-brain-and-boost-your-memory-like-a-usa-memory-champion
    It’s actually a pretty fun read.d

Leave a Reply