Study Finds The Blind Have Superior 'Serial Memory'

Remembering the order of things can be key to finding the right doorway, shirt or flavor of yogurt for someone who cannot see. A new study shows that this aspect of understanding and organizing the world may train the minds of the blind to have superior "serial memory," or the ability to remember the order or sequence of things.

Testing 20 sighted individuals and 19 congenitally blind individuals on this serial memory as well as "item memory." To test item memory, they were asked to recall words from a list. To test serial memory, they were asked to remember not only the words, but the order in which they were read.

Blind subjects performed better, remembering more words overall. They especially excelled in naming them in order, researchers found, but did not show any advantage in remembering the first words from the list or the most recently heard ones. Memory did not appear to be affected regardless of where the words fell in the list, suggesting that "their success may lie in representing item lists as word chains, perhaps by generating associations between adjacent items."

"Our opinion is that the superior serial memory of the blind is most likely a result of practice," said researcher Ehud Zohary of Hebrew University. "In the absence of vision, the world is experienced as a sequence of events. Since the blind constantly use serial-memory strategies in everyday circumstances, they tend to develop superior skills."

Researchers now plan to futher study these differences using brain imaging.

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