Modelling taxi drivers' learning and exceptional memory of street names

A computer simulation was designed to model taxi drivers' learning and memory performance, and predict experimental results in a memory test in which the stimuli are lists of street names ordered with varying degrees of meaningfulness. The objectives of the study are, firstly, to explicate the quantitative and qualitative differences between performance outcomes observed in expert and novice drivers in memory tests, and secondly, to formalise the behavioural traits assumed to constitute the essence of expertise. Finally, we test the adequacy of these assumptions with a computer simulation.