I would like to discuss techniques to improve in the Numerical Sequence Working Memory Task or the Ayumu Test. That simple game which was given to chimpanzees. There is a screen with a sequence of some length of natural numbers beginning with 1. The chimp is allowed to memorize the order of the sequence on the screen. And then after some time the numbers become blank squares, which then should be pressed in the order of the sequence before.
If there are some posts on it in the Forum feel free to mention them, I would like to read those.
The question is : how to improve my skill in such a game effectively? My method so far is playing it on some platform and more playing.
I once reached lvl 20 on humanbenchmark and then I quit because I got bored.
What I did was memorize the strings of numbers going line by line, each line would be a room in my memory palace. For example, in the image you shared I would memorize 7 in the first room, 9 in the second, 623 in the third, 148 in the fourth and 5 on the fifth.
Then I would just go number by number. I’d click the one and then think about the number two, I would see that I have it on the third room on my second loci, so it’s the second number of the third row, and continue like that until I finished.
Depends on what level you want to achieve, as techniques will differ.
Short-term memory should hold you to 9. Afterwards, I like to chunk the numbers into triangles or quadrilaterals, i.e. groups of 3-4, and visualize the direction and motion of those shapes. Given that there is a lot of empty space, and almost all versions of this chimp test show you the location of all the squares (but not the number), one can avoid confusing two similar numbers pretty well. This geometry-based approach gets me to about 16.
After 16, it becomes harder to spatially keep track of everything, so going line by line (either row or column, but row is more intuitive) works better. You can make up stories with these numbers from left to right. @Nicoriossoto covered this very well.
