I Remember, Therefore I Am: The Spectrum of Forgetting
I’ve a grand memory for forgetting.
-Robert Louis Stevenson
The Story
Forgetting-it’s a part of our everyday life, albeit an annoying one. We forget both the trivial and the important — everything from the algebra we learned in high school to the name of our latest acquaintance to where we put our car keys. Sometimes we remember the trivial — all the lyrics to our favorite songs from the teenage years — while forgetting the important — details of a critical work project. People have forgotten their drinks on the roof of the car and their children at a rest stop.
Most of the time we get frustrated when we can’t remember something. But then again sometimes we can’t forget things that we would like to.
And these fall under the “normal” category of forgetting, not indicative of serious brain disease or injury.
Psych Pstuff’s Summary
There are extremes on this memory continuum. In terms of remembering achievements, Dave Farrow broke the Guinness World Record for Most Decks of Playing Cards Memorized in a Single Sighting twice-once in 1996 when he memorized a random sequence of 52 decks and then again in 2007 when he reclaimed the title by accurately recalling 59 decks (3,068 cards). Other extraordinary…
