MemoryandRecall10AmazingFactsYouShouldKnow.docVIP

Memory and Recall: 10 Amazing Facts You Should Know “If we remembered everything we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing.” ~William James It’s often said that a person is the sum of their memories. Your experience is what makes you who you are. Despite this, memory is generally poorly understood, which is why many people say they have ‘bad memories’.?That’s partly because the analogies we have to hand—like that of computer memory—are not helpful. Human memory is vastly more complicated and quirky than the memory residing in our laptops, tablets or phones. Here is my 10-point guide to the psychology of memory (it is based on anexcellent review chapter?by the distinguished UCLA memory expert, Professor Robert A. Bjork) 1. Memory does not decay Everyone has experienced the frustration of not being able to recall a fact from memory. It could be someone’s name, the French for ‘town hall’ or where the car is parked. So it seems obvious that memories decay, like fruit going off. But the research tends not to support this view. Instead many researchers think that in fact memory has a limitless capacity. Everything is stored in there but, without rehearsal, memories become harder to access. This means it’s not the memory that’s ‘going off’ it’s the ability to retrieve it. But what on earth is the point of a brain that remembers everything but can’t recall most of it? Here’s what: 2. Forgetting helps you learn The idea that forgetting helps you learn seems counter-intuitive, but think of it this way: imagine if you created a brain that could remember?and recall?everything. When this amazing brain was trying to remember where it parked the car, it would immediately bring to mind?all?the car parks it had ever seen, then it would have to sort through the lot. Obviously the only one that’s of interest is the most recent. And this is generally true of most of our memories. Recent events are usually much more important than ones that happened a long