Somewhat surprisingly, S was unaware that his memory was unusual until Luria began his investigations.
S used three basic processes, usually in combination, for remembering verbal material. The first wasto generate rich visual images to represent information. When he became a stage performer, he trained himself to convert senseless words into meaningful images so that he could remember nonsense words or words from unfamiliar languages. The second process was to use familiar locations, such as stops on an ofttraveled street, to place the images mentally for later retrieval. This procedure is the method of locations (or loci) developed by the ancient Greek poet Simonides of Ceos in about 500 B. C. The method of locations has been discussed by authors as diverse as Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. S apparently developed the technique independently. The third process was to create a story with appropriate images to retrieve the information.
With these techniques, S was able to remember any information presented. Luria was unable to find any limit to the amount of material S could recall in this fashion. More surprisingly, there appeared to be no limit to the duration of S's memory.
This is a free page. This page contains 185 words. This
article contains 1,671 words (approx. 6 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Article with our Mnemonists Access Pass.
