Mind maps for studying

Photographic Memory describes every mind map with five parts. The example is the Cold War.

1. A centre. The main subject: the Cold War.
2. Branches. The main themes: why it happened, the Berlin Wall, the aftermath.
3. A keyword or an image on each branch. For the Berlin Wall, a wall.
4. Twigs. Smaller themes growing from a branch, each one relevant to it.
5. A network. Branches and twigs together form a structure of connected points.

1. Take paper and coloured pens. For something you want to remember, the book is clear: “it is best to put pen to paper.”
2. Start in the centre, with a keyword or a small drawing.
3. Draw four or five branches. Make the lines to the most important ones thicker.
4. Write keywords, not sentences.
5. Look for links between branches and draw them.

Don’t try to make it beautiful. As Edoardo puts it: “No one cares if your drawing is bad.”

• One small trial, a borderline result. Fifty medical students studied a text, half of them with mind maps. A week later, the mind map group recalled about 10% more facts, but the margin of error included no difference at all. The same group was also less motivated by the technique (Farrand and colleagues, 2002).
• Concept maps, a close cousin, do better. A meta-analysis of 55 studies with 5,818 students found that learning with concept maps was linked to better retention, with effects from small to large depending on how the maps were used and what they were compared with (Nesbit and Adesope, 2006).
• Drawing the map is not the same as recalling it. In a study published in Science, students who practised recalling a text learned more than students who built concept maps of it, even when the final test asked them to draw a concept map (Karpicke and Blunt, 2011).

Draw the map. Then put it away, take a blank sheet and draw it again from memory. Compare the two and fill the gaps. A few days later, do it again. Now you are using retrieval practice, the technique with the strongest evidence, and the map gives it a shape (Retrieval and spacing).

Mind maps are good for exploring a topic, much less for putting things in order. Memory Improvement draws the line:

If you know how the ideas relate to one another and are able to put them in order, a list is your best bet.