A new book called The Psychology of Memory has highlighted how the process of memory works while also revealing whether losing your keys is a sign of you losing your marbles.
The Psychology of Memory comes straight from Dr. Megan Sumeracki and Dr. Althea Need Kaminske. In the book, the psychologists outlined the neural process while also offering recollection-boosting techniques to improve learning or to help remember names and numbers.
Does losing your keys mean you’re losing your memory?
In the book, both of the authors argued that forgetting things is actually very normal and part of the human experience. Despite popular opinion, your brain does not work as a recorder to take down and sort your memories in chronological order. Instead, the authors said that memory is more like a Wiki page that can be edited.
“Because we are most aware of our memory when we have trouble remembering something, our intuitions about how memory works might be a little biased,” Dr. Kaminske said. “For example, I (Althea) spend an embarrassing amount of time looking for my phone, water bottle, and keys. You may be unsurprised to learn that our memory systems are not necessarily designed to remember where we put our phones. Or keys. Or water bottles.”
She continued: “Though we would hazard a guess that if we were in a survival scenario where dehydration was a concern, we would be much more aware of water sources.
“People are better at remembering information when they process it in a fitness-relevant scenario, such as being stranded in the grasslands of a foreign land.”
The book also offered advice for improving your memory
Though losing your keys is nothing to be particularly worried about, if you want to improve your memory, Dr. Kaminske and Dr. Sumeracki offered some advice in their new book.
Firstly, they debunked the idea that memory is a collection of your past events when actually, it is vital for queuing tasks in the future. For instance, they suggested leaving your purse in the back of the car to trigger your memory into remembering you need to take your kid out of the car seat.
Another tactic, known as retrieval practice, is best used to improve long-term knowledge and streamline the learning process. The tactic is relatively simple and works by “pulling” facts from memories and then repeating them. They used the example of calling a person by name every time to make sure you remember their name.
Finally, the doctors noted how chess players use schema to remember the location of pieces on the board.
“Visual and auditory techniques can also help train the memory of normal individuals. The ability to recall the order of cards in a pack seems impressive but can be achieved by creating mental associations for each card,” the doctors explained. “Anyone who has studied knows that regular practice is essential. But to become an expert in a field of learning, people need to employ deliberate practice. The difference is that deliberate practice involves purposeful and deliberate attention whereas regular practice just involves repetition.”
