Memory Magic

Introduction

I attended a large meeting once where the speaker for the meeting consciously shook the hands of 50 people from the audience before the meeting began and subsequently performed some Memory Magic. During the first few minutes of his speech, the speaker came into the audience and addressed all 50 of the people he met before the meeting flawlessly by their first names. I was amazed.

A number of years later, my wife and I attended a banquet with about 30 people. There was only one waiter. The waiter took the orders from a large menu for all 30 people without writing anything down. He later delivered the meals for all 30 people without a single error. The various people gave different ways they wanted their food prepared and other instructions to the waiter. He delivered all the food flawlessly. He was amazing?

These situations intrigued me to read and research how these amazing people remembered flawlessly the names and orders. During my reading, I learned that memory of this magnitude is accomplished using methods that generate mental imagery and is highly dependent on a number of principles.

How We Remember

Memory involves attention, perception, storage, and representation. Our memory of experiences or information requires selective concentration on the information or happening while ignoring other things (attention). During the acquisition of information it requires that we interpret, select and organize sensory information creating a model of how things work in our world or realm (perception). Then we must retain information in a fashion allowing us to recall it via later query (storage). The representation of the information as it is stored determines our ability to recall the information at a later time.

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