09 Track 9

Review unit 4

fluency practice

review readings 7: You can be a world memory Champion!

Page 221

You can be a world memory Champion!

Every year, people with extraordinary memory skills compete in a unique event called the World Memory Championships.

The tasks they are required to do require tremendous powers of memory retention: looking at and reciting two-page poem; recollecting a page of 40-digit numbers; remembering the order of 52 cards in a deck; memorizing the names of 110 people after looking at their pictures; and several other demanding tasks.

Completing any of these tasks may not seem feasible for the average person, but scientific evidence seems to show that even someone with average skills can, through training, enhance his or her memory skills and be transformed into a memory Champion.

One memory champion explained his method of recalling the order of the cards in a deck.

Previously, he linked a person, an action, and a thing to each card in the deck. For example, the king of hearts is Elvis Presley, eating, peanut butter sandwich.

The three of spades is Rocky Balboa, boxing, Madison Square Garden. The ten of hearts is William Shakespeare, writing Hamlet, a broken pen. Take person from the first card, an action from the second card, and a thing from the third card.

Then any group of three cards creates a vivid image that is more easily recalled. For example: king-ten-three becomes Elvis Presley writing Hamlet in Madison Square Garden − a memorable image.

Still, even having created images for each group of three cards, it is difficult to keep them in order. This is done using the loci method, or what some call a “Memory Palace”, a term created by Frances Yates in his 1966 book The Art of Memory, which is a simple yet effective method devised by the ancient Greeks.

They practised transforming lists of words into vivid sets of objects, which they arranged in their imagination around familiar spaces. Then they learned to link these images back to their original meaning.

But are there people with naturally superior memories? We’ve all heard of people with photographic memories − the ability to memorize anything just by looking at it.

Ranjan Mahadevan, born in Indiana in 1957, seemed to have such a memory. By the age of five, he was able to remember the license plate numbers of a parking lot full of cars.

He was also able to remember a string of 31,811 digits. One book claimed that his memory power was a natural talent.

Later, however, Mahadevan visited with K. Anders Ericsson, a psychologist who believes that memory is a matter of training not talent.

They discussed Mahadevan’s memory achievements, and Mahadevan explained that he had spent 1,000 hours and used memory techniques to memorize the 31,811 digits. He admitted that it was hard training that allowed him to do it, not a special memory.

The winner of the 2011 World Memory Championships, held in Guangzhou, China, was 21-year-old Chinese national Wang Feng.

He retained his title from the previous year by breaking world records for three of the competitions 10 memory games.

These records were recalling 300 of 400 spoken numbers, and memorizing 500 numbers in five minutes and 2660 numbers in one hour.

But Wang Feng says he had a “normal memory as a child,” and no special talent except for hard work and attention to detail. “I’ve spent three months preparing for this championship,” he said.

“Each day I spend five to six hours practicing. Actually, each year, I spend two to three months preparing for competitions.”

Although many still think that people have either good or bad memories from birth, that need not be true.

By using the methods of grouping, linking to vivid images, and the loci method, we can all enhance our memories.

Who knows, you might even become the next World Memory Champion!