Brain Teaser to Stimulate your Concentration Skills

Learn­ing can be inci­den­tal. We all mem­o­rize facts with­out pay­ing much atten­tion to these facts or with­out will­ing to mem­o­rize them. How­ev­er, when one real­ly wants to mem­o­rize a fact, it is cru­cial to pay atten­tion. Many stud­ies have shown that com­pared to full atten­tion con­di­tions, divid­ing atten­tion dur­ing study time leads to poor mem­o­ry performance.

This exer­cise will help you prac­tice focus­ing your attention.

It may seem easy but make sure you count twice!

Count the num­ber of “Y” in this text:

Yes­ter­day, Lucy went all the way to Boston. She want­ed to buy new shoes. She had to go in many shops before she found the shoes she want­ed. She was hap­py to stop at a restau­rant to have some tea and cook­ies before she took the train back home.

Count the num­ber of “F” in this text:

Fin­ished files are the result of years of sci­en­tif­ic study com­bined with the expe­ri­ence of years.

Count the num­ber of “E” in this text:

Last sum­mer, Jean and Har­ri­et spent their vaca­tion in Michi­gan. They rent­ed a cab­in on the lake. The cab­in had two bed­rooms and a nice deck. They used to spend a lot of time on the deck, just look­ing at how the light would change on the water. Sev­er­al times, they bor­rowed bikes from their neigh­bors and spent a few hours explor­ing the vil­lages not far from their cabin.


Solu­tions

There are 7 “Y” in the first text.

There are 6 “F” in the sec­ond text (got them?)

There are 38 “E” in the third text.

For many oth­er Brain Teasers, click Here.
For many oth­er teasers and arti­cles by Dr. Mich­e­lon, click Here.

Pascale MichelonPas­cale Mich­e­lon, Ph. D., is Sharp­Brains’ Research Man­ag­er for Edu­ca­tion­al Projects. Dr. Mich­e­lon has a Ph.D. in Cog­ni­tive Psy­chol­o­gy and has worked as a Research Sci­en­tist at Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty in Saint Louis, in the Psy­chol­o­gy Depart­ment. She con­duct­ed sev­er­al research projects to under­stand how the brain makes use of visu­al infor­ma­tion and mem­o­rizes facts. She is now an Adjunct Fac­ul­ty at Wash­ing­ton University.

8 Comments

  1. SGM on May 1, 2009 at 1:54

    There are 8 “y” in the first text :-)



  2. SGM on May 1, 2009 at 1:55

    Ooops!



  3. phyllis on May 1, 2009 at 2:18

    Are there real­ly 38 “e“s? (I can find only 33)



  4. nina on May 2, 2009 at 3:39

    i found 38 e’s.…on my third count — each count different.
    Count of the y’s: 6, 7, 6
    F’s: 5, 4, 5
    :(



  5. Jan on May 3, 2009 at 12:03

    I count­ed this at least 10 times…I only found 37.



  6. Jan on May 3, 2009 at 12:08

    Okay…I spoke too soon, I found the oth­er “e”



  7. david on May 3, 2009 at 7:16

    This puz­zle is a bit trick­i­er for me than most…I’m using IE6, and can’t see much of the para­graphs, because they are coverd up by google ads!



  8. ghita on October 15, 2009 at 6:11

    Did­n’t get any­one right, sob.….….sob.…What does that make me?



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