Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV
Imagine that someone asked you to come up with a sequence of five words. In any other year, some idiosyncratic combination would likely come to mind. This year, though, one five-word sequence that has been etched into the memories of many Americans, and many worldwide, stands out—“person, woman, man, camera, TV.” Donald Trump, touting his ability to memorize these words as part of a cognitive health test, made the sequence famous. (The comedian Sarah Cooper also gave it a boost with her viral YouTube video, “How to person woman man camera tv.”)
We can tie together our personal experiences and acquired knowledge—such as this memory of Trump’s behavior—into interconnected memories, recallable at a moment’s notice. The fact that our healthy brains can do this can seem mundane and unremarkable. After all, we often experience the phenomenon of memory, with the exception of cramming for tests and the like, quite effortlessly. Our ability to remember a simple five-word sequence, or the events of a birthday five years ago, and the fact that a question, or a
