Page 112 - Malcolm Gladwell - Talking to Strangers
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do.” And I think much of the stress, as I got to know it over time, was largely driven by an
internal sense of real alarm, like, “I don’t know what the right answer is.”
Then he decided to have the SERE students do what is called the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure
drawing test. You’re given this:
First you have to copy it. Then the original is taken away and you have to draw it from memory.
Most adults are pretty good at this task, and they use the same strategy: they start by drawing the
outlines of the figure, then fill in the details. Children, on the other hand, use a piecemeal approach:
they randomly do one chunk of the drawing, then move on to another bit. Before interrogations, the
SERE students sailed through the test with flying colors. Being able to quickly memorize and
reproduce a complex visual display, after all, is the kind of thing Green Beret and Special
Operations soldiers are trained to do. Here’s a typical example of a Rey-Osterrieth figure drawn
from memory by one of the soldiers before interrogation. These guys are good.
But just look at what the soldier drew fifteen minutes after interrogation:
