Cognitive shuffling examples: a worked word list

One shuffle, worked through

Take the word lantern. Start with L and picture a lemon, then a ladder, then a lighthouse, each for a few seconds. Move to A: an anchor, an apron, an accordion. Then N: a needle, a nutmeg, a notebook. Then T: a teapot, a tractor, a tent. Then E: an envelope, an elbow, an eel. Then R: a rake, a radio, a raincoat. That is eighteen pictures and a few minutes of work, and the word has more letters to give if you want them.

Beaudoin's 2014 paper describes this letter-by-letter approach as a technology-free way to produce content: select a word, spell it, and for each letter imagine several items that start with it. The reason for the letters is practical. Memory is associative, and a waking mind drifts toward sense-making on its own, so unrelated material is harder to produce than it sounds. The alphabet does the choosing for you.

What makes a good item

Concrete things work better than ideas. A teapot can be pictured; "justice" cannot. Neutral things work better than loaded ones, so a notebook is a safer choice than an invoice, and a lemon is safer than the name of a person you know. If a word brings up a worry, a task or a face, let it go and take another word with the same letter. Nothing is lost by dropping it.

Keep the items from joining up. If the ladder leans against the lighthouse, you have made a scene, and scenes start to mean things. Break the link and move on. The paper's own phrasing is that sense may be made of each single target, but the stream of targets as a whole should stay disconnected.

You can also skip the letters and use categories: ten kinds of bird, then ten kinds of tool, then ten places you have never been. The letter method is simply the one Beaudoin wrote down.

What the evidence amounts to

The 2014 paper is a theoretical proposal, and it says plainly that empirical evidence for the technique had not yet been published in academia, with experiments planned. It is the source for the method, not a trial of it. A later systematic review of pre-sleep cognitive activity, which has Beaudoin among its authors, found that the transition to sleep is normally marked by sensory imagery and a wind-down of higher thinking, and that the pre-sleep thoughts of people with insomnia more often involve planning or problem-solving. Of the strategies tested to change that activity, including mental imagery and distraction, the review reports effects that were beneficial, negligible or detrimental. Its authors call for more research into the mechanisms.

So the honest description is a reasonable idea, with a plausible mechanism and a modest amount of direct evidence. It is not a treatment, and persistent trouble sleeping is a question for a clinician.

If you would rather be handed the pictures

Producing the items takes a small amount of effort, and some people find that the effort itself keeps them alert. The full explanation of the cognitive shuffle covers the idea in more depth. Our sleep stories take the other route: a voice supplies the unhurried, low-stakes material, so there is nothing to generate. The thinking that keeps people awake is usually the kind that has somewhere to go, and unrelated pictures have nowhere to go.