An Individual’s Thoughts on Moonwalking with Einstein

Many people report having lackluster memories: how they forget where they put their keys, forgetting someone's name, missing deadlines, and much more. Humans have so many thoughts in a day that it is no wonder that not everything sticks. It is a possibility that one forgot where they set their keys because they were too preoccupied with doing something else at the time to make that location memory last. It is not just that people have "bad memories". Often at times, people's memories are just fine. Rather, it is that people do not know how to make lasting memories or have truly effective learning strategies.

This topic is explored in the non-fiction work Moonwalking With Einstein: the Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer. A New York Times Bestseller published in 2011, the novel tells the author's year-long journey from being just a simple journalist to going all the way to winning the 2006 United States Memory Championships. After covering a story about the championships, Foer became fascinated with the art of memory and took tutelage under some of the world's leading mnemonists, including Ed Cooke and Ben Pridemore.

Along the way Foer explores his experiences with some people with very interesting memories, including the man who forgot everything and the psychologist of the man who remembered everything. The book also tells of many learning strategies and principles that one can use to improve their own memories in everyday life. Some of the top five elements I found to be interesting were the fact that memory champions are not superhuman, the concept of the memory palace, how people become masters of their field, cognitive conditions, and the fact that the brain can remember almost an unlimited number of pictures.

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Memory champions:

Before I started taking this course and read this book, I had thought that memory champions and those who could recite incredible amounts of information were geniuses; how else would one be able to keep track of all that material? As the book pointed out, this is not the case at all. In fact, participants of memory competitions are normal everyday people! They forget where they put their keys and where they parked just like any average person on the street. As Joshua Foer recounts in the first chapter of the book, he too believed that having a memory like memory champion Ben Pridemore's would allow him to remember to put the toilet lid down and to be a better person in general (pg. 7).

However, even Ben Pridemore admits that "[his] memory is quite average. All of us [in the International Championships] have average memories" (pg. 9). The author of the book is a journalist. Ed Cooke had never held a real job before. There was even a group of high school students called "The Talented Tenth" who had entered the championships (pg. 189)! Anyone can have an incredible memory if they just know how to use the proper tactics.

This idea of mastering memory can be related to our coursework by examining some of the methods we have learned in order to make things stick. For starters, we know from the Modal Model of Memory that if sensory inputs are paid attention to, they can be stored in the short term memory. On average, only about seven objects can be held in the short term memory. However, these memories can be committed to long-term memory through careful focus. The study by Craik and Tulvig (1975) found that elaborative rehearsal is a superior means to encoding than just maintenance rehearsal due to the deeper processing. This deeper processing allows for more retrieval cues to be created in the brain, a method that many memory champions use to store information. On top of this, they also use a multitude of strategies in order to make iconic memories stick, including the memory palace.

The idea that memory champions are not, in fact, superhuman is applicable to my life in that it gives me hope for my own memory. If a journalist such as Joshua Foer can become the American memory champion in just a year, then there is no telling what my own memory can do! If I were to follow the same training regimen, such as memorizing a deck of cards by converting the suits and numbers to people, I too could be entering these competitions. Although I have no plans of doing such a thing, I can bring these techniques into my everyday life.

For example, I recently had to take a test in my pathophysiology class over various ailments of the filtration systems of the body--and with that came a lot of vocabulary words that needed studying. At the beginning of the semester, learning all of this information had seemed like an overwhelming task. There was just so much information crammed into these note packets! Now, however, I have a much more efficient studying strategy.

Instead of just repeating these words in my head over and over, I think deeper about them. I think about what the latin roots and prefixes of these words means, how pleasant they sound to pronounce, and any funny mental pictures I can make with them. By focusing more on these words and creating more retrieval cues that stick, I feel more confident going into my tests. Before, it was not that I did not have the memory capacity to remember all of the important information that popped up in my life, it was just that I did not have the proper memory techniques to encode them.

Memory Palace:

The main technique that these memory masters used to recall such vast stores of knowledge was the usage of the memory palace. Despite the fact that we have discussed this technique in class, it still mystifies me how well it works. The memory palace works by associating interesting mental images with different landmarks in a well-known location such as a home or school. Ed Cooke had apparently mapped out hundreds of memory palaces in preparation of the Memory Championships. This method was reportedly first used by the Greek poet Simonides of Ceos when he had to recall the locations of people in a burning building. Human brains evolved to be hunter-gatherers in ancient times, and with that had to know where to find food and how to get home (pg. 91).

With that, our brains are more suited for remembering locations and images rather than droll knowledge such as phone numbers. Memory champions take advantage of this with the memory palace. For example, when memorizing long strings of numbers, they often have pre-memorized combinations with images that get placed in the palace, such as Ed Cooke's "Ed Kicks Ass" imagery for the number 220 (pg. 115). This pre-memorized technique is also done with cards, binary, and other repetitive tasks. I found it fascinating that these mental athletes were so familiar with their own ways of thinking and their own memory palaces that they could just hundreds of these images in their palace on the fly and be good to go. It never occurred to me that these people might need several well-known locations in mind in order to store different sets of information!

We were encouraged to witness the effectiveness of the memory palace first-hand when memorizing our class list of mundane items. Looking at the list at first, I would have never have guessed that getting them down word-for-word would be such an easy task, especially with a list of over 25 items with very specific names. For my memory palace, I used my sophomore year dorm room due to the fact that I was very familiar with it. The items in the list took a tour through my dorm, to the Dobson parking lot, to the grocery store, and all the way back to my bedroom at home in St. Louis. For example, the bowl with three black under armour socks sat on top of my mini fridge by the door. A framed picture of Steve Buscemi slid out of a Batman comic. These methods worked by creating unique, memorable images that were easy to connect to one another in locations I knew by heart. These ideas stick a lot better than mundane recitation.

However, I have found that I do not use the memory palace just to memorize random lists in class; I occasionally use it in everyday life as well. For example, as someone who hates carrying pieces of paper around, I use the memory palace as an excuse to not have to bring a shopping list with me when I go to the grocery store. Although my grocery lists are typically never excruciatingly long, they are hefty enough to where important things are easily forgotten. By using the apartment that I live in now, I can map out my list in order to replace a sheet of paper: there is a pool of milk sitting outside of my door, a giant loaf of bread barricading my door, etcetera. On top of that, whenever I hear the term memory palace brought up in popular media, such as in the BBC production Sherlock or in the book Hannibal by Thomas Harris, I no know what the characters are talking about and can understand where they are coming from a little bit better!

Skill Mastery:

I was also very interested in some of the examples of skill mastery that the book provided. For example, it takes chicken sexers two years of studying in order to be able to tell the genders of baby chickens with around 98% accuracy. The most skilled experts in this field are able to grasp two baby chickens at a time and identify their gender, sorting through 1,700 chickens per hour (pg. 51). More examples of this are waiters taking orders without writing things down, violinists quickly memorizing new scores, and veteran police officers reading body language (pg. 55). These experts are able to see the world differently using their built up banks of memories. However, these masters do not perform better on cognitive tass, but can incorporate things better into a context (pg. 60). I found these examples of mastery to be very fun to read about!

In class, we discussed mastering a skill under the idea of successful learning. It has been found that mastery of a skill is reached at 10,000 hours of practice. According to the Total Time Hypothesis, the more time spent studying results in a better recall ability. In a sense, time spent on task is a good predictor of performance. On top of this, there are optimal ways to spend that time while studying and practicing. Successful learning is also about distributing your practice instead of cramming, testing rather than just studying, and putting effort into your learning techniques. As a wise professor may have said once or twice, cramming ruins your life!

I can see examples of skill mastery in my everyday life as well. The first instance that comes to for me is with my own father. Although it may not necessarily be seen as the most glamorous job, my dad has been working in produce at Dierbergs Market for around thirty years now. As a produce man, it is his job to sort out the store's produce, take in shipments, and make produce recommendations to customers. More than once, I have been able to describe a specific kind of fruit or vegetable that I had found and have him rattle of a list of what it could be.

When picking out the most ripe apples in the store, he can pull one seemingly faster than I can sort them out. Since he has spent so much time doing his job, he is able to sort through past memories and scenarios stored in his mind to perform with minimal effort. All of this took learning however, with a lot of trial and error and daily practice. Masters can also be seen in other real-life instances, such as the athletes that were in the 2016 Rio Olympics and many of the traditional craftsmen demonstrations you can find at locations such as Silver Dollar City.

Cognitive Conditions:

Another meaningful element that I noticed in the book was the wide array of cognitive conditions that can affect memory. While a lot of these conditions were interesting in concept, they also had devastating sides as well. An example of this was the man who remembered too much. A journalist, known only as "S" was able to recite a list of 70 digits, forwards and backwards, back to his psychologist as well as a list of nonsense words (pg. 22). This man suffered from synesthesia, where every sound had its own intertwined senses such as color and texture. He was able to remember long lists due to every sound eliciting a meaningful response, but he could also not forget what he heard.

Another individual, an 84-year-old technician called "EP", suffered from such an extreme case of amnesia that he forget everything shortly after learning it, leading life in a constant state of ignorant bliss. Interestingly enough, he was still able to remember events from his younger days. EP had suffered from a case of herpes complex that ate his medial temporal lobes. (pg. 71). Another case of this amnesia was with Henry Molaison, who suffered from seizures, who also had his temporal lobes demolished via surgery.

This relates to what we have learned in class in regards to cognitive deficits--especially amnesia. For example, the Sensory-Functional Theory developed by Farah and McClelland (1991) was inspired by semantic amnesias. With these category-specific deficits, 80% of patients were able to name nonliving things, but could not with living things. Because of this, the Sensory-Functional Theory suggests that we categorize semantic knowledge by sensory and functional.

Interestingly enough, as with Ribot's Law, those suffering from amnesia and Alzheimer's can usually still remember their childhood memories. Sufferers from amnesia can generally suffer from two types. Retrograde amnesia is the inability to retrieve information from the past, while anterograde amnesia is the inability to move short term memories into long term memories. These amnesia are caused by damage to the temporal lobes and memory centers, as was the case with EP and Henry Molaison from the novel.

Unfortunately, cognitive deficits are very real circumstances that many people have to learn to manage. This is especially the case with older individuals, whose memories deteriorate with time. Alzheimer's disease and dementia are especially prevalent in the older generation. My grandfather died from Alzheimer's disease when I was young; I remember that he got to the point where he did not remember my family's names and was often confused about where he was.

People usually take their memories for granted until they find themselves losing them, or being unable to encode short-term memories into long-term memories. These deficits can have a serious impact on not only the victim, but their families as well. Sadly, there are currently not cures for diseases such as Alzheimer's, only means of slowing its progression; once that brain tissue is gone, it is gone. By people volunteering for studies and clinical trials, the medical community will be better able to understand how the brain and its ailments work, and hopefully work towards a cure.

Remembering imagery:

Finally, one of the other major themes of the novel was the brain's incredible capacity for images. As stated earlier, this came from the brain's evolutionary need to memorize images and locations rather than just facts. While the brain can typically only remember only seven (plus or minus two) items in a list, it has a seemingly endless capacity for mental images. The more distinct these images are, the better. Memory champions take advantage of this cognitive ability. Rather than just constantly repeating strings of numbers, these mnemonists convert certain orders into pictures that are extremely distinct--such as Einstein moonwalking, as used by the author in his competitions! The Person-Action-Object (PAO) strategy is often used to this extent, combining even longer strings of numbers together (pg. 165). Combine this with the memory palace, and you have a sure-fire way of not forgetting something,

In class, we often discussed the different types of memory stores that our brain has. One of which is our iconic memory store that, according to a study done by Sterling (1960), has a high capacity. This store is typically not kept in our short-term memory for very long unless it is encoded into the long-term memory. By focusing on images rather than concepts, we are able to use elaborative rehearsal to create deeper connections with the material.

Images tend to be more unique and interesting to our minds than just memorized facts, allowing them to stick. The more unique the image, the better! However, it is harder for the brain to visualize abstract concepts than concrete ones. When it comes to abstract concepts, sometimes it is better to just memorize them or convert them into concrete images than trying to visualize them as is. This is why abstract words, such as beauty or hatred, are harder to remember than concrete words such as dog or hammer.

Upon learning about this phenomenon, something about my own learning and studying techniques clicked into my mind. During a test when I am trying to recall information, usually I will try to think about where in the study notes I remembered reading about it. I can learn the order and contents of certain bits of information based on where they are on the page. On more than one occasion I have found myself asking a study partner where a topic is in the notes! This is due to the fact that I have the appearance of these notes ingrained in my head; I can picture where each picture and section was. On top of that, I find that I rely on landmarks and my memory of what a place looks like to get around when driving rather than using street names. I could not tell you what street the grocery store is on, but I can tell you what the store and the landscape surrounding it looks like!

Overall, I found Moonwalking With Einstein: the Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer to be an interesting read. I went in not expecting to like the book very much, but I was pleasantly surprised. The book is a nice combination of facts and personal narratives, with a splash of humor thrown in for good measure. The top five elements of the book that I found to be interesting or meaningful, in order, were the idea that memory champions have regular memories, the memory palace, mastering a skill, cognitive deficits, and the brain's capacity for remembering pictures better than concepts. I would recommend this novel to anyone interested in the psychology of how memory works or even looking to improve their own memories. Despite improving their memory however, they will most likely still lose track of their keys.

References

1. Foer, J. (2011). Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything. New York: Penguin Press.

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