Feats of memory<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Learn seven lines a day. . . The steady degradation of our mental faculties as we age has been documented in depressing detail. If you're over 30, you're\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2010\/07\/feats-of-memory\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Feats of memory\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Learn seven lines a day. . . The steady degradation of our mental faculties as we age has been documented in depressing detail. 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The steady degradation of our mental faculties as we age has been documented in depressing detail. If you\u2019re over 30, you\u2019re losing it\u2014the only question is how fast.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

So it\u2019s nice when a study comes along suggesting that people post-50 are capable of remarkable mental feats. Take 74-year-old John Basinger. When he was 58, he decided on a lark to see if he could memorize Milton\u2019s Paradise Lost. The whole thing. All 60,000-plus words. It took him nine years, but he pulled it off and has even recited it in public.<\/p>\n

Researchers wanted to discover Basinger\u2019s secret and also how well he really knew the poem. Turns out, he memorized the poem in small segments\u2014about seven lines a day (this is consistent with other research on what the immediate memory can hold). And it wasn\u2019t just rote memorization: Basinger was attempting to comprehend the motivations of the characters, to gain a \u201cdeep, conceptual understanding of the poem.\u201d He tried to connect with it emotionally.<\/p>\n

\nThe researchers tested his accuracy by prompting him with two lines from the poem and asking him to recite the next ten. They found that he made few errors and, when he did, they were usually errors of omission.\n

He\u2019s not some memory superhero, though. Basinger has the same memory troubles that annoy most seniors (and plenty of us non-seniors, too). He forgets names, can\u2019t find his keys, etc.\u00a0 He\u2019s pretty much normal for his age, except for the memorizing-all-of-Paradise-Lost thing.<\/p>\n

via Memorizing Milton \u2013 Percolator \u2013 The Chronicle of Higher Education<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote><\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"