Improving Your Memory (3 page)

Anna has allergies to dust, animals, weeds, and grasses. At her doctor’s office, she was given samples of two allergy medications to try. One of the medications was to be taken in the morning because it can disturb sleep; the other was to be taken at bedtime because it can cause sleepiness. When she got home, Anna had forgotten the doctor’s instructions. Because there were no directions on the sample packages, Anna had to call the doctor’s office for clarification. She decided to make a conscious effort to remember which medication was which. She noted that the daytime medicine was blue, and she associated the color with the blue daytime sky.

(If the daytime medicine was green, she could note that a green light means Go and think, “I get up and go in the morning, but not at night.”)

Retrieval

Retrieval is the process of getting information from long-term memory into the conscious state of working memory. Most memory complaints center on the inability to bring information to mind on demand. In actuality, however, our ability to find a piece of information in our vast storehouse of memories and bring it to awareness is truly amazing and happens easily much of the time.

There are two ways you can retrieve information from long-term memory: recognition and recall.

Recognition
is the perception of information that is presented to you as something or someone you already know. For example, you recognize the name of your friend’s son when you hear it, but you could not come up with it on your own.

Recall
is a self-initiated search of long-term memory for information you want. In most cases, recall is more challenging than recognition. Recall of information is difficult, because you must find one piece of information among the millions that are stored in long-term memory.

For example, say you want to talk about your former neighbor and you search your memory bank to recall the name. Although you know you would recognize the name, recalling it far more difficult.

When you say, “I can’t remember,” you usually mean, “I can’t recall.” It may be hard to recall the name of a TV show, but you may recognize the name of the show easily when you see it in the programming schedule.

When a friend of ours had trouble recalling the name of a new medication, she laughingly said, “I wish this were a multiple choice question.”

EXERCISE: RECALL

To answer the following questions, you are required to recall the information from long-term memory. If you find this task difficult, try to see if you can recognize the correct answers to the questions as they are asked again on
page 28
.

1. What is the capital city of Illinois?

2. Who played Dorothy in the movie
The Wizard of Oz?

3. Who ran for president against Jimmy Carter in 1976?

4. Who was the mayor of New York City on 9/11/2001?

Sometimes recall of information is triggered by a cue. A
cue
is an event, thought, picture, word, sound, smell, or something else that triggers the retrieval of information from long-term memory. For example, you may be able to recall the last name of your neighbor when prompted with the first name. This triggering information, the first name, is a cue.

People often say, “I can’t remember names, but I never forget a face.” We remember faces easily because they present themselves for recognition. Remembering names, in contrast, involves recall of information from long-term memory, for which the face is only a cue. (Recently the media have called attention to a condition called “prosopagnosia,” or face blindness, which impairs a person’s ability to recognize faces, even
the face of a spouse or another person very closely connected to the person with the condition. This problem is different from not being able to remember the name of people even when you recognize their faces.)

When you are searching for a name or another piece of information, try thinking of related facts that may serve as cues. They will often trigger the desired piece of information. For example, if you are having trouble recalling what class you took last summer, you might think about where it was held, who was in the class with you, and other subjects you have taken in the past.

4
Why We Forget

Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.

—Marcel Proust

No one can remember everything. An essential part of the memory process is making decisions about what information is valuable to you and worth the effort to encode it. Is it really critical to spend energy encoding the name of a woman who occasionally teaches your exercise class when she is only an infrequent substitute? It might be better to choose to learn the name of your neighbor’s new baby.

Most people feel very frustrated and even embarrassed when they have to say, “I’ve forgotten.” Rather than blame a faulty memory, consider instead that there are some good reasons for not remembering.

1.
Some information never gets into the memory bank.
It gets only as far as sensory input or working memory. Why? You didn’t pay attention to it. You didn’t really hear it. You didn’t understand it. You didn’t care enough to remember it. You got distracted by something else. You didn’t need to remember it.

2.
Memories that do enter the memory bank may be overlaid with subsequent similar information that makes the original memory irretrievable.
People often describe their inadequacies in memory by saying, “I can’t even remember what I ate for breakfast yesterday.” If you eat similar types of breakfast food day after day, you may forget what you ate on any particular morning, while the memory of the one time you ate a croissant baked by your French daughter-in-law remains firm.

3.
Information for which you have few associations and little background knowledge is harder to remember.
For example, if you are just a beginner at the game of bridge, you will find it hard to remember any particular hand dealt during an evening of play, but a bridge expert can accurately recall most of the cards in a particularly meaningful hand.

4.
Some information may be remembered only when the proper cues are available, and those cues are not part of everyday life.
For example, you may think you’ve forgotten many of your eighth-grade classmates until you find an old photo or go to a class reunion.

5.
Who we are influences how we remember.
Many people assume that their own memories are a true picture of what really happened, and they are upset or confused by the conflicting recollections of others. Personal differences can affect encoding of information and can influence the way we remember; our background, knowledge, training, stance on life, age, gender, and prejudices all have an impact on the way we interpret events and commit them to memory. When two people remember things differently, they may argue over who is “forgetting.” In reality, the difference in recollection may be due to the differing views and experiences of the people involved.

6.
Some pieces of remembered information may be assembled incorrectly.
Pieces of information may be recalled but misassembled. For example, you described to your daughter a time
when Uncle John fell out of a tree. She didn’t remember the event, and you remarked that Aunt Rose didn’t recall it, either. Several months later, you were surprised to hear your daughter tell the same story and say, “I heard this from Aunt Rose.”

7.
Some memories fade away.
They are not readily available for all time. For example, if you studied a foreign language in high school, you may recall or recognize some of the vocabulary words you learned. However, you probably have no recollection of and wouldn’t even recognize many other words you once knew.

5
Let’s Review

Let’s review some of the terms used to describe the memory process.

Sensory input:
information that enters the brain through the five senses

Working memory:
equated with conscious thought, the very small amount of information you can pay attention to at a given moment

Long-term memory:
the accumulation of information that is not present in conscious thought but is stored for potential recollection

Encoding:
the act of learning and storing information

Retrieval:
the act of bringing information from long-term memory to conscious thought

Association:
the connection between new information and what you already know

Recognition:
the perception of information that is presented to you as something or someone you already know

Recall:
a self-initiated search of long-term memory for information

Cue:
the event, thought, picture, word, sound, smell, or something else that triggers the retrieval of information from long-term memory

Here are those questions again. Are they easier this time?

EXERCISE: RECOGNITION

To answer the following questions, you are required to recognize the correct answers.

1. What is the capital city of Illinois?

Chicago

Peoria

Springfield

Champaign

2. Who played Dorothy in the movie
The Wizard of Oz?

Doris Day

Judy Holliday

Judy Garland

Mary Martin

3. Who ran for president against Jimmy Carter in 1976?

Ronald Reagan

Gerald Ford

Michael Dukakis

George H. W. Bush

4. Who was the mayor of New York City on 9/11/2001?

Michael Bloomberg

Mario Cuomo

Rudolph Giuliani

Richard Daley