Taxi drivers' exceptional memory of street names

In this paper, we explore the nature of taxi drivers' serial recall of stre et names. The main question is whether the memory of verbal material benefi ts from the possibility of using visuospatial associations and knowledge co ncerning large-scale environment. In two experiments, expert taxi drivers,' recall of street names was superior to that of control groups. In Experime nt 1, experts' superiority of memory was greater when the street names refl ected a visuospatially continuous route than when the street names were loc ated along a straight line across the map without spatial continuity or wer e presented in random order. In Experiment 2, the expert taxi drivers recal led spatially continuously organized lists much better than they recalled l ists of street names belonging to the same semantic category or lists prese nted in alphabetical order. This result also suggests that interitem associ ations, which are based on spatial co-occurrence, are efficient in comparis on with other mnemonics.