14 DAY TRIAL // Leeloo, the Fifth Element, could learn by heart books in a matter of seconds, but you should calm down, as real people cannot remember a thousand different things at once. This is just impossible, as a new research shows that the average person's short-term memory can only stick four items at a time.
The team of psychologists at the University of Oregon made a connection between short-term memory capacity and general intelligence. The researchers, Professors Edward Awh (lead author) and Edward Vogel, found that individual short-term memory capacity varied greatly from person to person and was firmly linked to IQ and scholastic aptitude; higher IQ was also connected with the ability to think about more things simultaneously.
The researchers followed the hypothesis that the complexity of memories could be connected with the memory capacity, but they got some surprising results. The subjects, with an age varying from 18 to 30, could retain four items in active memory regardless of how complex those items were.
"However, the clarity of those items was not perfect, and some people had much clearer memories than others," said Awh. Memory capacity was also linked to its clarity. Memory capacity appeared to be influenced by the complexity of items being stored.
"For example, a four-gigabyte iPhone, the popular new Apple cell phone, might be able to hold about 1,000 four-minute songs, but, of course, far fewer songs would fit in storage if the songs were all 20 minutes in length," said Awh.
"The same people who can remember a lot of objects at one time do not necessarily have clearer memories of those objects. Knowing the number of things a person can remember tells you nothing about how clear a person's memory may be. So even though people with high IQs can think about more things at once, there are not guarantees about how good those memories might be," he added.