An experiment . . .

[omorka]

Hmm. Well, this is not a random sample by any means, but we'll call this an observational study rather than a survey and live with it.

Okay - if you're reading this, I want you to do the following:

In a comment below, tell me how many rooms there were/are in the house of the grandparent or pair of grandparents you visited the most often while you were growing up.

Then tell me, in the same comment, how you retrieved the information in memory - what the process was that you used to answer the question. The more detail you can give on what you did mentally to find an answer, the better.

I'm screening comments so that no one will be contaminated by anyone else's answer. I'll unscreen comments after 48 hours and analyze the results in another post. (I'm interested in whether there are any common methods, or whether we all do this differently, in case you were wondering.)

Comments

[pinesandmaples]

15.
I "walked through" their house the way I remember it, counting rooms. Since there is really only one way to move through their house anyway (based on layout). Two stories, still only one way to wander.

I counted bathrooms as a room, btw.

[greeneyedpagan.livejournal.com]

12 rooms.
I visualized the house, walked in, and counted the rooms as I walked down the hall.

[bassfingers.livejournal.com]

I'm walking through the house (of course, there are probably rooms I'm not allowed in, so I can't be certain...) I want to say 8 rooms in the Kadjar house in Baytown, TX and maybe 13 rooms in the Ivy house in Devon, PA. The most striking thing about the Ivy house in PA was that to some extent it seemed to be 5 stories tall. It was built into a hillside with as a 2 story house with both a basement and an attic that also had an elevated section in the peaks.

[memeslayer.livejournal.com]

I get ten, counting connecting hallways and bathrooms.

I started by mentally envisioning the first room(a tiny entranceway with laundry machines). The envisioning is a vague sort-of-blurry image of the physical structure and colors of the room. Then I went to the next room over(no transition movement), a bedroom, and the bathroom next to that. I didn't envision the inside of the bathroom, I just knew it was there and sort of focused my attention on it for a moment. Then I went to the other room connected to the entranceway, a kitchen. The closest adjacent room from the entrance to the kitchen is the living room, so I counted that. Next from the kitchen is a dining room, then past the kitchen altogether is a bed/living room. Going left(the house is sort of L-shaped) I enter a hallway which also connects to the living room, note the bathroom on the side(stronger image -- it's the one I usually use when I'm there), then go to the bedroom on the end of the hallway.

While writing this, I realized that you have to pass through the garage to get to the entranceway in the first place, so I should probably count that(all I do is pass through it, so it only registers weakly). The entranceway also connects to the back yard. I knew the yard was there when I was thinking through before, but I forgot about the garage.

More detail on the visuals: I start with the physical structure of the room, which consists of where I can walk and what furniture is in the way. In the kitchen, the countertop pokes out into the middle of the room. That gets registered. The structure of the cabinets and the sink doesn't. The stuff I look at first when I enter the room is strongest. I'm looking at things from the perspective of the door I enter from. Colors are mostly a vague overall impression determined by both what the room normally looks like and its normal lighting conditions. The first bedroom looks dark and cool-colored because the lights are always off when I go in. If I think more, I start seeing what details I remember -- furniture details, decorations, more colors and patterns, other objects. It's not really a *picture*, although I can make a low-detail one of those if I try, it's more like I'm rendering things on the fly.

Hope that helps. Let me know if you want more.

[cifarelli]

9, if you include the hall, my grandfather's workroom, and the laundry/storage room. These last two you had to go outside and through the carport to get to, but they were part of the same building as the house proper, and had doors you could lock. They were not, however, heated (or air conditioned either, but the rest of the house had only window units for air conditioning anyway). I'm not sure whether halls are included in room count by anyone other than carpet cleaning companies, but I'm counting it 'cause it is interior space.

As for my memory process? I visualized the house, and then counted the rooms in it. I counted this by taking a mental tour of the house, and counting each room I came to. Kitchen, dining room, living room, bedroom, hall, bathroom, bedroom. Laundry/storage room, workroom. And there you have it. :)

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

First, the how-I-do-it: I visualize a walkthrough of the building in question.

Overstreet grandparents (whom I currently live with): Pre-1983, kitchen, living room, den, 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, 7 total. Post-1983 to current, kitchen, dining room (formerly living room), den, living room, office, utility room, closet-hall, 3 bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths, 13 total.

Thornton grandparents (pre-1984): Living/dining room, kitchen, 3 bedrooms, 1 bath (3 rooms- 1 bath/toilet with two separate lavatories), greenhouse, 9 total.

Thornton grandparents (post-1984): Living room, dining room, kitchen, 3 bedrooms, 1 bath, 7 total.

[follybard.livejournal.com]

Well, to start off, for me there is no "pair of grandparents [I] visited the most often"; Mom's parents and Dad's parents lived on the same street about a block and a half apart, so when we visited one set we also visited the other, and took turns which house we actually slept in.

That said, each house had seven rooms (including bathrooms) plus either an attic (Dad's parents) or a basement (Mom's parents). I retrieved the floor plans from memory by mentally starting at the spot where I usually entered each house and then visualizing a path through the house that would take me into or past every room, counting as I went.

[kansas-dave.livejournal.com]

I can not recall that at all.

I have a short vignette which may be interesting if you're thinking about memory.

I stopped by an open market on my way home from work Friday; I bought a bag of lemons and another of limes. Then I stopped by a small grocery store and bought some chicken stock, 4 onions, and 2 garlic bulbs. I paid for it and went home. I went to my computer and entered the amount I paid in my laptop (because I'm conducting a study of my spending habits - I don't usually track every cent). Hours later I was going to use the ingredients and found the lemons and limes in my fridge, but the rest was nowhere to be found. My best guess is that I left them at the store, but I have no recollection, and it was just 5 hours after the purchase that I tried to reconstruct events.

D

[lolleeroberts.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Dad's side - 8 rooms, 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, living room, kitchen, den with attached eating area. Mom's side - 8 rooms, eat-in kitchen, dining room, living room, 3 bedrooms, 1 bath, add-on den. Interestingly, I remember the house of my Dad's mother was much bigger, and they actually had the same number of rooms, although I think on square footage it was the larger of the two.

Mentally, I visualized the houses and went through the rooms, counting as I went. I actually changed the number for my Dad's side when I realized that the eating area wasn't a separate room.

I'm still thinking about the houses, even after I have the answer to the question. I'm remembering my grandmothers, and things that happened in both houses during my childhood, and how the rooms were furnished.

[asland32.livejournal.com]

Rooms in Gma's house (in Kansas): 16 including attic and basement and all bathrooms.
how did i come by this number? I mentally took a tour of her house, closing my eyes starting in the basement I walked through the entire house and counted. During the 10-15 seconds this took i remembered all the smells from each room that were most prominant.

[briareos.livejournal.com]

I think there were eleven rooms in my mother's parent's house which I visited often as a child. I counted by starting at the front door and mentally walking through each room. I haven't been in that house in a long time (over 15 years), so my memory of it is a bit fuzzy, but for most of the rooms I had a good enough memory of it to picture certain portions of it as I walked through it. For instance, when walking through the living room I remembered the type of lamps they had in there and a particular piece of art on the wall, and I remembered the ping pong table in the basement when walking through that room, etc.

grandparents house

[shefsatyr.livejournal.com]

13 rooms
if you count laundry room, bathrooms and laundry room as seperate rooms. And not counting hidden rooms
How I thought it through. I visualized standing at the back door and then I just mentally recreated the rooms as I walked through the house. Then I double checked it by sectoring the floor plan and making sure everything fit the way I remember it. It's been 26 years but I'll never forget that house.

[fyredrago.livejournal.com]

oooh a cognitive psyc experiment!

9 or so rooms. Namely, I started counting them in my head. I sortof visualized what all I could remember of Gran's house... though her new one she's lived in about as long and it's only got 5 rooms.

[skirtovereyes.livejournal.com]

First I saw my grandmother who was in the kitchen. Then I backed out the hall, living roomm and guest room are next to that. In the living room are the stairs that lead to Uncle's room. Down the stairs again is the foyer, then the sun room, then their bedroom.

[asland32.livejournal.com]

I already posted my answers to this, but I am curious. When you finish this observational study will you be posting your conclusions/findings?

lemme know!!!!

[omorka.livejournal.com]

Yes, I will, probably on Tuesday. I'm waiting for a couple more people to respond, who I hope will do so.

[quantumduck.livejournal.com]

I rarely visited either of my grandparents. My mother's folks lived in a small house in the woods in Michigan. It was a one story house, which seemed weird to me back then. It had a small living room, with a medium sized kitchen nearby, and then one of those not-quite-a-hallway things leading to one or two bedrooms. In the generously sized basement my grandfather had a great workshop. The woods around the house were wild and crisp.

I never visited either of my father's folks (there was a divorce) until I was in college. My grandfather had a lovely two story home with three bedrooms, a large living-room, dining room, and a variety of other spaces I only dimly recall. My grandmother and her live-in lover 'Nardo' had a wildly modern home that spanned many, many rooms. They had a sunken den with a glass ceiling that let the sunlight in, a massive dining space that opened up into other rooms, and a stunning library and office, filled with the things you'd expect of a Yale board-member.

I have better floor-plans in my head for the many homes of aunts, and uncles. I also have clear memories of the beach houses we would rent out for family reunions in Cape May, New Jersey.

In all cases I recalled this data by pulling specific memories of meals and other special moments, and using them to reconstruct the space in three dimensions. Since each memory has specific orientation data I can assemble them into a larger imagined space like pieces of a mental puzzle. Some portions of these homes are missing altogether, but they can be reconstructed from hints left in the images I do recall clearly. More images can be unlocked if I return to the places mentally and allow memories to play out around me. The smell of cappuccino being served in the morning, or things baking in the oven, can often be the start of new levels of detail coming into focus.

[greeneyes-rpi.livejournal.com]

Eight.

I mentally walked through the house and counted each room.

Is there another way?

6 rooms

[wyldraven.livejournal.com]

I visualized the home, and did a virtual walk through, counting the rooms as I went.

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

My grandmother was, at that time, living in half a house -- she'd had the other half sealed off and rented it out as an apartment. Her half had the living room, the original dining room which she used as a bedroom, the original kitchen, and the stairs leading down to the basement. There was also a small screened room just outside the back door, not big enough to be called a porch -- I think its purpose was mostly to prevent mosquitoes from getting into the main house when people used the back door, and also that's where the basement stairs led down from.

How do I remember this? I "went for a walk" thru the house in my head. I have fairly good visual memory, and we stayed in that house for 2 weeks every summer until I was 16 and we moved to Nashville permanently.

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

Oh, and a bathroom, of course! I almost missed it because it wasn't on the direct route from front to back -- it was a doorway off the short hall leading from the bedroom to the kitchen.