But in normal testing, no one gets 50 digits correct in a row, much less 240. That is why the first phone numbers were limited to 7 digits-psychologists determined that many errors occurred (costing the phone company money) when the number was increased to even 8 digits. After all, psychologists established many years ago that the normal memory span for adults is about 7 digits, with some of us able to recall a few more and others a few less (Miller, 1956). (No, he is not.) Second, Simon must have abilities more advanced than the rest of humankind. When most of us witness a performance like that of Simon Reinhard, we think one of two things: First, maybe he’s cheating somehow. His record in this task-called “forward digit span”-is 240 digits! In fact, Simon would have been happy to keep going. For a final trial, 50 digits appeared on the screen for 50 seconds, and again, Simon got them all right. Then came 30 digits, studied for 30 seconds once again, Simon didn’t misplace even a single digit. No one in the audience (mostly professors, graduate students, and undergraduate students) could recall the 20 digits perfectly. In the next phase, 20 digits appeared on the screen for 20 seconds. After the series disappeared, Simon typed them into his computer. On the first round, a computer-generated 10 random digits-6 1 9 4 8 5 6 3 7 1-on a screen for 10 seconds. In 2013, Simon Reinhard sat in front of 60 people in a room at Washington University, where he memorized an increasingly long series of digits. Memory is also a series of processes: how does that information get filed to begin with and how does it get retrieved when needed? In some ways memory is like file drawers where you store mental information.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |