More about memory

I just want to remember where I left my car keys.  And my reading glasses.  And the name of that movie I saw with Paul Giametti where he went on and on about pinot noir.  And . . .

I just finished an interesting book about memory.  Moonwalking with Einstein by (I have to look this up because I can't remember the author's name) Joshua Foer.  He's a science writer who was covering a memory championship event (yes there are such things), when he accepted a double dog dare and agreed to train for the coming year's championship.  The book is a breezy, informative read, made all the more compelling by Foer's realization that you really can train your memory for things like discrete lists of numbers and names, poetry, sequences of cards.  It isn't supposed to happen, but Foer ends up winning the event a year later.  He's obviously a bright guy, but he comes across as a regular joe who worked hard and accomplished something.  There's hope for all of us!

When Foer took the assignment to cover the memory championship, he expected to be writing about savants, prodigies whose brains somehow recorded and remembered everything.  What he found were a bunch of ordinary folks who had trained themselves to recall sequences of cards in multiple decks, the names of auditoriums full of strangers, phonebooks, and epic poems.  These same folks couldn't remember where they left their car keys or reading glasses or the name of that movie they saw with Paul Giametti.  What they could do is pay attention and come up with outlandishly creative mental pictures that helped them to remember certain categories of things.

The techniques Foer discusses in the book date back to the ancient Greeks and involve associating what needs to be remembered with mental images--the more striking and bizarre, the better.  I gave the system a try on a 6-hour car trip from Virginia to mid-state Pennsylvania, attempting to memorize as many names as I could of the long haul trucking and retail companies whose rigs clogged the interstate enroute.  This occurred a month ago.  I mention that because memory research shows that what we are able to recall declines rapidly with time.  After an hour we may already have forgotten a third of what we knew.  After a day half.  After a week 80 percent and so on.

I memorized 17 companies.  The number of discrete items our memory holds on average is 7-10 (hence the number of digits in a phone number).  Here goes:  Schneider, Arnold, Shayer, Western Express,  US Express, Roadway, Swift, Marten, JR England, CRST, JB Hunt, Xtra, Maersk, FedEx, Walmart . . .  Not too bad.  Fifteen of seventeen.  I'm disappointed I can't remember the first two in the sequence.  That's the result not of a lack of memory, but a lack of creativity.  I used one of the school buildings where I taught 14 years as my "memory palace" and placed the images associated with names of the companies in specific locations throughout the building.  So, as I was trying to remember, I walked through the school in my mind, recalling what I had placed in particular places.  I started in the weight room, went to the coaches' office, walked through the showers, down the hall past the trophy case, into the principal's office, etc.  The first two images didn't come back to me, but I remembered the next, the comedian Rob Schneider showering in a obscenely comedic way (Schneider trucking), and the next, Arnold Schwarzenegger vamping in front of the trophy case (Arnold trucking), and so on.

A few of the images are a bit crude.   Pardon me please, Scarlett Johansson.  You can be sure I remembered those.  The first couple of milder images I created hover like ghosts next to their locations in the weight room and coaches office, but they just aren't strange enough to come back to life after a month.  All in all, I'd say the system works.  Like anything it demands attention and practice and as I use it to memorize other things (lists of Spanish verbs) it should improve with time.  As Foer recounts, it really does take training and practice.

Read the book.  And give the techniques a try.  You still won't be able to find your keys, but you might be able to recall a list of something else you want to memorize.

[Note:  I remembered the first two trucking companies in the list while out driving this past week.  The names and images:  Crete (a  very ugly cretan lifting the entire weight room on his shoulders) and Werner (the last name of my 6th grade crush, who I pictured grown up and standing in an evening gown in front of my locker in the coaches' office, beckoning me with a come hither look).]