Page 118 - Mind Games The Aging Brain and How to Keep it Healthy

102 • Chapter 4

13. _______________ Humpty Dumpty, year, river, wig-
maker
14. _______________ refrigerator, nose, jogger, stockings
15. _______________ envelopes, oceans, the president,
Good Housekeeping™ magazine

Check your answers at the end of this chapter in “Solu-
tions to Exercises and Games.”
Follow-up: Now that you have the hang of it, make up
collections of your own.
Follow-up: Play ANIMAL, a game of hierarchy. You can
find this interactive game on the Ageless Mental Agility
Web site at www.mentalagility.com. You can download
the program to play with your family or play it online.

Chunking

Grouping items in a long list helps to reduce the number of
items in the list. This technique is known as chunking. This
helps to make a long list shorter, thereby reducing the num-
ber of items you need to remember. Chunking helps you re-
member telephone numbers. Each 10-digit telephone number
is divided into three parts: the three-digit area code, the three-
digit exchange office, and the four-digit line number. To re-
member a 10-digit telephone number, try chunking the area
code and the exchange. Then you only have to remember the
four-digit line number. For example, you can reduce the num-
ber 410—727—9416 to six items by remembering that 410 is a
Maryland area code and 727 is a downtown Baltimore ex-
change. Recall only MD, Baltimore, 9416—six items! Now this
won’t help much in you live in an area other than Baltimore
and don’t know the area code and common exchanges to
help you. You will have to personalize these examples in the
book to match your situations.
Here is another example of chunking. For a Los Angeles
phone number, you can chunk one of the area codes, 714, into
Joe Friday’s badge number from the detective show Dragnet.
You also may chunk patterns in a telephone number. The