What are mnemonic devices and how do they improve memory?

Mnemonic devices are memory strategies that organize information into more memorable formats by creating associations with existing knowledge. The method of loci, or memory palace, associates items with specific locations along a familiar route. Acronyms use the first letters of items to form a word, like ROY G BIV for rainbow colors. The peg-word system associates items with pre-memorized rhyming pairs. Chunking groups individual items into meaningful units, like remembering a phone number as three chunks rather than ten separate digits.