I have also found Carruther's book very interesting. The way we use our memories has changed so drastically ever since we started inventing stuff like the printing press - and now even more so.
I'm going to link a very non-academic source now: a Ted talk by Joshua Foer. He's won one of those memory championships, where people compete to memorize, for example, as many numbers as possible. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
The interesting thing is, later in his talk, he refers to the history of mnemonics, and how these people who compete in such competition are rediscovering the lost art. The guy who wins is not the one with the best brain: their brains have been scanned, and they are not different than ours.
The guy who wins, is the one who makes the best mnemonics for himself.
Now, even more interestingly, almost everything he says can be connected with the way I describe the mnemonics that help to remember foreign plant names in the VM.
Foreign plant names are, in essence, nonsense words. So the best thing you can do to remember them, is to tie this nonsense information to information you have already (i.e. a figure from classical mythology). Additionally, you have to activate the visual part of your brain and make the brain work a bit. If the image you create is slightly absurd, it's even better.
This guy basically describes how the f89 mnemonics work.
Edit: about the text, it does contain information, but it's probably not a plain text - as in, the paragraphs look more like a list of similar names than "real prose". I do agree, of course, that the images carry much more information than one would say at first sight.
I'm going to link a very non-academic source now: a Ted talk by Joshua Foer. He's won one of those memory championships, where people compete to memorize, for example, as many numbers as possible. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
The interesting thing is, later in his talk, he refers to the history of mnemonics, and how these people who compete in such competition are rediscovering the lost art. The guy who wins is not the one with the best brain: their brains have been scanned, and they are not different than ours.
The guy who wins, is the one who makes the best mnemonics for himself.
Now, even more interestingly, almost everything he says can be connected with the way I describe the mnemonics that help to remember foreign plant names in the VM.
Foreign plant names are, in essence, nonsense words. So the best thing you can do to remember them, is to tie this nonsense information to information you have already (i.e. a figure from classical mythology). Additionally, you have to activate the visual part of your brain and make the brain work a bit. If the image you create is slightly absurd, it's even better.
This guy basically describes how the f89 mnemonics work.
Edit: about the text, it does contain information, but it's probably not a plain text - as in, the paragraphs look more like a list of similar names than "real prose". I do agree, of course, that the images carry much more information than one would say at first sight.