There was a time my keys went missing and I frantically rummaged the place in what I thought was every nook and cranny to find them. I was already running late for one thing or another and I couldn’t appreciate adding more time to the wait with these missing keys. Sure, some people may now have technologically advanced solutions to this frenzy by clipping a tag to the keys that can be geo-tracked in real time (I’ve even seen parents attach tags to necklaces for their small kids to wear), but there may be an even simpler, more versatile solution (regarding the keys, not the small children).
What is Pointing and Calling?
A solution I’ve read about earlier and have seen in some travel documentaries too is “Pointing and Calling.” Also known as shisa kanko (指差喚呼) in Japanese, Pointing and Calling is a method many industry workers use to improve their efficiency and accuracy of operations.
指差喚呼 shisa kanko
Literal translation: finger point and call out
指 (shi) finger
差 (sa) difference/variation
喚(kan)call
呼(ko) call/summon
Note: The individual characters have particular meanings that can vary in meaning and nuance when combined with other characters!
How to do the Point and Call
To do the Pointing and Calling method, workers point to the object they’re reviewing or checking, check it, and say it out loud to confirm the check. For example, if I were to roughly apply this method to placing my keys in a specific spot, I would:
1) Point to the keys on the table
2) Check that they are on the table
3) Say out loud that they are on the table; i.e., I would say “The keys are on this table.”
The Japan Industrial Safety & Health Association (JISHA) has a clear diagram of the process on their website, along with their safety philosophy (JISHA, n.d.). According to an interview between K. Tabata of JISHA and A. Gordenker of The Japan Times, research conducted in 1994 by the Railway Technical Research Institute shows that the implementation of Pointing and Calling reduced errors by about 85% ((Gordenker, 2008)! Its effectiveness and simplicity make it a sensible component of JISHA’s zero-accident total participation campaign (JISHA, n.d.).
Applications elsewhere
The Pointing and Calling method can apply to areas beyond railway operations, including in healthcare settings. The method is low-cost and accessible, with its effectiveness supported by evidence and could be used to improve awareness and prevent errors among paramedics (Violato & Cheung, 2025). It’s essentially a low-risk cognitive checklist, which can easily be employed by healthcare professionals (Violato et al., 2022). Pointing and Calling, along with other related methods that can reduce errors (like TWED), could counter cognitive biases while improving decision making and precision (Kim et al., 2024; Chew et al., 2019). Once again, their checklist quality is what disrupts automatic, quick thinking, forcing the user to check their own thinking; this “check of thinking” is a process known as metacognition (Chew et al., 2019).
TWED is a mnemonic that stands for:
T = Threat (identify the threat)
W = What else? (what are other reasons for threat exist?)
E = Evidence (is there enough evidence to support or reject the decision?)
D = Dispositional factors (what other factors could influence this decision, e.g., emotional or environmental factors at play?)
(Chew et al., 2016)
Why would this work?
In addition to its metacognitive properties, which JISHA alludes to in their statement of “raising the consciousness level” (JISHA, n.d.), the effectiveness of Pointing and Calling may also be due to the activation of multiple sensory inputs.
Pointing, for example, involves the use of gestures and motor movements, and the use of meaningful gestures may reduce demands on working memory to help us remember more information (Cook et al., 2012). Learning words in a foreign language may also be enhanced with complementary gestures, activating areas of the brain’s motor cortex to support language learning (Mathias et al., 2021). This could be seen as an extension of the enactment effect, which has been studied over the past few decades to show that acting out items (e.g., words or phrases) can lead to better memory for them (Arar et al., 1993).
➡️ What is Working Memory?
The short-term storage of information in the mind that is used for further complex tasks, like learning or understanding (APA, 2018)
A related effect, known as the production effect, could be working in tandem to make Pointing and Calling effective. Calling relies on us to produce speech and say words out loud, and as described by the production effect, saying a word out loud could improve explicit memory for that item (MacLeod et al., 2010). The fact that you are saying the word is also crucial for this memory boost; saying the word out loud improves memory for that item more than hearing someone else say it (and hearing a previously-recorded audio of you saying that word is better than hearing someone else say it, but not as good for memory as saying it out loud in the moment; Forrin & MacLeod, 2017).
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A simple solution grown from intuition, the success of Pointing and Calling is rooted in our cognitive processing patterns. Combining our cognitive operations for language and movements, its underlying principles can be applied to different learning contexts like in the language learning lab or a physical training course. In smaller, everyday uses, it can help refine tasks that require precision, like baking a souffle or packing items for a move. Perhaps the next time I put down my keys, I’ll narrate the little act to help me pick them up again.
Or I could just put my keys in the same spot every time.
References
American Psychological Association (APA). (2018, April 19). APA Dictionary of Psychology: working memory. https://dictionary.apa.org/working-memory
Arar, L., Nilsson, L. G., & Molander, B. (1993). Enacted and nonenacted encoding of social actions. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 34(1), 39-46. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9450.1993.tb01099.x
Atlas Obscura. (2020, March 31). What’s the Point of Pointing in Japan, Anyway? | Atlas Obscura [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZun7IvqMvE
Chew, K. S., Durning, S. J., & van Merriënboer, J. J. (2016). Teaching metacognition in clinical decision-making using a novel mnemonic checklist: an exploratory study. Singapore medical journal, 57(12), 694–700. https://doi.org/10.11622/smedj.2016015
Chew, K. S., van Merrienboer, J. J. G., & Durning, S. J. (2019). Perception of the usability and implementation of a metacognitive mnemonic to check cognitive errors in clinical setting. BMC medical education, 19(1), 18. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-018-1451-4
Cook, S. W., Yip, T. K., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2012). Gestures, but not meaningless movements, lighten working memory load when explaining math. Language and Cognitive Processes, 27(4), 594–610. https://doi.org/10.1080/01690965.2011.567074
Forrin, N. D., & MacLeod, C. M. (2018). This time it’s personal: the memory benefit of hearing oneself. Memory, 26(4), 574–579. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2017.1383434
Gordenker, A. (2008, October 21). JR gestures. The Japan Times. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2008/10/21/reference/jr-gestures/
Japan Industrial Safety & Health Association (JISHA). (n.d.). Concept of “Zero-accident Total Participation Campaign”. https://www.jisha.or.jp/english/zero_accident.html
Kim, A. R. J., Chew, K. S., & Ngian, H. U. (2024). Take C.A.R.E of patient safety: A call to action. The Medical journal of Malaysia, 79(6), 800–802. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39614801/
MacLeod, C. M., Gopie, N., Hourihan, K. L., Neary, K. R., & Ozubko, J. D. (2010). The production effect: delineation of a phenomenon. Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition, 36(3), 671–685. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018785
Mathias, B., Waibel, A., Hartwigsen, G., Sureth, L., Macedonia, M., Mayer, K. M., & von Kriegstein, K. (2021). Motor Cortex Causally Contributes to Vocabulary Translation following Sensorimotor-Enriched Training. The Journal of neuroscience: the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 41(41), 8618–8631. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2249-20.2021
Metrolinx News. (2022, August 19). Japanese safety practice comes to GO Trains. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jrcj1pRQJvg&t=38s
Violato E, Chao I.C.I, McCartan, C, and Concannon, B. (2022). Pointing and calling the way to patient safety: An introduction and initial use case. Journal of Patient Safety and Risk Management, 27(2), 86-93. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/25160435221078099
Violato, E., & Cheung, M. (2025). Teaching pointing and calling (Shisa Kanko) to reduce error and improve performance. Medical teacher, 1–3. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/0142159X.2025.2508281
