Our capacity for visual memory is extraordinary; we only need to learn how to take advantage of it. Since we need to learn words, not pictures, we will use combinations of words and pictures. Such combinations work even better than pictures alone. This effect even applies to totally unrelated images: you will remember an abstract drawing with the sentence “Apples are delicious” better than that drawing alone. Faced with an incomprehensible image and an unrelated word, your brain struggles to find meaning, even if there isn’t any. In the process, it automatically moves the word out of the
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