Post 7 - How Good is My Memory?

Test 1: Short-term Memory for Pictures

I chose to take the test with animal pictures because remembering photos of cute animals seemed fun and easy. It was. I'm not sure if this memory test is as valid as the others because in the first test, I had trouble assigning meaning to the variety of words that I needed to memorize. In this test, every picture made me feel something, such as "oooh cute fox" or "wow cool eagle" or "uhh what is that thing?" It was easy to assign emotion or meaning to each picture, so it was also easy to recognize repeated photos.


 Test 2: Short-term Memory

This test was fairly straightforward: read over a list of words, focus on them briefly, and retype them in the given blanks. I think it's a valid way to assess one's capacity for short-term memory as long as the test taker doesn't cheat or spend an excessive amount of time reading the words. I myself read the list twice over and scored about average, so attempting this test with integrity is important for its validity.


 Test 3: Problem Solving

This test generally made sense, though I don't think anyone would score much lower than I did as long as they don't take pride in being especially obstinate or stubborn. I'm not sure if this test can accurately assess one's problem solving skills because it relies solely on information provided by the the test taker, and I'd bet most of the people taking this test would like to believe they are good at solving problems.



Lastly, this article contains over 40 interesting facts about memory, such as strategies that can help increase it, people who have insane amounts of it, and where terms like "gaslighting" came from. It covers information from many different age ranges (from a baby's rapid formation of memories to forgetting them as an older adult), different species (the memory of goldfish and rats), and history (from the Sistine Chapel to Mel Blanc).



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