The Space Memory method — what we teach and in what order

The three assumptions it stands on

Everything else follows from them: the length of a class, the make-up of the group, and what the child does at home.

• Remembering is a skill — Not a gift and not a character trait. A skill is learned in a certain order and practised — exactly like swimming or playing an instrument.
• Practice has to be on real material — A technique practised on an invented list stays inside the exercise. So the child brings their own notebook and the next test to class.
• Short and daily — Ten minutes a day fix more than an hour once a week. Hence the split: a meeting with the coach once a week, and sessions on the days between.

Five techniques, in the order we introduce them

Each one uses the one before. Skipping a step usually ends in going back to it.

1. The image

   Turning a word or an idea into a scene you can see. The basis of everything that follows — without it the other techniques have nothing to work with.

2. The association

   Tying the new to something the child already knows: a sound, a shape, a situation from their own life. Here we teach what separates an image that stays from one that vanishes.

3. The chain

   Images joined into one story where each element does something to the one before. From this point order works — lists, stages, sequences of events.

4. The route, or the memory palace

   A familiar place turned into a series of fixed points where images are placed. The oldest of the techniques, known as the method of loci, and the most reliable for longer material.

5. Number images

   Fixed images assigned to digits, which turn a date or a formula into a scene. Here we use the system popularised by Dominic O'Brien, a multiple world memory champion.

6. Transfer to the child's own material

   The last and most important step: the same technique used on tomorrow's lesson. Until that happens, the child knows the techniques but does not use them.

What the method does not do

Four limits we state to parents in the first conversation.

What a week looks like

The same arrangement for every group, whatever the level.

• The meeting with the coach — 90 minutes once a week, online, in a group of 5–10 children aged 8–18.
• Sessions between classes — Ten minutes a day on the platform, where every technique has its own trainer.
• Work on the child's own material — Part of every meeting goes to what the child has been set at school.
• Checking out loud — Questions in front of the group, at random and with notebooks closed — as at the blackboard.

How long it takes to use it freely

Realistic limits, if the child also works between classes.

Where the method comes from

Author: Natalia Lubenets — co-founder and head of methodology at Space Memory

The method is the responsibility of Natalia Lubenets, co-founder of Space Memory, who prepares children for memory competitions. The techniques are not ours — they have been known and described for a long time. Ours is the order we introduce them in, the time we give to each, and how we carry them over to material from school.

The research we rest on

The scientific work our classroom techniques rest on, each with a link to the text. None of it studied Space Memory: what was studied were the techniques we teach, and that is how we describe them here. The last two are about what we do NOT promise.

• Acquisition of a Memory Skill — Ericsson K. A., Chase W. G., Faloon S., 1980. What we rest on: The method's first assumption: remembering is a skill, not a character trait. A student with an average memory went from 7 to 79 digits through practice — not because his memory changed, but because he learned to encode digits as images he already knew.
• Mnemonic Training Reshapes Brain Networks to Support Superior Memory — Dresler M., Shirer W. R., Konrad B. N., Müller N. C. J., Wagner I. C., Fernández G., Czisch M., Greicius M. D., 2017. What we rest on: Why we teach the memory palace rather than “memory exercises”. Six weeks of training with the method of loci, half an hour a day, gave ordinary adults a lasting improvement in recalling lists. The same holds here: short, daily, a specific technique.
• Mnemotechnics in second-language learning. — Atkinson R. C., 1975. What we rest on: Where our way of teaching vocabulary comes from: a foreign word first gets a key word that sounds like it, then a scene tying it to the meaning. This paper described the keyword method and its advantage over plain repetition.
• Test-Enhanced Learning — Roediger H. L., Karpicke J. D., 2006. What we rest on: Why homework here means recalling rather than copying out. A text read several times slips away faster than a text recalled once from memory — and the gap grows with time.
• Retrieval Practice Produces More Learning than Elaborative Studying with Concept Mapping — Karpicke J. D., Blunt J. R., 2011. What we rest on: The same thing in a school setting: recalling from memory did better than making concept maps and notes, even though children and students expect the opposite. That is why a child answers in front of the group instead of taking neat notes.
• Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis. — Cepeda N. J., Pashler H., Vul E., Wixted J. T., Rohrer D., 2006. What we rest on: The third assumption: consolidation works short and daily, not long and once a week. A review of 254 studies shows that the same repetitions spread over time give more than the same amount done in one go.
• The effects of overlearning and distributed practise on the retention of mathematics knowledge — Rohrer D., Taylor K., 2006. What we rest on: Why we do not say “do another ten examples the same evening”. Extra repetition within one sitting adds almost nothing weeks later; spreading the same tasks over several days does.
• Improving Students’ Learning With Effective Learning Techniques — Dunlosky J., Rawson K. A., Marsh E. J., Nathan M. J., Willingham D. T., 2013. What we rest on: A review of ten ways of studying: testing yourself and spaced repetition came out highest, underlining and rereading lowest. The plan for the week rests on this: a class, short daily self-testing, and a return to older material.
• Conclusions about interventions, programs, and approaches for improving executive functions that appear justified and those that, despite much hype, do not — Diamond A., Ling D. S., 2016. What we rest on: Attention and control in children improve where they are trained in real activity, and only for as long as the training lasts. That is why we work on material from school and do not promise “better concentration in general” after a course.
• Training, maturation, and genetic influences on the development of executive attention — Rueda M. R., Rothbart M. K., McCandliss B. D., Saccomanno L., Posner M. I., 2005. What we rest on: Where the length of exercises for younger children comes from: short attention sessions of a few to a dozen minutes produce a measurable effect in children. Hence ten minutes a day between classes, rather than an hour once a week.
• Is working memory training effective? A meta-analytic review. — Melby-Lervåg M., Hulme C., 2013. What we rest on: A limit we state plainly to parents: working memory exercises improve the score on the exercise itself and do not carry over to marks or to reading. So our trainers are a tool for consolidating techniques, not “brain training”.
• Do “Brain-Training” Programs Work? — Simons D. J., Boot W. R., Charness N., Gathercole S. E., Chabris C. F., Hambrick D. Z., Stine-Morrow E. A. L., 2016. What we rest on: The same limit in a wider form: the evidence for “brain training programmes” is weak, and improvement usually applies to the trained task. Hence the rule in our texts: we do not promise higher intelligence or better marks from training alone.
• So Much to Read, So Little Time — Rayner K., Schotter E. R., Masson M. E. J., Potter M. C., Treiman R., 2016. What we rest on: Why our speed reading classes measure comprehension as well as words per minute: above a certain pace comprehension drops, because the eye cannot take the text in. We teach competent reading and checking what stayed, not records.

Parents' questions

More on this

Pages: measurement, the individual techniques, and the people behind the method.