So last night I was doing the quizzes and brain-teasers in the local paper’s kiddies section with my daughter. But this time she insisted that mum played as well. We got to the memory task, where you have 60 seconds to look at 14 objects and then a further 60 seconds to write down all teh ones you can remember. Well, final scores were interesting: the one with the best memory (8/14), mum and dad (12/14 each).
So we asked Natty how she had memorised the objects, and she said she’s just looked at them and tried to ingrain them on her memory (well, words to that effect). Interstingly, she said she found it easire to remember the ones she memorised first than the ones she memorised later.
Then I asked my wife how she had done it. She said she had categorised the words in groups by theme, thus animals, foods, clothing, etc. As for me, I’de used a completely different approach, creating a story that contained the items. Thus, “A crabby snake ate a frog wearing socks”, etc.
So, what method would you use in such a test, and how much does it tell you about your personality and the way you use your brain?
I’m especially interested in haring from mathematical types, as all three of us are definitely of an arts/words bent.