This may be helpful to you. I'm going to summarize and greatly simplify several lines of research on human memory that has occured in the last 50 or so years (and throw in a few necessary but reasonable assumptions). This isn't a strategy; but it will give you an idea of how memory works, and, more specifically, how you might trigger thoughts in someone's mind. (BTW, I'm not pulling this out of my a**. But you'll just have to take my word for it.)
Currently the best way to describe human memory is as a big web. Ideas, concepts, facts, feelings, perceptions, and sensations are stored at the intersections of the fibers. The ideas, feelings, etc. that are typically experienced at the same time are at nearby intersections. Simple, right?
Here's the cool and useful part of the analogy:
When you experience one of those ideas, feelings, etc. again, it's kind of like jiggling that intersection on the web. The vibration is carried along the fibers to other nearby, associated intersections. For instance, if you think about cats, the sound of "meow" is more likely to be awoken in your mind.
There's also evidence that if you jiggle a bunch of intersections that all relate to a specific, unmentioned thing, you're more likely to think of or re-experience that thing. I'm sure you can see how you could apply this to a pick-up situation. It fits very well with (and might explain) Gunwitch's method.
Just to be clear, those intersections (memories) can have a number of forms, including, for example:
Visual sights
Mental images
Sounds
Voices
Movements of your body
Lighting conditions in the room
Smells
Textures
Internal mental states
Physical environments
etc., etc.
External things that trigger memories are called "cues." So the way it works is that cues trigger their associated memories (like seeing a hot dog wakes up your visual memory of a hot dog) and those memories make other related memories more likely to be experienced.
To up the odds of someone thinking of something "on their own," try to provide as many related cues as possible. Again the best cues will be things that are experienced at the same time as the thing you want them to think of.
whistler
Currently the best way to describe human memory is as a big web. Ideas, concepts, facts, feelings, perceptions, and sensations are stored at the intersections of the fibers. The ideas, feelings, etc. that are typically experienced at the same time are at nearby intersections. Simple, right?
Here's the cool and useful part of the analogy:
When you experience one of those ideas, feelings, etc. again, it's kind of like jiggling that intersection on the web. The vibration is carried along the fibers to other nearby, associated intersections. For instance, if you think about cats, the sound of "meow" is more likely to be awoken in your mind.
There's also evidence that if you jiggle a bunch of intersections that all relate to a specific, unmentioned thing, you're more likely to think of or re-experience that thing. I'm sure you can see how you could apply this to a pick-up situation. It fits very well with (and might explain) Gunwitch's method.
Just to be clear, those intersections (memories) can have a number of forms, including, for example:
Visual sights
Mental images
Sounds
Voices
Movements of your body
Lighting conditions in the room
Smells
Textures
Internal mental states
Physical environments
etc., etc.
External things that trigger memories are called "cues." So the way it works is that cues trigger their associated memories (like seeing a hot dog wakes up your visual memory of a hot dog) and those memories make other related memories more likely to be experienced.
To up the odds of someone thinking of something "on their own," try to provide as many related cues as possible. Again the best cues will be things that are experienced at the same time as the thing you want them to think of.
whistler
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