There is another Olympiad where 'Mental Athletes' also compete for Gold, Silver and Bronze medals. Set up as a sporting event, the tournament consists of memorizing exercises in individual competitions. The top 8 contestants go on to the championship round.
The American Memory Championship was started in 1997 by Tony Dottino, president of Dottino Consulting Group after he met Tony Buzan, a British educator who started the first Memory Championship in London in 1991. There are now established championships in a dozen countries, including China, So Africa and Mexico.
There are two kinds of memory. Internal, the kind we are born with, and External, the memory stored outside our brains. Medieval scholars memorized sermons and plays; Roman Senators memorized speeches. After Gutenberg invented books, we supplanted our own natural memory with an elaborate external system of preserving everything we consider valuable such as literature, music, law, politics, science and math. It was no longer necessary to practice memorizing. Its more important to know where and how to find history stored in books, photos, museums, digital media, etc.
Memorizing has become a curiosity trick, but Championship tournaments are rescuing the ancient art of using mnemonics in memory exercises that anyone with an average memory ability can practice. There are many web sites on the net that teach and explain how to practice mnemonic techniques. Journalist Josh Foer in his book, "Moonlighting With Einstein" tells in some detail how to create a Memory Palace, an imagined space wherein strings with elaborate encoding are imprinted on one's memory simply by engaging one's spatial memory in the act of remembering. A string of numbers, a shopping list or a long poem are retrieved as visual images that had been arranged in the imagined space.
The 19th USA Championship was held May 7th, 2016 in Hershey Pa. There were 3 events.
- Spoken Words. Contestants had 15 minutes to memorize 200 words organized numerically in 5 columns, with 20 words per column on 2 pages. Starting with number 1, remember as many as possible consecutively. 15 seconds to answer.
- Three Strikes You're Out. contestants had 15 minutes to listen and review written facts about 6 different people, their names, date of birth, where they lived, their pet, favorite 3 hobbies, favorite car, favorite 3 foods. After retention period, 15 seconds to answer.
- Double Decks O'cards. Contestants had 5 minutes to memorize 2 decks of 52 playing cards, identical, previously arranged in the same exact order, but not mixed and with different colored backs. After the memorizing period, there was a 2 minute hiatus prior to recall, and 15 seconds to answer.
1 comment:
I have a memory contest too. It's called The 6 Second Memory. That's about the longest time I can remember anything: 6 seconds.
Memory is really interesting as to what sorts of things people can remember and of course it changes over time too. Memories get blurred and chronologically rearranged.
I have great memory for horses. I remember most of the ones I've known (or more accurately the ones I remember; 'cause if I don't remember them ... well doh), I have a poor memory for names. Even poorer memory for dates; even important historical dates that most people remember without issues like birthdays and anniversaries. My spouse always remembers these and I rarely remember them at all.
In ancient times, the ability to remember long chains of oral history or songs was considered a mark of intellect. Some oral stories take days, weeks or longer to recite all of the stanzas/events. These great epics were the entertainment for many. The adventures of great heroes both in this world, the underworld and over-world were revealed as new chapters in the saga.
Some of these great sagas had significant religious aspects and once started the chain could not be broken and teams of singers, chanters, or reciters would work day and night to tell their story of creation because if the story stopped then the world and cosmos would be incomplete. These great tellings re-created the world, cosmos and gods as the story unfolded and breaking the chain or altering the order of the story would break the world.
I loved learning some of these long ballads and complicated saga stories but when you try to sing or recite these to modern audiences they have only the ability to listen for oh ... about 6 seconds.
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