WASHINGTON - Vice President JD Vance found himself in an awkward spot recently when Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. posed what should have been an easy question for someone representing the Buckeye State on the national stage.

Kennedy’s challenge: Name Ohio’s eight presidents . The Cincinnati Republican managed to come up with just two.

But Vance’s memory lapse points to something bigger than one politician’s embarrassing moment. It turns out he’s struggling with a problem that afflicts most Americans — and one that memory researchers say is both predictable and likely to get worse.

Science of presidential amnesia

Memory studies conducted over decades reveal that most American presidents are destined to fade from the nation’s collective memory within 50 to 1

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