Are Bingo Enthusiasts Mentally Sharper?

Psychologist Dr. Iseli Krauss has discovered that playing bingo is a stimulating and possibly mind-sharpening pastime. Dr. Krauss, who teaches at Clarion University, has studied elderly bingo players who could play dozens of cards at the same time. One woman could play 140 cards simultaneously without making any mistakes!

Compared to bingo beginners, elderly experts had developed a special mental skill for spotting the called numbers and the patterns at the same time. Dr. Krauss found out that the novice player first scans for the number, then looks for the pattern, while seasoned players see the patterns forming as they are daubing the card. That's an important skill to have, since cards in pl ay get so marked up that beginners may not even see that they have bingo.

The results of a memory test given by Dr. Krauss to elderly experts were especially surprising. She gave each of them a sheet of cards and asked them to memorize the numbers in a set amount of time. Then they had to throw the cards away and write all the numbers they could remember on blank cards. Some of the players were able to remember entire cards, down to the very last number. Why? It turns out many players had their own quirky ways of remembering numbers they hated or liked -- for example, "of course I would remember I-17 -- I never win on that number!"