ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we describe our analysis of a single subject (SF) who has become an expert at the digit-span task. Over the course of 2 years, involving over 250 hours of laboratory practice, SF has steadily increased his digit span from seven digits to about 80 digits. SF's current digit span exceeds that of normals by more than a factor of 10, and his span is four times higher than has ever been recorded in the literature before. In this chapter, we present our analysis of the cognitive processes underlying this memory feat, and we want to use this specific example to develop what we think are the important theoretical principles that we have discovered about skilled memory.
