THE FRAGILE POWER OF MEMORY
Memory is probably not the first thing to come to mind when psychology is mentioned, so it may surprise you to learn that psychologists have been involved in the scientific study of memory for well over 100 years.
Science itself has been described by the eminent biologist Stephen J. Gould as a process of turning a beautiful butterfly into a drab cocoon. Gould’s analogy was meant to capture the explanatory function of science, which often involves reducing an interesting phenomenon to more basic principles that bear little resemblance to the original phenomenon. Although my professional interests revolve around the scientific study of memory, I will not take you through the rather tedious process of reverse metamorphosis implied by Gould’s analogy. Rather the focus will remain on the butterfly, which coincidentally turns out to be a magnificent metaphor for human memory.
Butterflies are fragile creatures that nonetheless possess the power to accomplish prodigious migration. As with the butterfly, the fragility of memory is obvious. Forgetting is a constant nuisance, and just in case we lose sight of that fact, the media and other comedians happily remind us of the frailties of memory, especially those associated with age. But also like the butterfly, the fragility of memory coexists with enormous power, a fact that seems to surprise some.
I meet very few people who boast of their memory prowess. Indeed, most folks seem to consider their memories to be mediocre at best, complaining that remembering names, birthdays, grocery lists and the like is something they wish they could improve. It is as if memory were an elusive and difficult skill acquired only by the diligent or lucky among us. This is a peculiar attitude from the standpoint of the science of memory because memory is a crucial biological process inherent to all living organisms.
Memory accomplishes the remarkable feat of conveying the past into the present. The importance of this function cannot be overstated because everything we think and do is influenced by our past. Consequently, it would be a wicked trick of nature if such a fundamentally important process were as fickle as is commonly assumed. Rather it seems to be the case that memory is a bit like a dishwasher. You rarely think about it unless it fails to work.
The Power of Memory
As an initial indication of how powerful your memory is, consider that everything you know is known through your memory. The amount of information an adult has acquired in a relatively short span of time is truly phenomenal, and we usually are able to access this information easily and in a timely fashion. That ability is your memory.
As sophisticated as they are today, no computer beats the capacity of your memory. Among other things, the contents of your memory define who you are. When you are asked to tell someone about yourself, what do you talk about? Almost always it is about your past. Losing your memory is losing yourself.
Some really good news is, that is not likely to happen. Most of us will live out our lives with memory largely intact. It is true that normal aging brings modest decreases in memory functioning, just as it does to other psychological processes such as seeing and hearing, but nothing that seriously disrupts one’s life.
According to data from the National Institutes of Health, the most common form of dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, occurs in only 5 percent of the American population between the ages of 60 and 74. The percentage increases with further aging, but so do a myriad of other health problems. The fact is that debilitating memory loss is not a high probability event before death, which makes a lot of sense given the importance of memory to everything else we do.
Another powerful aspect of memory is the ease with which memory is acquired. This assertion may seem outlandish in the face of how difficult memorization can be, but stop for just a moment and think about what you did yesterday. Most of us can recreate virtually everything that happened. Now how many times yesterday did you say to yourself, “I must remember this”? Probably not often, if at all. This example illustrates an important discovery from the science of memory: namely, remembering does not require that you try to remember. Rarely do we try to remember the things that are occurring around us. Rather what we do is try to understand and make sense of those things. As it turns out, memory for things you pay attention to and comprehend comes for free.
If remembering is so easy, why is memorizing so hard? The answer to this question is that, when memorizing by rote, we tend to use techniques that are not good for long-term retention.
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— R. Reed Hunt
Illustrations by Anna Elena Balbusso