The speed of information processing at memory competitions: limited by reading in short tasks and declining as a power law for longer times
We analyze information rates associated with top performances in memory competitions and reveal three phenomena. First, in tasks with short memorization time, information processing reaches up to 42 bit/s with most of the time spent on reading, suggesting that mental associations are formed even more rapidly. Second, record performances show a remarkable concordance across time scales: the processing speed depends on memorization time as a power law. Third, despite dramatic improvements in scores and mnemonic strategies over the last decades, the differences in information rates across memorization tasks remain remarkably consistent.