What occupations have good short-term memory?

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I've never had a taxi driver ask me to repeat where I'm going

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There was some sort of scientific study of taxi drivers and they found that the part of the brain that deals with spatial navigation was much larger in their brains than in the general population. I think rather than a generalizable short-term memory ability they possess a specific navigational ability-- so they're not necessarily good at remembering names.

[Landon_McFly]

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Besides the ones already mentioned...air traffic controller. I looked into doing this (you know, make $80K, be a federal employee, get work in any major city, etc.) You have to remember what runways are open, what flights are leaving, what flights are incoming, where bad weather is, all that...and it's continually changing while you put the puzzle together. Damn. And of course, if you screw up bad enough, people can die.

ScottieK

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I believe they have the highest suicide rate of any job due to the stressful nature of their occupation.

[FatOtt]

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Booya. Research this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeigarnik_effect

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Holy [censored]. This is awesome.

[JaBlue]

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Its pretty easy to improve your short term memory if you want to. Just use it regularly. Learn to play chess, you don't have to play very well to improve it if you are actually trying 2 hours a week. Heck just remembering your golf score without using a card will help.

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I would like to see some evidence that chess improves short term memory because I played and studied 10+hrs/wk for 3 years and my short term memory still and always has sucked.

[Blarg]

I think something like chess can work on it indirectly, because you have to memorize a little to think X number of moves ahead. Then next turn the situation changes a little to a lot. Same with Go.

Card counting in blackjack requires very short term memory. You're constantly moving numbers through matrix tables in your mind, very quickly, and then forgetting about them instantly, remembering only the count. Which is itself constantly changing.

I have another one -- the guys who work taking orders in the pit at the stock exchange and commodities exchanges. They hear everybody shouting from all directions and waving their arms, gotta be distracting and intense as hell, and often take down several orders at once, and it might as well be life and death, for the insane amount of money involved that the process every few seconds. And it's all based on your word, basically.

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Besides the ones already mentioned...air traffic controller. I looked into doing this (you know, make $80K, be a federal employee, get work in any major city, etc.) You have to remember what runways are open, what flights are leaving, what flights are incoming, where bad weather is, all that...and it's continually changing while you put the puzzle together. Damn. And of course, if you screw up bad enough, people can die.

ScottieK

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I believe they have the highest suicide rate of any job due to the stressful nature of their occupation.

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This I believe. If I can't do the job hung over, then I don't want it.

As for chess players and memory...I think most chess players have a better short term and long term memory than non-chess players. My memory's pretty good...not Lord Nikon quality, but pretty good. I think chess trains players to memorize a lot of things, like tactical patterns, checkmate patterns, opening lines, etc. Players also have to remember their lines of analysis when selecting a move to play. FWIW.

Edit: Also found this interesting: Chess and memory study in kids

ScottieK