Test the availability of these visual impressions that you have made
by starting with the picture of the Piano and follow each picture
carefully back to the House. Thus, Piano--Stove--School--Lamp--etc.
You now have a series of twenty unassociated words so impressed upon
your mind that you can say them forward or backward. You can as easily
begin in the middle and go either way, or you can think of any word at
random and tell which word precedes it or follows it in the list.
=Strong visual impressions properly associated can be recalled at
will.=
It has taken some time to make and photograph these pictures, practice
will soon make the process so easy and natural that the same result can
be accomplished in a few seconds. It is not unusual for children, after
a little practice, to take a list of twenty words and visualize them in
one careful reading, so that they can recall them in any order desired.
Practice will do the same for all regardless of how difficult they may
find the idea at first. All have the faculties, awaken them and make
them serve.
The important thing is not that the child has easily learned a list of
words which he can repeat forward or backward, but the fact that he
has experienced the memory value of a definite mental operation. The
learning of the list is merely the exercise through which the process
of visualization is applied to the memory. The child may possess the
knowledge, but practice is the only way to make it most useful. This
same kind of exercise should be continued and will later lead to many
practical applications.