Your are wise.
How fast can we learn something? What an interesting question. Autistic savants show us that the brain can do things like perfectly drawing a city in every detail after a single helicopter ride (like your flash card). Indeed it seems that what the neurotypical brain is doing is "forget as much as possible", and savants are disabled in their ability to forget.

Have you heard / read the philosopher/psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist? His books/lectures/videos on the way our brains work, specifically how our two brain-hemispheres interact with the world. You'd like him. The right hemisphere always keeping context, the left ignoring as much as it can in order to focus. Right hemisphere looks for signs of predators, left hemisphere looks at the prey it can grab. Here's a short clip where he discusses the importance of context.

I hope truth faster means honesty. That's what I want and seek out. Weird people, excluded, horrible, arrogant—if they are honest i want to read and hear them. Hook me up with analog cable to the minds of every idiot and nutcase out there. That'd be fast truth.

Hopefully @k00b can get us more info on that research!