Ancient Australian Aboriginal memory tool superior to 'memory palace' learning

[Judi Lynn]

MAY 18, 2021

by Monash University

Australian scientists have compared an ancient Greek technique of memorizing data to an even older technique from Aboriginal culture, using students in a rural medical school.

The study found that students using a technique called memory palace in which students memorized facts by placinthem into a memory blueprint of the childhood home, allowing them to revisit certain rooms to recapture that data. Another group of students were taught a technique developed by Australian Aboriginal people over more than 50,000 years of living in a custodial relationship with the Australian land.

The students who used the Aboriginal method of remembering had a significantly improved retention of facts compared to the control and the "memory palace" group.

The study led by Dr. David Reser, from the Monash University School of Rural Health and Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta, from Deakin University's NIKERI Institute, has just been published in PLOS One.

Medical students, and doctors, need to retain large amounts of information from anatomy to diseases and medications.
Because one of the main stressors for medical students is the amount of information they have to rote learn, we decided to see if we can teach them alternate, and better, ways to memorize data," Dr. Reser said.

The memory palace technique dates back to the early Greeks and was further utilized by Jesuit priests. Handwritten books were scarce and valuable, and one reading would have to last a person's lifetime, so ways to remember the contents were developed.

More:
https://phys.org/news/2021-05-ancient-australian-aboriginal-memory-tool.html

[2naSalit]

1. Sadly, the article...

Barely describes the technique, they spend more ink on the other methods and then describe the study but not what the actual technique is and why or how it's unique.

[Baitball Blogger]

2. This is what coursera should be teaching.

I wonder if they know that curso in Panama means diarrhea? My mother would laugh every time she said that she had to take a curso, since it came up often since she was a teacher.

[eppur_se_muova]

3. Ummm .... about as much as you can expect in a short news article.

In Aboriginal culture, which relies on oral history, important facts like navigation, food sources, tool use and inter and intra tribal political relationships are important for survival. Aboriginal methods of memorizing also used the idea of attaching facts to the landscape, but with added stories which describe the facts and the placement to facilitate recall.

Oh, and a link to the original research they're abstracting ...

Australian Aboriginal techniques for memorization: Translation into a medical and allied health education setting

[2naSalit]

4. Thanks...

I was hoping for a little more detail like with the other method mentioned and described in more detail. I didn't have time to go to the actual research paper, thanks for the link!

[Judi Lynn]

5. Thank you for providing that link. 🌟

[Warpy]

6. Exactly, I suppose someone is trying to be proprietary

Oral historians here and I imagine elsewhere use a sort of musical chant form. I've heard it but knew better than to ask for a translation. Some of it has been shared with the latest crop of anthropologists who, instead of digging up their ancestors and sending them to the Smithsonian, are using GPR to identify burials so they don't disturb the dead. That's going a long way toward interesting tribal people in anthropology.

A story that came out last year that astonished me was this: https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-evolution-human-origins/budj-bim-0013281 A history that stretches back tens of thousands of years is astonishing enough, but having it in an intact oral form is mind blowing to those of us who played "gossip" as kids.

It's said that the Druids refused to write any of their lore down because that would decrease the ability to memorize. Maybe they were correct.

[2naSalit]

7. That's sort of what I was thinking.

I studied cultural anthropology in college with attention to linguistics. I find many practices of long ago cultures that survive into to the present are common among cohorts on different continents. The maintenance of historic record had a methodology which seems to be where ritual comes in. Memory is prompted by familiar activity so rituals would be a way to facilitate that awakening of one's memory. I suppose the method mentioned in the article might show evidence that something of that sort was a major component of the method they identified.