You should spend about 20 minutes on
Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.
Memory Decoding
Try this memory test: Study each face and
compose a vivid image for the person’s first and last name. Rose Leo, for
example, could be a rosebud and a lion. Fill in the blanks on the next
page. The Examinations School at Oxford University is an austere building
of oak-paneled rooms, large Gothic windows, and looming portraits of
eminent dukes and earls. It is where generations of Oxford students have
tested their memory on final exams, and it is where, last August, 34
contestants gathered at the World Memory Championships to be examined in an
entirely different manner.
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A
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In timed
trials, contestants were challenged to look at and then recite a two-page
poem, memorize rows of 40-digit numbers, recall the names of 110 people
after looking at their photographs, and perform seven other feats of
extraordinary retention. Some tests took just a few minutes; others lasted
hours. In the 14 years since the World Memory Championships was founded, no
one has memorized the order of a shuffled deck of playing cards in less
than 30 seconds. That nice round number has become the four-minute mile of
competitive memory, a benchmark that the world’s best “mental athletes,” as
some of them like to be called, is closing in on. Most contestants claim to
have just average memories, and scientific testing confirms that they’re
not just being modest. Their feats are based on tricks that capitalize on
how the human brain encodes information. Anyone can learn them.
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B
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Psychologists Elizabeth
Valentine and John Wilding, authors of the monograph Superior Memory,
recently teamed up with Eleanor Maguire, a neuroscientist at University
College London to study eight people, including Karsten, who had finished
near the top of the World Memory Championships. They wondered if the
contestants’ brains were different in some way. The researchers put the
competitors and a group of control subjects into an MRI machine and asked
them to perform several different memory tests while their brains were
being scanned. When it came to memorizing sequences of three-digit numbers,
the difference between the memory contestant and the control subjects was,
as expected, immense. However, when they were shown photographs of
magnified snowflakes, images that the competitors had never tried to
memorize before, the champions did no better than the control group. When
the researchers analyzed the brain scans, they found that the memory champs
were activating some brain regions that were different from those the
control subjects were using. These regions, which included the right
posterior hippocampus, are known to be involved in visual memory and
spatial navigation.
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C
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It might seem
odd that the memory contestants would use visual imagery and spatial
navigation to remember numbers, but the activity makes sense when their
techniques are revealed. Cooke, a 23-year-old cognitive-science graduate
student with a shoulder-length mop of curly hair, is a grand master of
brain storage. He can memorize the order of 10 decks of playing cards in
less than an hour or one deck of cards in less than a minute. He is closing
in on the 30-second deck. In the Lamb and Flag, Cooke pulled out a deck of
cards and shuffled it. He held up three cards – the 7 of spades, the queen
of clubs, and the 10 of spades. He pointed at a fireplace and said,
“Destiny’s Child is whacking Franz Schubert with handbags.” The next three
cards were the king of hearts, the king of spades, and the jack of clubs.
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D
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How did he do it? Cooke has
already memorized a specific person, verb, and object that he associates
with each card in the deck. For example, for the 7 of spades, the person
(or, in this case, persons) is always the singing group Destiny’s Child,
the action is surviving a storm, and the image is a dinghy. The queen of
clubs is always his friend Henrietta, the action is thwacking with a
handbag, and the image is of wardrobes filled with designer clothes. When
Cooke commits a deck to memory, he does it three cards at a time. Every
three-card group forms a single image of a person doing something to an
object. The first card in the triplet becomes the person, the second the
verb, the third the object. He then places those images along a specific
familiar route, such as the one he took through the Lamb and Flag. In
competitions, he uses an imaginary route that he has designed to be as
smooth and downhill as possible. When it comes time to recall, Cooke takes
a mental walk along his route and translates the images into cards. That’s
why the MRIs of the memory contestants showed activation in the brain areas
associated with visual imagery and spatial navigation.
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E
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The more
resonant the images are, the more difficult they are to forget. But even
meaningful information is hard to remember when there’s a lot of it. That’s
why competitive memorizers place their images along an imaginary route.
That technique, known as the loci method, reportedly originated in 477 B.C.
with the Greek poet Simonides of Ceos. Simonides was the sole survivor of a
roof collapse that killed all the other guests at a royal banquet. The
bodies were mangled beyond recognition, but Simonides was able to
reconstruct the guest list by closing his eyes and recalling each
individual around the dinner table. What he had discovered was that our
brains are exceptionally good at remembering images and spatial
information. Evolutionary psychologists have offered an explanation:
Presumably, our ancestors found it important to recall where they found
their last meal or the way back to the cave. After Simonides’ discovery,
the loci method became popular across ancient Greece as a trick for
memorizing speeches and texts. Aristotle wrote about it, and later a number
of treatises on the art of memory were published in Rome. Before printed
books, the art of memory was considered a staple of classical education, on
a par with grammar, logic, and rhetoric.
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F
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The most famous of the
naturals was the Russian journalist S.V. Shereshevski, who could recall
long lists of numbers memorized decades earlier, as well as poems, strings
of nonsense syllables, and just about anything else he was asked to
remember. “The capacity of his memory had no distinct limits,” wrote
Alexander Luria, the Russian psychologist who studies Shereshevski also had
synesthesia, a rare condition in which the senses become intertwined. For
example, every number may be associated with a color or every word with a
taste. Synesthetic reactions evoke a response in more areas of the brain,
making memory easier.
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G
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K. Anders
Ericsson, a Swedish-born psychologist at Florida State University, thinks
anyone can acquire Shereshevski’s skills. He cites an experiment with S.
F., an undergraduate who was paid to take a standard test of memory called
the digit span for one hour a day, two or three days a week. When he
started, he could hold, like most people, only about seven digits in his
head at any given time (conveniently, the length of a phone number). Over
two years, S. F. completed 250 hours of testing. By then, he had stretched
his digit span from 7 to more than 80. The study of S. F. led Ericsson to
believe that innately superior memory doesn’t exist at all. When he
reviewed original case studies of naturals, he found that exceptional
memorizers were using techniques – sometimes without realizing it – and
lots of practice. Often, exceptional memory was only for a single type of
material, like digits. “If we look at some of these memory tasks, they’re
the kind of thing most people don’t even waste one hour practicing, but if
they wasted 50 hours, they’d be exceptional at it,” Ericsson says. It would
be remarkable, he adds, to find a “person who is exceptional across a
number of tasks. I don’t think that there’s any compelling evidence that
there are such people.”
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Questions 1-5
The Reading Passage has seven
paragraphs A-G.
Which paragraph contains the following
information?
Write the correct letter A-G,
in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.
1 The reason why the
competence of super memory is significant in academic settings
2 Mention of a contest for
extraordinary memory held in consecutive years
3 A demonstrative example of
extraordinary person did an unusual recalling game
4 A belief that extraordinary
memory can be gained through enough practice
5 A depiction of the rare
ability which assists the extraordinary memory reactions
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Questions 6-10
Complete the following summary of the
paragraphs of Reading Passage.
Using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the
Reading Passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 6-10 on
your answer sheet.
Using visual imagery and spatial navigation to remember numbers are
investigated and explained. A man called Ed Cooke in a pub, spoke a string
of odd words when he held 7 of the spades (the first one of any cards
group) was remembered as he encoded it to a 6………………………. and the card deck to memory are set to be one time of an
order of 7………………………..; When
it comes time to recall, Cooke took a 8………………………….. along his way and interpreted the imaginary scene into
cards. This superior memory skill can be traced back to Ancient Greece, the
strategy was called 9………………………
which had been a major subject was in ancient 10………………………..
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Questions 11-12
Choose TWO correct letter, A-E.
Write your answers in boxes 37-38
on your answer sheet.
According to World Memory Championships, what
activities need good memory?
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A
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order for a
large group of each digit
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B
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recall
people’s face
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C
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resemble a
long Greek poem
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D
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match name
with pictures and features
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E
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recall what
people ate and did yesterday
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Questions 13-14
Choose TWO correct letter, A-E.
Write your answers in boxes 39-40
on your answer sheet.
What is the result of Psychologists Elizabeth
Valentine and John Wilding’s MRI Scan experiment find out?
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A
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the
champions’ brains are different in some way from common people
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B
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difference in the brain of
champions’ scan image to control subjects are shown when memorizing
sequences of three-digit numbers
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C
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champions did
much worse when they are asked to remember photographs
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D
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the memory-champs activated
more brain regions than control subjects
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E
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there is some
part in the brain coping with visual and spatial memory
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