Socrates Method Of Memory Works Just As Well Using Virtual Reality

In the episode of NOVA that aired October 24 of this year, host David Pogue posed the question, “How Smart Can We Get?” At one point in the episode, he met with Chester Santos, who was the 2008 US Memory Champion, to pick his brain on how he manages to learn long strings of numbers and words. Santos taught him a technique that involved visualization of objects that were in Pogue’s own house and associating them with the string of non-related words. It turns out this technique is nothing new. Its roots stem all the way back to the time of Socrates, in fact.

A new research study conducted by a team from the University of Alberta has revisited this age old technique giving it a modern-day twist.

The memory technique, called loci, or location, by the ancient Greeks, was used by Socrates, according to classic scholars, to memorize his oratories. To do this, Socrates would wander around his home and assign a word or fact that he needed to memorize some familiar object or structure in his home.

At the time that Socrates needed to recall this information in front of an audience, he would simply conjure up his home and, in his mind, the words that he had linked to things like his window or table would instantly be recalled.

“Nowadays many contestants in memory competitions use this same technique,” said lead researcher Eric Legge. “They use the location method to instantly recall everything from words to a long list of random numbers.”

Legge, along with his U of A research colleague Christopher Madan, developed a virtual living-space environment. This virtual living room would allow their test subjects to use the ancient Greek technique to increase their memory ability.