Memorizing Academic Citations: Names, Dates, content

General Memory Chat
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Hey all, this is my first post! I just wanted to say how awesome I think this website is and thanks in advance for any help you can send. So, I’m getting my PhD and am preparing for my comprehensive exams in a few months, and I’ve decided to take a formal approach to studying for these.

Right now, I’m reading Moonwalking with Einstein and basically just soaking up anything I can find out about memorization techniques. As far as practice goes though, I haven’t actually started since I’m just trying to form an executive strategy for approaching my task. This is where I was hoping to pick your collective intelligence.

So, the brunt of my preparation will be memorizing the general content of academic journal articles including the author name and date published. I need to do this for about 700 articles which are divided into several topical areas. For instance, I would need to commit the following to memory:

III. Psychological and behavioral commitment to the organization
 Hulin (1991) - persistence in organizations

A. Organizational commitment and trust
 Becker (1960) - notes on commitment
 Mowday et al. (1979) - measuring organizational commitment
 Rusbult & Farrell (1983) - etc.
etc.

B. Absence behavior
 Steers & Rhodes (1978)
 Staw & Oldham (1978)
etc.

For the different topics, I’ve brainstormed about 20 different locations (all places that I’ve lived), and am thinking about using each location for each topical area (e.g, my house for all “absence behavior” article. Based on your knowledge, (and knowing that I’m new at this), what is your reaction to this approach? what would you suggest I consider?

For the publication year, I’m undecided between the Major System and the Mnemonic Association System. Since I only need to memorize dates from about 1960 - 2014, I figure I only have to memorize the last 2 digits and can figure out which century it is. The major system is appealing, but it’s weakness seems to be if you can’t always form a phonetic word or be able to tell the difference between an 8 (f) and an 88 (ff). Alternatively, the Mnemonic Association System seems like a lot of tough memorizing on the front end with only loose associations between the numbers and the digits.

I’m still looking for an approach to handle the names. Many names have helpful mnemonics built-in, but many others will come from all kinds of languages, so I don’t have any sounds or associated concepts to link these too. (Luckily I probably won’t be graded on spelling). Any suggestions for how to handle unfamiliar names?

I also need some way of capturing the general content of each article and being able to link it with the name and date. It seems easy to create mnemonic for a name or number, but how about general ideas or concepts?

Finally, I need some way for cohering all this together. So based on my limited understanding, my first-instinct approach to organizing all this would be to formulate a separate palace for each topic. Then, at each loci within the palace, I would create some event involving whatever mnemonics I’m using for the article name, date, and content. For instance, at the first locus within my “org commitment” palace, I might imagine Beck (for Becker) impatiently looking at his wristwatch (wristwatch = 60) before deciding to “quit” my palace.

The above example seems easy, but what about when I get the name Csikszentmihalyi or something like that?

So I guess my questions are: What thoughts came to your mind while reading this? Did any of it seem underaddressed or over-concerned? Am I asking the right questions or appropriately focusing my attention? Any advice is much appreciated. Thanks Ya’ll

BTW, my name is Josh :slight_smile:

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Welcome to the site! :slight_smile:

That should work.

They are essentially the same in practice. You can fill in your system with associations and use the Major System for numbers that don’t have a natural association. I think it works best if you have a fixed image for each two-digit number.

The Major System is (traditionally) based on sounds, not letters – “fork” would be 84 and “waffle” would be 85 even though it has a double letter. If you had a three-digit system, “castle” would be 705 since the “t” is silent.

You can break up names like that into smaller pieces. I’d break it up phonetically: cheek + cent + michal + yee.

(“Ly” in Hungarian is a consonant that I can’t pronounce, but I think it becomes silent in English.)

Or just remember “cheek” + “cent” and then the rest of his name is basically the same as his first name: Csíkszentmihályi Mihály.

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Thanks a ton for the info!

I can’t believe you recognized the name’s origin. I looked it up on youtube once so I wouldn’t botch it at a conference, and I think it’s pronounced “chick-sent-mee-hai”

question about this:

Intuitively, “Fork” seems like it wold be 847 (7 for the the K), but is the seven specifically NOT included in the mnemonic because I assume that I’m using only a 2-digit system? If that’s the case, I assume you would only use the first 2 consonant sounds of the mnemonic word for extracting the date… otherwise, you could get stuck with wondering whether “fork” was 84 or 47.

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I spent some time in Hungary. :slight_smile:

Yes… you just take the first consonants* of the word up to the number of digits in your system:

  • If you have a 2-digit system, fork would be 84.
  • If you have a 3-digit system, fork would be 847.

*In the traditional major system, the consonants, w, h, y, are ignored, so “werewolf” would be 45 or 458.

5

Thanks Josh!

That’s super helpful. I’m actually looking forward to studying now!

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You can always make sure you code your numbers as two digits. So it would be 08 (sf) versus 88 (ff), which would be very different things. A very strong, fireproof SaFe versus a lil’ bunny FuFu, or what have you.