Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything

by Joshua Foer

Subsequent studies of amnesics, including tests conducted on EP, have found that people who lose their memories are still capable of yet other kinds of unremembered learning. In one experiment, Squire gave EP a list of twenty-four words to memorize. As expected, within a few minutes, EP had no recollection of any of the words, or even that the exercise had happened at all. When asked whether he’d seen a given word before, he answered correctly only half the time. But then Squire sat EP in front of a computer monitor and gave him a different test. This time, forty-eight words were flashed on the screen for twenty-five milliseconds each, just long enough for the eye to catch some, but not all, of them (an eye blink, by comparison, happens in 100 to 150 milliseconds). Half the words were from the list that EP had read over and forgotten, and half were new. Squire asked EP to read each word after it flashed on the screen. Surprisingly, EP was far better at reading the words he’d seen before than the ones that were new. Even though he had no conscious recollection of them, somewhere in the recesses of his brain they had left an impression. This phenomenon of unconscious remembering, known as priming, is evidence of an entire shadowy underworld of memories lurking beneath the surface of our conscious reckoning.