Throughout chapters 3-5 my group and I discovered the different perspectives of an intellectual and an average person. Joshua Foer, the author of Moonwalking with Einstein discusses experts more advanced and developed minds and their logical thinking compared to nonexperts. Foer also explains in his research he discovered while experimenting the "chunking method" that people can remember 7 chunks of info in their short term memory. In order to increase your memory and the size of chunks you have to give them meaning. Foer also discusses how he met a man EP, who has short term memory loss due to a serious flu. He lost the ability to create new memories and has never improved or worsened. Through this chapter Foer emphasizes two different types of memories, declarative and nondeclarative. Declarative memory in which you remember things consciously, this also includes semantic which are facts and concepts, and episodic like what you ate for lunch. Nondeclarative memory are things you know unconsciously like breathing. Each time we think about a memory we integrate it more deeply into our web of other memories, therefore making it stable and less likely to be forgotten. Through these next chapters we learn a lot about how we remember things and how they're described in our thoughts. He also introduced the memory palace, where you imagine the content you have to remember in a place. Most people have these without even realizing, which is what makes your memory so unique.
Ultimately these chapters were very informative and eye-opening. We discussed our personal opinions and the ideas throughout each chapter. We felt that Foer has a good and simple language, which creates an easier understanding especially since he uses personal and scientific examples.
- Pedroza
I like that you mentioned the chunking method and memory palace technique, which Foer emphasizes repeatedly throughout those chapters.
ReplyDeleteI also agree that Foer has a more simple style of writing that is easy to understand. However, I have gotten confused a few times when it comes to differentiating between his own opinion and those of the scientists that conduct the studies he uses as references. I feel that he uses so many examples of scientific studies that his own arguments get buried beneath them all.
- Annika H