INECO - Institute of Cognitive Neurology

A new research project carried out by Dr. Facundo Manes, Director of INECO and the Institute of Neurosciences at Favaloro Foundation, Dr. Tristán Bekinschtein and Lic. Julián Cardozo, has identified the strategies employed by Buenos Aires waiters to remember complete orders from large parties without writting them down.

"A few years ago, when I was with some friends at Café Tortoni, I asked myself how was it that Argentine waiters could remember so many orders without written them down, and how were they able to deliver the correct items to the right person each time", says Dr. Facundo Manes, who is also the Chair of the Aphasia & Cognitive Disorders Research Group of the World Federation of Neurology.

In order to investigate this "natural" strategy of Buenos Aires waiters, INECO's research group visited classical bars in town (Tortoni, London City, Británico, La Ideal, Los Molinos, and others) in groups of eight people. Once at the table, each person ordered a combination of items, and when the waiter was gone, they changed places with one another. Upon returning to the table, they assessed whether the waiter made any mistakes at delivering the orders to each person. The results were in most cases a combination of "place" and "person" strategies: waiters would deliver the items at the correct "seating location" at the table (and not according to the person who placed the order) and others served the items to the right persons, besides their having moved to a different spot. The researchers concluded that the waiters generated a map of people in specific places associated with specific orders, and through daily training, they learned to incorporate these memory schemes and fill them with information for each new table with customers. When changing places, the schemata are broken, and the waiters' specialized memory no longer works. The researchers named this phenomenon the "Tortoni Effect", honoring the classical café in Buenos Aires that carries that name.

Click here to download the original article published in Behavioural Neurology

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