Page 128 - Mind Games The Aging Brain and How to Keep it Healthy

112 • Chapter 4

in the practice of it, to notice a link to a name. The name
might be the name of a relative or another friend. It may not
be wise to link a name to a garment, unless it is a uniform
that person will be wearing at your next meeting.
Let’s take another look at a scenario we discussed in
Chapter 1. Do you remember the wife who used auditory, vi-
sual, and kinesthetic strategies and never forgot anything?
Her strategies are much more robust than we implied and
deserve a second look. She repeats to herself the thing she is
trying to remember to do in an interesting rhyme or pattern
(verbal rehearsal, repetition priming, and coding), writes it down
on a piece of paper, and puts it next to her place mat where
she will see it as she eats her meals (imagery, repetition prim-
ing); then she tells her husband to remind her (repetition prim-
ing). She knows her husband will never remind her,
and he knows she doesn’t really expect him to remind her
(so he doesn’t bother to store it). They are operating on an ac-
cepted schema pattern here, where the circumstances of her
telling him a fact are a memorable pattern. All the techniques