In which direc­tion is the bus pic­tured below traveling?

Do you know the answer?

The only pos­si­ble answers are “left” or “right.”

Still don’t know?

Keep read­ing for the answer and explanation…

When pre-school chil­dren were shown this pic­ture and ques­tion, they all answered “left.” When asked why, they answered “Because you can’t see the door.” Feel pretty dumb now, don’t you? I did too!

But this teaser illus­trates a good con­cept to remem­ber when­ever you start think­ing your mem­ory is ter­ri­ble. While most of us think our mem­o­ries are pretty lousy, imag­ine if our mem­o­ries were absolutely per­fect. You might have been able to answer this puz­zle cor­rectly, since you could com­pare this image to all the school bus images you have in your head, and only the ones going left would match.

On the other hand, imag­ine hav­ing eidetic, or pho­to­graphic, mem­ory and remem­ber­ing every sin­gle detail of every sin­gle day of your life. It would be insur­mount­able to fil­ter through all that data retrieve use­ful infor­ma­tion. (In real life, there have been very few peo­ple with eidetic mem­ory, and some peo­ple spec­u­late if there is such a thing at all.) So, your mind remem­bers things that it pays atten­tion to because they are deemed impor­tant. Think of emotion-laden mem­o­ries. With good or bad expe­ri­ences– the mem­o­ries are detail rich. There­fore, if you need to remem­ber more — either do things that are more mean­ing­ful to you or find a way to ascribe mean­ing to what you’re try­ing to remember.

And now make sure to try our other selected Brain Teasers!

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