I can remember...!
Memory: How well and how long can you remember?
The three distinguished ways of remembering an item are through: 1. repetition; 2. coding; and 3. visual imaging. Just to make it clear, there are a few parts to memory but the two types of memory that are often discussed are short-term memory (STM) and long-term memory (LTM). These three processes, which have been dubbed as control processes that convert STM into LTM.
The first control process, which is repetition or sometimes known as rehearsal is widely used. Most of the time, we would verbally speak out the item for many times, until we can at least think that we have memorized the item. After the item has been memorized, it is safely stored in your LTM, where it won't fade away and has to be just recalled back for future use. However, although it has been proved through experiments based on amnesic patients that repetition does help a person convert items into LTM, how is the efficiency of this conversion? Two factors that may interfere with this sort of conversion might be habituation and attention span. These two factors come together as a sort of "cohort effect" of sorts. To get things started, STM only lasts for around 20-30 seconds. This is almost as long as the attention span of an infant. Infants have a tendency to get habituated within a very short time span and this is also associated with the short attention span of infants. Perhaps our STM is working just like an infant's attention span and habituation would decrease the impression of the items we have to remember over time. This would mean that repetition would not produce a very reasonable impression for retention.
The second way is through coding. Another word for coding is elaboration. One example that i learned by attending a convention is by associating the list of items within an elaboration that would make it seem very funny to you. For example: if you had to remember a list of items such as ball, tree, boy, pizza, bike and house, you would construct a sentence like "a ball knocked down the tree that the boy liked to use as ingredients for a pizza. so he took out his frustration by using using his bike to run over the house". Does that sentence seem funny to you? If it doesn't, try to construct a sentence with that list of words that would make it seem extremely funny to you. After that, try and recall the list of words without referring to the list. I think you'd find that you remember it better. This type of elaboration is associating the item(s) to something funny. In another example, one can also use elaboration to remember terms. Let's say you had to remember the word conditioning. You could remember it by using phonetics by breaking it up into its phonemes of con-di-tion-ing. Or, you could check the dictionary and learn its various meanings. This way, you would be using semantic memory by checking associationg it with the knowledge that you know about the word "conditioning".
Another way of memorizing things is through visual imaging. Now, does that sound like a very technical word? Ironically, the way that we actually work out this technique is very easy. Basically, visual imaging is through using your imagination. You make a mental picture or diagram of the item that you wish to remember. Like if you would like to remember parts of the brain, you would picture in your mind where the temporal lobe, prefrontaral cortex, ocipital lobe and amygdala is. With that picture in your mind, it would help you to remember it better (store in LTM). People also use visual imaging in the way of picturing words in their minds. Like that list stated above, you can also picture the list of words inside your mind.
However, out of the three strategies above, it has been found that the use of visual imaging is the most effective. However, I believe that visual imaging is actually a combination of the first two with an added element of imagination. The reasons behind this are: 1. you require repetition during time lapse during the period it takes for you to contruct a mental diagram; 2. you need to associate the items with images already inside your LTM (e.g. structure of items).
Through the premecy-recency theory, we learn that memory patterns are typically in a "U" shape. We remember the earliest item shown through repetition and the last item through its presence in the STM. In order to sustain the picture in the STM, he has to rehearse the early parts and use the remaining parts to picture diagram in his mind. His mind then has to associate the formations of the structure. Basically, he has to use the structural theory in pattern recognition to formulate an virtual structure of it inside his mind. The image is the formed through that.
Although one may argue that he can form an image first and then associate. But, how can a person form an image before associating the item to items inside his LTM? And how is it possible to maintain an item inside STM for a prolonged period without repetition (especially in novel situations)? Through a hebbian theory, when we associate an item to another, there is already connections within our thought process (that encompass our memory patterns as well). This means, that even though we do not consciously start off with items we do not wish to remember, whenever we hit a connection point in our mind, we will trigger off the memory as well. The more we remember, the more we repeat it. Perhaps it's a form of unconscious repetition because we don't actually realize that we are repeating it.
A few questions spring up from this.
1) Do memory strategies limit the amount of items we can remember?
This is because within working memory, we are often using these strategies to remember items. Therefore, they are still within our working memory. It has been found that our working memory can only hold 7 chunks of items. Can our memory strategies form several items into one chunk? Or does it depend on the already stored information in our LTM?
2) Is there a most efficient memory strategy?
Of all the three strategies stated, it has been found that visual imaging is the most efficient in long-term recall of information. But is there a type of strategy that would make it more faster to recall? And is there really a most efficient, or is it just a cascade of the three strategies in an entire process to make memory of an item more efficient (like the process i proposed earlier)?
3) In Hebbian learning, the connectivity of our neurons makes our thoughts connect to each other as we scan through them. In this way, can we change everything that we remember into one chunk in working memory?
If the Hebbian learning theory is true, does the pruning or dying of neurons actually aid in avoiding the bottleneck effect?
4) Since there is the issue of mastery involved in performing tasks, if you're a master of an item, it will become very familiar to you. This would make anything within that field come as a familiar item to you. Let's say that you're a master of everything that you know. Does using mastered items in the LTM also follow the magic number 7 rule?
This is to do with multitasking. Can you multitask more than 7 items that you have mastered? However, there are very grave limitations to this. Humans have physical limitations, and also there might be a fixed "mental load" that each person can take on. Plus, how do we determine that that one person is actually doing all 8 at the same time, and just speeding up his processing speed to do each item faster within the same time? If he is, is that counted as multitasking as well? A fixed definition of multitasking needs to be distinguised before this can be done.
5) Can we enhance memory by changing his mindset?
Just like using cognitive therapy to change how a person thinks. Can we use cognitive therapy to help aid in memory enhancement? If chunks are unlimited bundles of information just made into a set by the human mind, can we use techniques to bundle up information into more manageable chunks? If we were to do this, it would be easier because it would free more space inside our working memory and also make us associate the memory items as a "chunk" and not many things to remember. Would this reclassification of items help to ease the memory process? From this, there rises the question of which is easier: making a new chunk or adding items into an already existing chunk. In theory, it would be easier to associate to an already existing chunk, but in practice would there be any significant difference after the mind has been trained to easily make new chunks?
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