It's been my (empirical) experience that some people have a better visual memory, and other people have a better memory for concepts and words--and of course, some lucky people are good at remembering both. I know that I have a lot of trouble remembering strictly visual information, or even visualizing something I've seen before. But I memorize numbers, quotations, passwords, and things like that without even intending to.
I learn foreign language words much better than most people. I also remember numbers quite well. I have an internal sense of quantity that allows me to judge whether something seems about right in a quantitative sense.
The interesting thing here was that in that particular category (visual memory) I sucked really badly. I'm not terrible at visual processing, though. If I were, I would never have learned photography.
This is why I kind of hate standardized tests; they fail to take into account the fact that different people think in different ways.
The standardization here refers to how a test is both valid and reliable. Valid means it tests for the intended thing and reliable means that it produces the same results for the same people who take it repeatedly.
I think I'm fortunate to have grown up at a time when (in my country, at least) standardized tests weren't especially popular in educational circles, so I don't recall having to take many as a kid.
Over-generalizing and over-interpreting the results of any test is problematic. This is why I wondered whether I should take a whole battery of professionally administered valid and reliable tests to gain a fuller picture of my cognitive ability profile.
RE: An Extremely Lopsided Cognitive Ability Profile