Word Association Game

(Chapter 3 Memory Problems & Chapter 26 MCI Tool Box in my book)

Word Association Game

Sometimes when I can't think of a word, I will play a word association game in my head hoping that will help me find the word. These are some examples of when I have used this method in the past:

A few months ago, I saw an animal in my driveway that I had never seen before so I took some pictures of it. I didn't really know what it was, so I posted a picture on my social media page and someone commented that it was a porcupine. Even though I now know that this is a porcupine, I might sometimes have trouble remembering the word. In my mind I remembered that I took a picture of this porcupine and it was in a “pine” tree. For some reason a lot of times I will remember that pine is in the word that I'm trying to think of. So, if I can't think of the word porcupine, I can sometimes remember it by using this method. In other words, if I can picture the porcupine in a pine tree, it might jog my memory and I can remember that it is a porcupine.

Another example of this is even though I love music and I saw Neil Diamond in concert a few years ago, sometimes when I hear one of his songs, I just can't remember his name. Now when I think of the songs that he sings; I think of a sparkly diamond and that usually helps me to remember his name.

Recently my youngest son and his wife got a new German shepherd puppy. I remember that the puppy is a male, but I kept forgetting his name. So, I had to come up with a way to remember it. I know that my daughter and her husband have a chocolate lab named Zoe. Now if I forget my son’s new puppy's name, I just have to remember that Zoe starts with the last letter of the alphabet and the new puppy's name starts with the first letter of the alphabet. Then I can remember that his name is Axel.

I know that I have never had a really good memory. My dad used to help me remember things by having me go through the alphabet in my head, but I don't think that method works as well as it used to. When it used to work, if I landed on the right letter, it would somehow click and it would help me to think of the word. Sometimes this method could take a long time.