Thanks for your response, very interesting! I should clarify, it's not really the imagination to create weird scenes that I lack so much as the ability to actually visualize them. So I'm really curious now, when you say:
"I imagined a car-sized jar of pickles, but the pickles were garlic shaped."
did that involve you creating a mental image of this? How clearly can you see it? Can you close your eyes and visualize just an ordinary pickle, for that matter? I wonder how integral that is in order for this technique to be useful, since I have trouble visualizing even a simple colored shape.
That said, it occurs to me now that I can imagine the feel of things very well, as well as the sound of things. So maybe I could prompt myself with a slippery trumpet or something, rather than an odd visual picture.
To be honest, I think I'm kind of in the same boat as you.
I don't really 'see' it, as I would a scene I was actually looking at. I don't see items in the periphery of it to the extent that I could describe non-essential items in the scene, but I know what I pictured, and I know it's there.
For comparison's sake, I know that my guitar is brown, and I know that it has chrome hardware, and I know it's got that classic Les Paul shape, but I don't really 'see' it in my mind's eye very well. When I look over at it now, I realize several details that I didn't envision in my head, but I generally know what it looks like.
In summary, it sounds like we might be similarly minded, and I can say that mnemonics have definitely helped me to learn certain things very well. I feel like it would be a bad all-around memorization technique for me though, because the act of creating the memory takes quite a bit longer to 'encode' than it does to just remember. While I realize that encoding is more reliable, it isn't practical for every day memories, and there are certain types of things I think I would be very bad at encoding.
Ah, ok. Very helpful. Your description of thinking about your guitar is exactly how I would think about it, so I think you're right that we might be similarly minded. I'll definitely have to check out Moonwalking with Einstein, then, if it worked for you.
"Moonwalking" is a good book, and I encourage you to get it, however, it won't train you on much more than how to remember that one thing. The book isn't about "how to train your memory", rather, it is about how one guy trained his. A subtle, but important distinction.
For something more instructional, I was recommended Higbee's, "Your Memory, How it Works and How to Improve It[1]".
I also noticed somebody else in this topic post a link to Memrise.com[2], which is a startup actually created by one the guy who actually taught the one bit of instruction in Moonwalking.
"I imagined a car-sized jar of pickles, but the pickles were garlic shaped."
did that involve you creating a mental image of this? How clearly can you see it? Can you close your eyes and visualize just an ordinary pickle, for that matter? I wonder how integral that is in order for this technique to be useful, since I have trouble visualizing even a simple colored shape.
That said, it occurs to me now that I can imagine the feel of things very well, as well as the sound of things. So maybe I could prompt myself with a slippery trumpet or something, rather than an odd visual picture.
Thanks for the book recommendation.