Working memory is the information we need to access to complete the tasks we’re engaged in right now, and scientists think it may be closely entwined with consciousness
  • over_clox@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    24 days ago

    This is very interesting.

    Random relevant story time…

    When I was 10 years old, in 4th grade English class, we were reading some silly short book where everything in the world basically worked backwards. Of course we all understood it was all silly nonsense, but it was fun for us around that age and kept the students attention.

    Well, part of it regarded the alphabet being backwards. Now of course the teacher didn’t expect us to remember that, nor did she grade us on that, but she took a moment in class to make it random fun, and asked the class if any of us could even try to say our ABC’s backwards…

    Around 5 o 6 students raised their hand and tried, but the best they got was about 5 letters in. What was I doing the whole time? Memorizing, in a compartmental sort of mode.

    So, after about 5 minutes, the teacher was ready to move on. But then I raised my hand…

    Straight from my fresh memory banks, no looking at the page or anything else:

    ZYX WVUTSR QPONM LKJIH GFEDCBA

    Everyone was astounded, even me LOL! I learned it backwards in all of about 5 minutes!

    Now I’m 43, going on 44. I still remember it to this day, guess I burned it into my long term memory.

    Let me finish by saying this much, please please do NOT try to do this, it’ll fuck up your entire concept of sorting words alphabetically! I mean yeah I’m good with language, spelling, letters, grammar, etc, but if you give me a list of 10+ words to sort alphabetically, without a computer of course, it’ll end up taking me like 3 times longer to sort out, as I have to remind myself which order the alphabet actually goes.