The Importance of Prompts or Triggers for Memory Recall.

On the selection of good ‘trigger’ words when constructing a mind map

The purpose of words (or images) on your mind map is to help you remember (i.e. recall from memory) important detail about your topic.

Is there a difference between a trigger word and a keyword? Both of these act as prompts or reminders for the brain. The difference is (in my view) that a keyword is a word that everyone would recognise (or at least could look up in a dictionary to ?ind the best meaning) and is usually a noun or strong verb. A trigger on the other hand, whilst including such keywords, can also be anything that happens to remind you about something (so it may be personal to you and not necessarily recognised by other people)

Thus any word that helps you remember something can be considered a trigger or prompt. There is always more information in your head about a topic than you realise but the difficulty is ‘getting it out’ of your head. If you think about it, this ‘problem’ is similar to trying to locate a file or folder that is stored on your computer or when searching the internet for information. It is very difficult to find anything without a good search term. Improving your skill in selecting keywords for a mind map is not much different to improving your keyword optimisation for an internet search. There are lots of instruction and courses available for internet marketers on the topic of SEO and keyword selection, so maybe there ought to be courses on keyword selection for mind mapping!

So here I'm providing you with a stop gap - giving you some hints and tips on the art of keyword selection for mind mapping.

When you construct a mind map, and especially when you’d like other people to read and make sense of it, the ‘keywords’ you use will often be the same high-level words that are somewhere in the text (but this is not always the case). These keywords are normally buried within the text so you have to actively seek them out. That can be a skill in itself.