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Memory Techniques That Actually Work

Chunking, the method of loci, elaboration and retrieval practice — which memory techniques have support, and the important limit on what any of them do.

Reign Creative Team4 min read

Key takeaways

  • Retrieval practice — testing yourself rather than re-reading — is among the best-supported study techniques in the research literature.
  • Spacing repetitions over time substantially outperforms cramming the same amount of study into one session.
  • Chunking works by reducing the number of separate items to hold, which is why grouped digits are easier than a long string.
  • The method of loci is a genuine technique with a long history; it is effective for ordered lists and does not generalise to everything.
  • The important limit: these techniques improve how well you remember specific material, not your general memory capacity.

The techniques with the strongest support are the least exciting ones: test yourself, and spread the testing out. The visually memorable techniques — memory palaces, vivid imagery — are real and narrower in application than their reputation suggests.

Here is what has support, what each is for, and the limit that applies to all of them.

Retrieval practice

Attempt to recall the material rather than re-reading it.

This is consistently among the highest-rated techniques in reviews of study methods. The Dunlosky review in Psychological Science in the Public Interest assessed a range of common learning techniques against the evidence and found practice testing among the most effective.

It is also among the least popular, for a specific reason: re-reading feels effective and is not. Familiarity feels like knowledge. Retrieval feels harder because it reveals what you cannot recall — which is exactly the information you need.

Practically: cover the answer. Try to produce it. Then check.

Spacing

Spread repetitions over time rather than massing them together.

Distributed practice substantially outperforms massed practice for verbal recall — the effect synthesised across a large body of studies by Cepeda and colleagues.

The practical form: three short sessions across three days beat one session three times as long. This is the mechanism behind spaced-repetition systems, covered in spaced repetition for language learning.

Retrieval and spacing combine well, and together they account for most of what a good study routine does.

Chunking

Group items so there are fewer separate things to hold.

A ten-digit number is hard as ten digits and easy as three or four groups. The groups become the items, and the number of items is what constrains short-term memory.

This is why phone numbers are written in groups, why card numbers are spaced, and why memorising a formula as three meaningful parts beats memorising it as a string of symbols.

The requirement is meaning. Arbitrary grouping helps a little; grouping into units that mean something helps a lot, because each chunk is retrieved as one thing.

Elaboration

Connect new material to something you already know.

Asking "why is this true?" or "how does this relate to that?" produces better retention than repeating the fact. The mechanism is that you are creating more routes to retrieve it later.

This is why explaining something to someone else works so well as revision: explanation forces elaboration.

The method of loci

Associate items with locations along a familiar route.

The technique is ancient, genuinely effective for its purpose, and narrower than its reputation. It is well suited to ordered lists — sequences you need to recall in order — because the route supplies the order.

It is poorly suited to conceptual understanding, skills, or material where the relationships between items matter more than their sequence. Building a memory palace for something you need to understand is effort spent on the wrong problem.

Use it for: ordered lists, speeches, sequences of steps. Do not use it for: anything you need to be able to apply flexibly.

The limit that applies to all of them

This is the part most articles on this subject leave out, and it matters.

These techniques improve how well you remember the material you applied them to. They do not increase your general memory capacity.

Someone who trains extensively on digit memorisation becomes very good at memorising digits. The evidence that this transfers to unrelated abilities is weak. The meta-analytic review of working memory training by Melby-Lervåg and Hulme is one of several analyses finding limited evidence for transfer to broader cognitive abilities.

We build a memory game, and we still think that is the honest summary. Working memory and training covers the literature in more detail, including the dissenting findings and the regulatory action taken against overclaiming in this industry.

The practical implication is not that the techniques are useless. It is that the correct expectation is "I will remember this material better", not "my memory will improve".

A workable routine

  1. Encode with meaning. Chunk it, connect it to something known, understand it rather than memorising the surface.
  2. Test yourself. Immediately, then again.
  3. Space the tests. Increasing intervals.
  4. Attend to failures. The items you got wrong are where the remaining work is; the ones you got right need less attention than they usually receive.

That is most of what a good study method does. The elaborate techniques are additions to it, not replacements for it.

Making the routine survive contact with an ordinary week is a separate problem, covered in building a daily practice habit.

Where our app fits

Mental Math & Memory Games provides short, repeated practice with immediate feedback — the retrieval-and-spacing shape described above, applied to arithmetic and memory tasks.

It is free to download on Google Play, supported by ads, with optional in-app purchases and an Everyone content rating.

What we will not claim: that it makes you smarter, improves your memory generally, or transfers to unrelated abilities. The published evidence does not support those claims, and we would rather have a smaller accurate claim than a larger unsupportable one.

Estimation techniques explained and multiplication shortcuts explained cover the arithmetic side. The rest is under education and brain games.

Good to know

Frequently asked questions

What is the best-supported memory technique?
Retrieval practice — attempting to recall material rather than re-reading it. It is consistently among the highest-rated techniques in reviews of study methods, and it is also one of the least popular with students because it feels harder.
What is chunking?
Grouping individual items into larger units so there are fewer things to hold. A ten-digit number is easier to remember as three or four groups than as ten separate digits, because the groups are the items.
Does the method of loci work?
Yes, for what it is designed for. Associating items with locations along a familiar route is effective for remembering ordered lists. It is a specific tool rather than a general memory improvement.
Do memory techniques improve general memory?
No, and this is the important limit. They improve your ability to remember material you applied them to. The evidence that training improves general memory capacity, or transfers to unrelated abilities, is much weaker than popular claims suggest.
Why does re-reading feel effective when it is not?
Because familiarity feels like knowledge. Re-reading makes material feel easy, which is mistaken for having learned it. Retrieval practice feels harder precisely because it reveals what you cannot yet recall.

Sources

  1. Improving Students' Learning With Effective Learning Techniques (Dunlosky et al., Psychol Sci Public Interest 2013;14(1):4–58) (opens in a new tab)PubMed, U.S. National Library of Medicine — accessed
  2. Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis (Cepeda et al., Psychol Bull 2006;132(3):354–80) (opens in a new tab)PubMed, U.S. National Library of Medicine — accessed
  3. Is working memory training effective? A meta-analytic review (Melby-Lervåg & Hulme, Dev Psychol 2013) (opens in a new tab)PubMed, U.S. National Library of Medicine — accessed

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