24 October 2007

Short term memory

I'm intrigued by this memory game on the National Geographic site. I did pretty terrible with the animals and landscapes- 6 out of 9 at best: clearly my strategy wasn't working, but I rocked out 9 for 9 on the numbers (not surprising to me as I've always been good with dates) and the letters.

The cover article on memory was really interesting.

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7 comments:

  1. a game? a memory game? i can't pass it up!

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  2. how'd you do? I got them all in each category eventually. Changing my strategy made all the difference.

    I think I may keep playing though...it's something I'd like to be better at.

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  3. I just did it once, and scored as follows:
    - Animals: 9/9
    - Landscapes: 6/9
    - Numbers: 7/9
    - Letters: 7/9

    I'm going to link this memory game from my blog too!

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  4. My scores:
    animals: 5/9
    landscapes: 4/9
    numbers: 9/9
    letters: 9/9

    My theory is that letters and numbers are easier because we have short easy words for them in our heads: "One," "two," etc. It takes longer to come up with brain-language for "desert-ish landscape at twilight." Either way, we're memorizing words (or at least I was).

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  5. Elisabeth: I'm impressed- the animals gave me a lot of trouble at first.

    Cheryl: You've nailed it. Naming things was the key for me remembering them all. When I first tried the animals and landscapes, I looked at them in groupings: horns, pairs, blues, greens. It's not an entirely bad approach, but I was still prone to mixing up pictures within sets as it's not specific enough.

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  6. I work at National Geographic and I'm glad you like our games! I got depressed doing the animals and landscapes, which I though would be easy, but then cheered up with the numbers and letters. Another kind of memory game on our site is the Puzzle Generator: they are beautiful photos that readers have sent in, and they get turned into jigsaw puzzles. It's a kind of memory game because although you can stare at the photo as long as you want before you begin, once you press start you can't refer to the photo again. If you do the puzzles be sure to turn on the volume, because the pieces make such a satisfying click when they fit together. Here's the link, and there are 54 pages of puzzles to choose from, each one takes less than 15 minutes: http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/yourshot/jigsaw-puzzle.html

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  7. Sounds cool! I'll check them out. Thank you, Marilyn.

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