Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Curious about memory in early memorizers

For those of you who had toddlers who memorized things (for my son it was states, capitols, countries, flags, what language was spoken, presidents, dinosaurs, periodic table, fungus...list continues as he does), how much of this information is retained long term?

My boy seems to get into a single subject at a time and "live" in it until he has learned everything that is possible for his current brain development to grasp. Only then does he move on. He is only more recently starting to branch out to several fascinations at once. At three he knew every flag of the world...it was a major obsession. Just last week, out of curiosity, I quizzed him, and while he knows way more than me, he'd forgotten a lot. Even at that, I was still surprised at how many he knew considering he has hardly looked at them since being 3.5.

How much of this information stays? Is this normal? Does it make his memory/brain function stronger to have learned this stuff and then move on leaving it unused? Is it good to go back and try to force recall? Just curious as to others experiences with prodigious memorizers.

I'm curious about this. I've got a child who has memorized a lot of things for her age and I have stopped giving her things to memorize (we don't have a map of the world on the wall, I stopped buying flashcards) because it seems like although she is drawn to memorizing things in her environment she will probably forget it all and her time would be better spent playing. I don't think my child is a genius and often want to apologize for even posting here at all, but I do think she has a good memory and good attention span. Still, it seems to me that her ability to self-regulate is probably benefited more by playtime than by memorizing things with no context (like space - she knows details about the planets and recognizes a nebula, constellations, a black hole but she doesn't understand what they are) and without the ability to regulate your attention a good memory isn't very useful.

I think memory depends on how emotionally important certain things are to you.

I have one of those kids too ... he's turning 3 in March. The way I look at all this as "brain exercise" ... he's expanding his capacity and even if he forgets all or some of the data, it was all fun for him and definitely worth the trouble as he really enjoys it and his brain is constantly getting trained at retaining data.

I think that Mk and Jon have the right idea-- my DD was one of these "collector" personalities right from the start. It was words and information when she was tiny, then it was CareBears, then complete series of books, then it was Littlest Pet Shop creatures, now it seems to be geeky teeshirts, gaming dice, steampunk attire, and physics formulae.

She hasn't necessarily "hung onto" those earlier phases, much as they delighted/charmed us as parents. Ultimately, though, this seems (at least to me) to be about her need to "collect" stuff in order to satisfy some inner need-- be it for control, for entertainment, or for intellectual stimulation.

It's served its purpose, and once she moves on, she doesn't really have a lot of need for it.

Most of those early memory things are long since gone. She had entire books and scripts memorized when she was two and three and knew all the muscles in the hand at one point, I think. She doesn't know that stuff now (13yo), though. What's very interesting to me is that she DID retain most of that early stuff for a long time, though-- for example, she could cite complete transcripts of movies that she'd seen once or twice even YEARS after the last viewing.

It's as though it faded away very slowly as it was supplanted by other new interests. But until she was about seven, she had TOTAL recall. It was really amazing.

Mine has kept some and discarded some of that early-memorized knowledge. It surprises me how much he's retained: he will come out with the Latin name of a cloud formation (learned at age 5) or the surface temperature of a planet (age 3) and it will certainly take me back to those days.

He increasingly is able to use his accumulated data as a reference library (i.e. knowing the whole periodic table by heart really does help you do chemistry faster). I'm glad he's integrating the information...

DeeDee

Probably the most remarkable thing DD memorized was the US presidents in order at two. She is four now and can still do this. She knows even more about them. She can give a brief fact or two about each one. But, she is constantly revisiting them. The same is true about the solar system.

She also memorized the US states in alphabetical order shortly after two, and while she could tell you a lot about each state we have visited, which is a lot, and could tell you the names of many states, she could NOT list them in their order anymore. She also was obsessed with rocks and crystals at one time and could identify 30 or 40 in her collection. The other day I was not surprised when she confused some of them.

I know I have also taught her things to memorize for fun that she has forgotten. She used to be able to say the lord's prayer and pledge of allegiance and had memorized the majority of Little Bear. I am pretty sure she cannot do these anymore.

She is a quick learner, though, and could probably memorize that stuff again quickly again like she did the first time if she wanted. I always figured she would forget a lot but would benefit from relearning things over and over. I think she held on to the presidents because history is such a passion of hers and they just keep coming up.

DS 4 also has a great memory. He started with numbers a nine months,then came letters,solar system, dinosaurs, states and capitals to name a few. I am not sure how much he has retained of these things but his true love is words.
He started learning words at 13 mos. And at 19 mos. He was tested by a reading speciialist at mid first grade level with excellent comprehension. Now his reading vocabulary is at sixth grade level. He has his own system for figuring out the words. A researcher at our local university who has tested him
Thinks it is based on chunking parts of words he already has memorized. If DS
Has seen a word once, he never forgets it.

I suppose the answer comes down to the question of the speed of neural pruning. There are some theories that hypothesize slower pruning in the gifted, though how much slower remains open for debate.

I remember my mom saying that we moved back to a place where we lived before when I was in the third grade. We hadn't been there since I was 2. I saw her best friends old apartment and started telling them where all the furniture used to be. I think about that with my babies. They'll remember more than you think. My sister used to rewatch movies in preschool until she could say every word of every movie we owned, and she would talk over the whole thing, saying the whole dialog. Don't you think that's annoying!