Limitations Of Memory

[petrushkagoogol]

Consider a dodecahedron with each face in a different color and each face having a different country name.

 

Give a person 1 minute time and ask him to remember all he can about the object's faces, their colors and words. 

 

How much can he ideally remember ?

 

What does that tell us about human memory and it's limitations ? 

 

[arauca]

Not much ,  basically you will remember the  red  blue and green

[Turtle]

IIRC, looking at folks who have exceptional memory is more revealing about poor memory than looking at the poor rememberers.

Savant syndrome

Savant syndrome is a condition in which a person with a developmental difference demonstrates profound and prodigious capacities or abilities far in excess of what would be considered normal.[1][2][3] People with savant syndrome may have neurodevelopmental disorders, notably autism spectrum disorders, or brain injuries. The most dramatic examples of savant syndrome occur in individuals who score very low on IQ tests, while demonstrating exceptional skills or brilliance in specific areas, such as rapid calculation, art, memory, or musical ability. ...

Explaining and inducing savant skills: privileged access to lower level, less-processed information

 

Abstract

 

I argue that savant skills are latent in us all. My hypothesis is that savants have privileged access to lower level, less-processed information, before it is packaged into holistic concepts and meaningful labels. Owing to a failure in top-down inhibition, they can tap into information that exists in all of our brains, but is normally beyond conscious awareness. This suggests why savant skills might arise spontaneously in otherwise normal people, and why such skills might be artificially induced by low-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation. It also suggests why autistic savants are atypically literal with a tendency to concentrate more on the parts than on the whole and why this offers advantages for particular classes of problem solving, such as those that necessitate breaking cognitive mindsets. A strategy of building from the parts to the whole could form the basis for the so-called autistic genius. Unlike the healthy mind, which has inbuilt expectations of the world (internal order), the autistic mind must simplify the world by adopting strict routines (external order).