Никому не интересная запись об истории науки.

[position_avtor]

Люблю обстоятельных людей. Ищу я, значиться, информацию по тестам на визуальную кратковременную память на замечательном SpringerReference.
Обычно информация об историческом бэкграунде теста выглядит примерно так:

"Dr. Arthur L. Benton developed the Visual Retention Test as a brief measure of immediate nonverbal memory to supplement the popular auditory digit span test in neuropsychological evaluations (Benton, 1945). It was first published in 1946. ..."

А тут наткнулась на это чудо. Тут и Лейбниц, и По, и Эмерсон, и Рузвельт...

The origins of digit span as a psychological construct date from the work Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716). Leibniz suggested that individuals have a finite capacity to prospectively process or hold in mind the information from the environment. He termed this capacity the span of apperception. (Much of the historical information reviewed in this essay is drawn from JTE Richardson's paper: Measurements of short-term memory: A historical review. Cortex, 43, 635-650, 2007.)

In the nineteenth century, Herman Ebbinghaus (1850-1909; 1885/1964 cited in Richardson,2007) was the first cognitive scientist to show how span could be used as an experimental paradigm to investigate memory and learning. In America, Oliver Wendell Homes pater(1809-1894; 1871 cited in Richardson, 2007) made cogent observations on the parameters of digit span as a method to assess span of apperception, i.e., "in uttering distinctly a series of unconnected numbers or letters before a succession of careful listeners, I have been surprised to find how generally they break down, in trying to repeat them, between seven and ten figures or letters" (Holmes, 1871, cited in Richardson, 2007). (Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., M.D., a resident of Cambridge, Massachusetts, was a very influential nineteenth century physician. In addition to his achievements as Dean of Harvard Medical School, Dr. Holmes popularized the use of the stethoscope as medical instrument. Equally impressive were Dr. Holmes' literary achievements. Admired by Edgar Allan Poe, Dr. Holmes was a member of an illustrious group of Boston literati and could count as his friends such individuals as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Known for his essays and poetry, Dr. Holmes was a founder of the Atlantic Monthly magazine. In addition to his other achievements Dr. Holmes is credited for naming the city of Boston The Hub of the Universe. Holmes' son, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., was a well known jurist and was appointed Associate Justice to the Supreme Court by President Theodore Roosevelt.) Several years later, Ebbinghaus made a similar observation commenting, "the question can be asked, what number or syllables can be correctly recited after only one reading… for me the number is usually seven", (1885, cited in Richardson, 2007). Thus, more than 80 years before George Miller's seminal paper (1956) "The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information", the basic paradigm of span as a psychological method had already been examined.