Rote memory

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I used to have a rote memory... how well does yours work?

I hope the poll options aren't too messy. I was trying to query a few facets of memory simultaneously - how long term it is, whether it's mainly things you pay attention to, and whether pure rote or understanding memory is easier for you.

I can't remember the alphabet and the order of the months. I need to work out multiplication problems for the first time, everytime. Straight rote memory is a pretty glaring weakness here.

I can, however, explain to you exactly how a NTR (Nuclear Thermal Rocket) works off the top of my head. I can (and do) have sophiscated conversations of intense intelluctual discourse.

Funny how memory works.

I guess my rote memory is pretty good, but only sometimes. Sometimes I can memorize twenty-forty new words in French in about ten minutes and recalling it automatically a year later (even though we did use some of the words in class), but I am much better with remembering things such as grammar rules, math rules, and formulas in physics. Other times, though, I will read a definition to a word about twenty times throughout a week and still not remember it.

I have a good rote memory but I need to visually see it in action.

For example, I can remeber how to go someplace once I have been to that place once. However, if I see a chart and then have to work off that chart, I have problems.

Ho yeah. #2000.

Anywho. I do not have a Photographic Memory by any means. But I am incredibly visual. And when I sit down to purposely memorize something it doesn't take long at all and I can see it in my mind and basically just read it off.

If it's a story, I can't remember a story line to save my life. But if I just memorize information, I can do that very quickly.

But as for it staying in my memory for a long time, I'm not so lucky. I don't retain it too long unless I reinforce it again and again until I have actually learned it and not just visually memorized.

I have usually done very well in school (when I tried) because my memorization skills are so good. (I think that also says something about teaching and testing methods in many schools who unfortunately-- but fortunately for me-- focus on remembering material rather than critical thinking.)

NOTE: This made me think of something: Because I am very visual and when I memorize something and just read it off from memory in most cases, I prefer to have it very organized (so I can "see" it) and the more compact and on one sheet or a few sheets of paper the better. I would NEVER use flash cards because they're all separate and I'd have to visually memorize every single flash card instead of just a few pages of a study guide. ARGH! Anyone else find this, too??

I'm not sure what you qualify as "recall it perfectly." I rarely watch movies, even ones I really liked, more than once because I can "recall it perfectly." Of course, I don't remember every trivial detail, every word uttered, but I do remember the general plot, character motives, conflicts, etc. Such things as the color of a person's jacket are irrelevant to me.

If you mean, can I recall things verbatim, I rarely ever can. I always hated memorizing short stories and poems in elementary school. I somehow managed to get by in mathematics all the way up into calculus without even having my arithmatic tables memorized by rote!

On the other hand, with my "restricted and stereotyped patterns of interest," I will have read many of the same ideas so many times that I do know them by rote. I generally do not find sitting down to memorize facts particularly pleasant, though.

Horrible rote memory. I think this might have come from doing so much memorization in school when I was young. I loose interest fairly quickly with things.

On the other hand, I love to find out new information and will often go to great extremes trying to retrieve this information and figure out how to apply it to life.

Everyone has a photographic memory. Some just don't have film.

Hey, wait a minute….didn’t I just post this on the thread "In the News Today" ???

http://www.wrongplanet.net/modules.php? ... pic&t=5480

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Must sit down....not feeling well.....the room seems to be spinning

LOL, monastic

i used to have an eidetic memory. however, age and depression and stress have an unfortunate effect, so i now have only the memory of an elephant. pants!

I'll put it this way, I couldn't recite a line from a movie correctly if I tried...

If I take 2 or 3 days to memorize some flowchart or some set of rules for college class I can usually do pretty well but otherwise, unless I press and press, my rote memory works like crap.

I need to understand something to remember it unless I use a pneumonic. I'm great at remembering concepts, but I am HORRIBLE at names and dates.

DrizzleMan, your questions and answers don't seem to fit together. Rote memory is memorising something through repetition usually with little comprehension. The way you wrote the answers to the poll make it seem like memorising something right away means you have a good rote memory, but that is not using rote memory at all.

To answer the question, though, I have a very good rote memory. That is how I remember most things.

Hi Drizzle Man,

I can remember anything in great detail in which I have interest after many years, e.g. 25 years or more. I never thought much of it until my professional colleagues kept asking me how I could remember details of clinical casework I had completed with clients in the government disability service for whom I worked. I could even remember what reports I had written and summarise them by [visual] memory. I thought every one, i.e. NTs, had such abilities. I really think it is a function of interest and attention "times" a particularly high [above 99th Percentile in my case] performance IQ profile, but more in terms of visual memory, than auditory. Like Sophist and ljbouchard I can "see" patterns virtually instantly, which is especially useful for me in assessing behaviour of my clients when I go into schools in my job as a behaviour management specialist. I quickly pick up the patterns of behavioural interaction in front of me [animals or human animals], but I cannot do it in relation to any participation by myself in any "social" setting, only when I am in my "work" role and by definition it is not a "social" setting for me. In such settings I am purely a "behavioural mechanic" watching and analysing from the outside of the social group.

Jim Crawford

I picked the "I remember what interests me, but it fades with time" option, though some things stick with me more than others. I also have to understand something in order to remember it.

In short, my memory sucks.

My husband gets frustrated with me sometimes. I know all about just about every bird there is what they eat, where they live, and what they sound like. But give me a problem to solve on paper and you've lost me even if I saw it last week.

In my early teens, I had an incredible rote memory. I could memorize practically an entire chapter word-for-word. But over time, this faded, as rote memorization becomes less important in higher grades.