The Benefits of Testing

The distinguished psychologist Roddy Roediger was invited to give the keynote address for the 50^th Anniversary meeting of the Psychonomic Society. The title of the address is “The Critical Role of Retrieval in Enhancing Long-Term Memory: From the Laboratory to the Classroom.” A streaming video of this keynote address came be found at

psychonomic.org/annual_meeting.html

Roediger begins his address by stating the implicit bargain that is usually made between teachers and students. Students don’t like taking tests and teachers don’t like giving them. Not only does the teacher need to construct the test, but she also needs to grade them, a time consuming task. So testing and exams are usually kept to a minimum. Moreover, testing is used to measure learning and the assumption has been that little or no learning takes place during testing. Roediger’s address should disabuse anyone of this notion.

Roediger presents a series of studies that vary the respective number of study and test trials. Little difference was observed during learning. But on retention tests that were given two days later, retention was solely a function of the number of test trials. He presents a series of studies varying the materials and the nature of the tests, but they all basically hammer home the same theme. Not only does learning occur during testing, but more learning occurs during testing than during study. One study done with a group of middle schoolers showed that repeated testing had the result of raising the average grade from a C+ to an A-.

It is interesting to examine the subjective ratings of students and test participants. They feel that they are learning more during study than during testing. When students keep re-reading highlighted material in a textbook, they get the filling that they really know the material and their confidence goes up. However, when a student tries to recall material from memory and fails, confidence is lowered. Yet the looking up of the material that was forgotten is more beneficial and the student has a more realistic appraisal of what is known and what needs to be studied. In the end, this latter experience is more beneficial.

The actual attempt to remember information forces the person to access the correct retrieval routes to that information. If the information is found, then that retrieval route is strengthened. When it is not found, the information is restudied and the retrieval route relaid. More effort is involved in testing than simply studying material, and there is evidence that this increased effort is also beneficial.

So what are the lessons to be learned here? First of all, cramming is not recommended. Even if you learn enough to pass the test, the information will quickly be lost. So its availability on a final exam or later in life is questionable.

Secondly, test yourself and recited the material frequently. This testing should be even more effective if spread out over time.

And what, if any, are the implications for the education system? Break the silent bargain between teachers and students and test more frequently. Roediger and his colleagues have taken to the practice of having a ten minute test at the end of every lecture. This practice not only forces students to keep up, but it also leads to better lifelong learning.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2010. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

When to Rely On Transactive Memory

Say you encounter a new piece of information. This piece of information could be as simple as a phone number or a major work that is central to your interests. Should you commit this information to your personal memory, or should rely upon external, transactive memory? This question has arisen in educational circles with respect to the multiplication tables. Now that calculators are ubiquitous, is there still a need to memorize the multiplication tables? The need for this can be argued from two points of view. One has to do with the standard for knowing. If something is important for understanding arithmetic and advanced mathematics, should not this information be resident in memory? If the answer is “yes”, then this needs to be committed to memory.

The second point of view is one of convenience. Will one always have a calculator available? Will it be worth the time and effort in finding a calculator to perform multiplication? What about potential emergencies when it might be a matter of life or death, but no calculator was available? If convenience is a factor, that alone might be justification for committing the multiplication tables to memory.

We are confronted with this problem everyday. Suppose you encounter a phone number. Do you need to commit this number to memory? There are mnemonic techniques that facilitate the memory for these numbers (see the blog posts “Remembering Numbers,” “More on Remembering Numbers,”, “Three Digit Numbers,” and “Remembering Even Larger Numbers.”). But these techniques require mental effort. Should you extend this mental effort? Not surprisingly the answer is, “It depends.”

Wayne Gray and his colleagues have developed a hypothesis, the soft constraints hypothesis, to address this question.¹ This hypothesis says that your choice will be based upon a rational cost benefit analysis. In other words, if this phone number is to be used only once, you will most likely not commit it to personal memory, but will rely upon transactive memory, a piece of paper for example. However, if you are going to use this number frequently and cannot rely upon speed dial (a type of transactive memory), you will commit it to memory. They present extensive and thorough evidence supporting the notion that this is, in general, how people behave. However, people do not always behave in this rational manner. In my personal experience there are times when I have relied way too much on external supports when it would have been more efficient to commit the information to my personal memory.

At other times, however, the criterion will concern how deeply you need to understand the information. Do you only need to bookmark or tag where to find it should you need it in the future? Although you need the information, it is still not central to your primary interest and can get by with knowing where to locate the information. Or is the information central to your understanding and needs to be committed to your personal memory. You would not usually commit a major piece of work central to your interests to verbatim memory, but you would commit its essence and its major points to personal memory. The number and depth of those points would depend upon the importance of the particular work.

1Gray, W. D., Sims, C. R., Fu, W-T, Schoelles, M. J. (2006). The Soft Constraints Hypothesis: A Rational Analysis
Approach to Resource Allocation for Interactive Behavior. Psychological Review, 113, 461-482.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2010. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Where to Find Good Health Statistics

Health statistics are important. They are needed to make informed decisions not only about health care for you and your loved ones, but also for he health care of the nation. Unfortunately, there are a number of problems regarding health statistics. There are all sorts of health statistics coming from all sources. One problem is that the different sources have different agendas. This potential bias should be obvious for drug companies, but there is also potential bias coming from health agencies, which one would presume to be neutral. Agencies can believe in certain policies and then present statistics to support these policies. Different statistics are appropriate for different purposes. The immediately preceding blog post, Health Statistics, discussed the difference between survival rates and death rates.

There is a very good book to help you understand health statistics. It is Know Your Chances: Understanding Health Statistics by Steve Woloshin, MD, MS, Lisa M. Schwarts, MD, MS, and H. Gilbert Welch, MD, MPH. They help you see the hype in medical news, ads, and public service announcements. The publisher is the University of California Press, www.ucpress.edu.

The following websites are recommended sources for good, reliable health statistics. All these sites are free. The first set of sites were created primarily for consumers.

The Center for Medical Consumers is an independent, nonprofit organization. It provides recent health news and a skeptical view on health claims.

medical consumers.org

Consumers Reports Best Buy Drugs is another independent, nonprofit organization. It uses the Drug Effectiveness Review Project to compare the benefits, side effects, and costs of different drugs for the same medical problem.

consumerreports.org/health/best-buy-drugs/index.htm

The Ottawa Health Research Institute for Patient Decision Aids is an academic affiliate of the University of Ottawa. They provide a comprehensive inventory of decision aids, ratings of the effectiveness of these aids, and provides information on how to get them.

decisionaid.ohri.ca

Although the following sources were created primarily for physicians and policy makers, consumers should not fear consulting them. These are all free.

The U.S. Federal Agency under Health and Human Services, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has a website that summarizes all the available data about treatment for specific conditions (look for EPC Evidence Reports).

ahrq.gov/clinic/epcix.htm

The Drug Effectiveness Review Project (DERP) is a collaboration of public and private organizations developed by the Oregon Health and Science University. It provides comparative data on the benefit, side effects, and costs of different prescription drugs that treat the same problem. This is the course used by the aforementioned Consumer Reports Best Buy Drugs.

ohsu.edu/drugeffectiveness/reports/final.cfm

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Evidence (NICE) is an independent, nonprofit, British organization that advises the British National Health Service. They provides summaries of all the available data about treatments for specific conditions.

nice.org.uk/guidance/index.jsp?action=byTopic

The Physician Data Query (PDQ) is part of the National Cancer Institute. It provides summaries of all the available data about cancer prognosis and treatments.

cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Center for Drug Evaluation and Research reviews and approves new and generic drugs.

fda.gov/cder/index.html To look up individual drugs, go to accessdata.fda.gov/Scripts/cder/DrugsatFDA/

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) is an independent panel of experts sponsored by the AHRQ. They provide recommendations on a wide variety of clinical topics.

ahrq.gov/clinic/uspstfix.htm

 

Health Statistics

Health statistics are important. They are needed to make informed decisions not only about health care for you and your loved ones, but also for he health care of the nation. Unfortunately, there are a number of problems regarding health statistics. There are all sorts of health statistics coming from all sources. One problem is that the different sources have different agendas. This potential bias should be obvious for drug companies, but there is also potential bias coming from health agencies, which one would presume to be neutral. Agencies can believe in certain policies and then present statistics to support these policies.

There is a very good book to help you understand health statistics. It is Know Your Chances: Understanding Health Statistics by Steve Woloshin, MD, MS, Lisa M. Schwarts, MD, MS, and H. Gilbert Welch, MD, MPH. They help you see the hype in medical news, ads, and public service announcements. The publisher is the University of California Press, www.ucpress.edu.

They state that if there were a hall of fame for exaggeration, survival statistics would get a lifetime achievement award. These statistics are frequently used in cancer screening. Survival statistics can be reported for any span of years. The choice is arbitrary, but the five year survival rate is quite common. The five year survival rate is the ratio of the number of patients alive five years after diagnosis divided by the number of patients originally diagnosed with the cancer. This statistic has its uses. For example, if different treatments for cancer patients were being evaluated, this would be a good statistic to use to compare the relative effectiveness, or lack thereof, for the respective treatments.

However, it is not a good statistic to use as evidence to support cancer screening. Cancer screening is the policy of testing everyone of a specific demographic or age group. The correct statistic for evaluating the effectiveness of screening is the Annual Death Rate. The Annual Death Rate is the ratio of the number of people who die from the disease over a year divided by the number of people in the demographic age group of interest. If screening is effective, then it should be reflected in decreasing death rates.

A reasonable question is how could there be survival statistics indicating that screening is effective, but annual death rates indicating that screening is not effective. Few people seem to realize that there are costs to early testing. Early cancers or precursors of cancer can go away on their own. Some cancers are so slow in developing that you are likely to die from something else before you would die from the cancer.

For example, the 5-year Survival Rate for the deadly skin cancer melanoma improved from 49% in 1950 to 92% in the most recent data available. Death rates have gone up during this period from 1 death in 1,000 to almost 3 deaths in 1,000.

One of the bests examples here can be found in screening for prostate cancer. For decades the Prostate Specific Antigen Test (PSPA) was regarded as mandatory for all men in a certain age group. Only recently, was this position changed. Now the PSPA test is not generally recommended, even for high risk groups. It is to be given only after consultation with a physician. The reason for this change was the discovery that the test was not affecting the Annual Death Rates. Cancers were being caught and treated, which resulted in improved survival rates, but there was no corresponding decrease in the Annual Death Rates. Prostate cancer advances at a wide range of rates. Although some prostate cancers advance relatively quickly, others advance so slowly that a man if much more likely to die from something else before the prostate cancer can kill him.

One way of looking at the difference between the survival rate and the annual death rate is to regard it as an index of unnecessary treatments. Thousands of men had their prostate glands removed with some of them suffering the side effects of impotence and incontinence. These same men could have lived on without surgery and eventually died of something else.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2010. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Online Memorials

Consider using transactive memory to leave a part of you behind once you have moved on to the hereafter. Consider a conventional memorial that consists either of a headstone marker, indicating the location of your remains, or an urn, enclosing your remains. With today’s technology, you can do considerably better than that. Even if you use traditional means for handling passing on, these means can be substantially enhanced via today’s technology.

The Navy Memorial offers a means of leaving an online memorial for Navy veterans. My Dad, who was cremated, is memorialized there. I find this of great comfort. Any time I am on-line I can visit and renew old fond memories. He was one terrific Dad.

His is a very simple memorial. One can go well beyond this. My Last Email, mylastemail.com, provides for both on-line obituaries and on-line memorials. Other services are bcelebrated.com, wildrosecemetries.com, and memorial2u.com.

These sites provide a means not only of communicating directly with your loved ones, but also of celebrating your life and documenting your accomplishments. Videos and recordings can be included. You can leave behind those accomplishments for which you are most proud. There is always the possibility that some of your work might be discovered and appreciated by later generations.

It is not advised to wait until you are at death’s door before starting this. You can start now, while you’re still healthy. You might find that this exercise will force some discipline on you that will increase your focus and the desire to leave something significant behind.

It did that for me. So long, I need to begin…

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2010. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Transactive Memory and the Dearly Departed

The Washington Post published an interesting article, “Let Online Lives Outlast the Dearly Departed” (Rosenwald, January 25, 2010; A01, or search for the tag “transactive” on delicious.com). With the advance of technology, more and more of our personal information is stored online. Our logons and passwords are stored throughout cyberspace. Included here are bank accounts, stockbroker accounts, insurance accounts and other accounts of considerable importance. This article addressed the issues that arise when your physical being leaves behind only its virtual reality. In the terminology of this blog this information is residing in transactive memory.

The Post article writes of a coming cybercrisis as many Internet services have policies that forbid accessing or transferring accounts, including recovering money without the password. Court orders are usually required to circumvent this requirement. Of course, this assumes that those you left behind know that there are accounts to access. At one time there was a paper trail that could be traced to find these accounts. But should you go the paperless route, there is no paper to trace. The paper trail has gone online.

Of course the simplest way of dealing with this problem is to leave your loved ones with a paper trail leading to these accounts and their passwords. Such a paper trail is risky, however, should it fall into the wrong hands. Legacy Locker, legacylocker.com, provides a means of securing this information in cyberspace. For a fee you can store all your passwords an log-in information. When you pass-on this information will be accessible to whomever you designate as digital executor. Short of passing on, such a resource can be helpful in dealing with less traumatic problems, such as forgetting a password.

Entrustet is part of LinkedIn and provides a variety of services in this area. As do DataInherit, datainherit.com, Parting Wishes, partingwishes.com, and deathswitch.com. If I Die, ifidie.org, is a free service, that will send out an email written by you with all the information you want to pass on.

In all of these services you are employing transactive memory to store information after your biological memory is no longer available to function.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2010. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

The Availability Heuristic

The availability heuristic is the use of information that can be recalled easier.  Perhaps it would be more accurate to call it the accessibility heuristic.  For example, are there more words in the English language that begin with the letter r or have the letter r in the third position in the word?   Most people think that there are more words beginning with the letter r, but in truth r is in the third position in many more words than in the first position.  In attempting to answer this question one tries to recall words.  It is much easier to recall words by their first letter than by their third letter.  Consequently this information is much more available.   Now the accessibility heuristic does have its value.  If you are time constrained, it may provide the only hope of an answer.  However, if there is time, one needs to look it up.

            Here is another example.  Are there more deaths due to homicide than to diabetes-related diseases.  Many would answer homicide to this question.  Homicides are in the news and on television and the movies, whereas diabetes wreaks havoc in relative obscurity. 

            Sticking to the homicide theme, which is higher, the number of homicides or the number of suicides?  In the United States in 2005, there were 5.6 homicides per 100,000 people, but there were 11 suicides per 100,000.  So the suicide rate is almost twice the homicide rate, yet most would probably opt for the homicide rate.  Again, homicides get much more attention than do suicides.  The murder mystery is a genre in literature.  Have you heard of a suicide mystery.   Usually suicide mysteries are whether they are true suicides or whether someone was murdered.

Continuing in this vein, in 2006 were there more deaths attributed to

assault (murder) than to Parkinson’s disease?

More deaths attributed to assault than to influenza and pneumonia?

More deaths attributed to assault than to Alzheimer’s Disease?

More deaths attributed to assault than to chronic lower respiratory diseases?

The answers to all four questions is “no.” But murders make the news. The are highly available. Many more people die every day from other causes, but they are less likely to make the news. Hence, they are less available.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2010. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Remembering to Do Things

The technical term for remembering to do things is prospective memory. A great deal of research has been done on prospective memory, but practically all of it has ignored transactive memory. Transactive memory is an external support like writing it down or entering it into computer or some type of smart device. It might seem like these researchers are overlooking the obvious. Perhaps they are, but they are doing so for their own theoretical purposes.

Writing it down might seem like the obvious answer. Although it might appear to be the obvious answer, it is flawed. One study showed that when daily planners were used, they were overlooked 25% of the time. So external aids can work, but only if you remember to consult them. Electronic devices where alarms could be set as reminders of where you should be at which time can remedy this problem. Such warnings are commonplace on computers. The problem here is that you need either be at your computing device or carrying it with you for the alarm to be effective.

Mnemonic techniques are also available. The techniques discussed in the blog posts “The Method of Loci” and “The One Bun Rhyme Mnemonic” can be used to make ordered lists of things to do throughout the day or week. Similarly Pierre Herigone’s technique (presented in the blog post, “Remembering Numbers”) for recoding numbers as sounds so that they can be converted into words and images can be used. Specific use of Herigone’s technique for remembering the times of appointments is discussed in the blog post “Remembering Historical Dates and Appointments.”

Perhaps the best method is to use a combination of mnemonic techniques and transactive memory tools. They each support the other. External supports compensate for memory failures. Mnemonic techniques compensate for the absence of technology. Both techniques require attention and most memory failures are, at bottom failures to employ enough of the right kind of attention.

Perhaps the most alarming failures of prospective memory are those that result in leaving children unattended in vehicles. The response to these cases typically is what terrible parents these people are. But the vast majority are good parents who suffered from prospective memory failures. This story has repeated itself numerous times. A mother, or father, goes to the day care center to pick up the child. Unfortunately, the child cannot be picked up because she is already dead in the back of the vehicle, the victim of a prospective memory failure (to drop off the child in the morning).

The number of these failures has increased drastically since the child seat laws required that the seat be in the back seat (due to the danger of the airbag injuring the child if it was in the front seat). The fundamental problem is out of sight, out of mind. Here an external aid, such as a doll place in the front seat or a ribbon tied to the steering wheel can reduce the number of these prospective memory failures.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2010. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Confirmation Bias

If we want to determine if something is true, we have a strong tendency to look for evidence that confirms that something. This confirmation bias was introduced in the “Mindware” post. Remember that mindware is a term Stanovich uses to refer to specific skills or knowledge that have been acquired through learning.¹ This is the strong tendency to fail to look for alternative hypotheses or explanations. A strong component of scientific mindware is the requirement to look and look hard for alternative hypotheses. Indeed, scientists try to falsify hypotheses. Logically, one cannot prove something, because there is always a possible unknown or unarticulated hypotheses that is more correct. However, one can disprove a hypothesis by finding one disconfirming instance. This is not the natural way we think, though. This is a discipline that needs to be learned (according to Stanovich, acquired mindware).

Peter Wason has designed a four card selection task that demonstrates the inherent fallacy in the way we naturally tend to think. Each card has a letter on one side and a number on the back. The hypothesis to be tested is, “If there is a vowel on one side of the card, there is an even number on the other side.” One of the four cards shows a K, another an A, a third an 8, and the fourth a 5. Now which card or cards needs to be turned over to determine the truth of this hypothesis. Think about this for a while before reading further.
50% of the people answer the A and the 8, which is a clear indication of the confirmation bias. They are seeking to confirm that there is an even number on the other side of the A, and that there is a vowel on the other side of the 8. The second most common answer is to turn over the A card only. This provides even stronger evidence for the confirmation bias.

Only 10% of the people choose the correct cards, the A card and the 5 card. If an odd number is found on the other side of the A card, the hypothesis will be disconfirmed. Turning over either the K card or the 8 card tells you nothing as the hypothesis states nothing about what is on the back of the consonant cards. They could have even numbers also or a mix of even and odd numbers.

It is important to be aware of these biases so that they don’t adversely affect your reasoning. As you become older, you should become wiser. Increased wisdom is a good indication of a healthy memory.

1Stanovich, K. E. (2009). What Intelligence Tests Miss: the psychology of rational thought. New Haven: The Yale University Press.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2010.. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Transactive Memory Games

A healthy activity is for a group of friends to commit a body of knowledge to their collective group memory. Now suppose you and your friends enjoy baseball. You could plan a group activity to commit to transactive memory all the World Series winning teams and losing teams by year to include the winning league and the number of games played and the winning and losing managers. This information can be found by doing a Google search for world series winners. That will take you to the Wikipedia List of World Series Champions, which includes all the information listed above.

The initial question is how to divide up this task. This depends on the number in the your group and their respective interests and time to devote to the task. One way would be to divide this up by year. So you could divide the number of years by the number of people in your group and each memory of the group would be responsible for memorizing all the information on the rows corresponding to the years for which he is responsible. Or the task could be divided by columns, columns and rows, whatever the group can support.

Should your group be small, you could cut the task down to size by remembering only the winning teams or perhaps the winning and losing teams.

This is a healthy activity in terms of both cognitive health and social interaction. Your group can put on demonstrations and show at parties and perhaps even win some bets in bars.

The World Series here is just provided as an example. The basic paradigm is to find some information of mutual interest on the internet, or in the library, to divide the information and commit it to group, transactive memory.

In the same Wikipedia article on the World Series is a list of World Series appearances by franchise. This could comprise another compelling demonstration of transactive memory. Here people could pick their favorite teams.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Remembering Names

The basic problem for most people is that we do not pay attention to the name when the person is introduced.  Usually we are thinking of what we are going to say or some other aspect of the situation and we miss the name.  So the first rule to remember people’s names is to pay attention when we are introduced or first hear the name.  It is good to repeat the person’s name when you are introduced.  Most people will be flattered when you express interest in their name.  So if you ask a question about it, you will both flatter the person and strengthen your memory.  By now you know that to remember something you need to make it meaningful.  .  Some names are inherently meaningful, for example, Rose, Temple, Church, Carpenter.  Take advantage of this.  You also know that forming mental pictures or images enhance memorability.  So you could imagine the individual holding a rose, going into a temple, going into a church, or working as a carpenter.  Concentrate on the sound rather than the spelling of the name.  Consider the following names and how easy it is to form a mental image of them:  Taylor, Cook, Barber, Skinner, Glazer, Pacer, Blocker, Fisher, Shepherd,  Potter, Mayer, Forman, Judge, King, Noble, Winter, Sommer, Spring, Snow, Rains, Bagel, Crown, Bridges, Turner, Brown, Miller, Coyne, Glass, Bell, Tucker, Katz, Bolling, Frett, Powers, Freed, Hart, Stamp, Walker, Graves, Berry, Gill, Storm, Rich, Post, Marsh, Moore, Roper, Hyde, Prince, Park, Price, Holliday, Colt, Rodes, Fawcett, Holland, Bush, Bushman, Martini, Land, Baker, Brooks, Porter, Love, Mailer, Tanner, Baron, Ashe, Banks, Allwood, Tower, Crater, Fountain, Hedges, Bloom, Starr, Burr, Fairweather, Feather, Lemmon, Cobb, Roach, Cruz, Plummer, Trapper, Bateman, Gates, Bellow, Rivers, Keyes, Bishop, Goldwater, Ford,  Booth, Foote, Trout, Gallup, Carver, Potts, March, Bolt, Garland, Byer, Angel, Farmer, Brewer, Webb, Dancer, Flagg, Bowler, Spinner, Nichols, Bowes, Silver, Gold, Frank, Marshall, Lane, Boyle, Knot, Teller, Steel, Bacon, Klapper, Pullman, Archer, and Kane.  There are many more, these are just some examples.  Some other names can be made more memorable with a little elaboration.  Smith, a common name, is one that is especially embarrassing to forget.  Smith can easily be elaborated to blacksmith.  Marriott, Hilton, and Hyatt are also hotel names so you can form a specific image for each hotel.  See if the sound of the name can be converted into an image that you can then combine with the image of the person or certain features on a person’s face.

            Another technique is to see if the name is shared by someone who is famous.  For example, if the name was Hooper, you could think of the actor, Dennis Hooper.   Given all the famous and historical people there are, this provides a rich source of remember names.  Consider the following names:  Winfrey (Oprah), De Niro (Robert), Spears (Britney), Hughes (Howard),  Kidman (Nicole), Brokaw (Tom), Parton (Dolly), Picasso (Pablo), Armstrong (Louis), Beethoven (Ludwig Von), Mozart (Wolfgang), Warhol (Andy), Hoffman (Dustin), Bancroft (Ann), Brooks (Mel), Allen ( Woody), Gable (Clark), Cooper (Jackie), Marx (Groucho, or Chico, or Harpo), Streep (Meryl), Redford (Robert), Reiner (Carl or Rob), Seinfield (Jerry), Bonds (Barry), Castro (Fidel), Lee (Robert E), Aaron (Hank), Williams (Ted), Mantle (Mickey), Jeter (Derek), Rodriguez (Alex), Torre (Joe), and Sinatra (Frank).  Former Presidents can also be used, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Eisenhower, Truman, Roosevelt (Franklin or Teddy), Lincoln, Washington.  They key here is that you be able to form a clear image of the former President or any famous person you are using to help you remember the name.  You form an image of the person you are trying to remember with the famous person sharing the same name.  There is no need to match for sex or age, all you need to is to form an image so that when you see the person, it triggers the image and you are able to recall the name.  Do not overlook the obvious.  If the name is meaningful, associate the person with an image of the sound of the name.  If the person shares a famous name, form an image of the person interacting with the famous personage.

            Still, there will be many names that are new and strange and do not immediately suggest an image.  These names require a little work in recoding the sound of the name so that a meaningful image can be formed.  Consider the recodings for the following names:

Dembowski                 a donkey (Dem for Democrat) with a bow on a ski

Rudolph                      the red nosed reindeer

Wellington                  imagine beef Wellington if you can’t imagine the Duke

Gibbons                       imagine primates playing

Rossitter                      someone sitting on roses

Lewyckyj ( pronounced loo wit ski)   someone in the lou drinking whiskey wearing skis

Bordelais                     a lay of flowers placed on a border

Lembo                         someone dancing the limbo

Harrington                   someone issue a harangue from a ton of steel

Leifester                      someone lying faster and faster

Now try generating your own images based on the sounds of the following names:

Altman

Caldwell

Eckstein

Forbes

Hamilton

Ingram

Lieberman

Nugent

Pomerantz

Zimmer

Kim

Ku

Yu

Rodriguez

Lopez

If you had problems with any of the above, here are some suggestions

Altman            an old man

Caldwell          a cold well

Eckstein          ink making a stain

Forbes             four bees

Hamilton         hammering a ton

Ingram             pouring ink on a ram

Lieberman       a man laboring, a labor man (union organizer?)

Nugent              a new gent (a new gentleman to whom you have been             introduced)

Pomerantz       a palm tree surrounded by aunts

Zimmer            a pot simmering

Kim                 imagine your next of Kin with M&Ms

Ku                   image a coup

Yu                   imagine a large letter “U”

Rodriguez       picture a rod reeking of gas

Lopez              picture someone who lopes

Remembering names will not only prevent embarassments, but the attention you exert in remembering the names will also likely contribute to your memory’s health.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Healthy Memory E-Learning

The January-February issue of the AARP Bulletin contained an article, FREE-Learning that provided a list of a wide variety of free educational resources on the web. For example, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, has put nearly 2,000 academic courses online. These can be found at watch.mit.edu. MIT is not the only university to do this. Harvard has courses at athome.harvard.edu.

academicearth.org is a site that features lectures from multiple universities, as does researchchannel.org that features 3500 videos from a consortium of leading research and academic institutions. The popular site YouTube also includes educational content on its education “channel” youtube.com/education. videolectures.net offers video lectures from all other the world by distinguished scholars and scientists at conferences, seminars, and workshops. A consortium of public television and radio stations offers live and on demand lectures on forum-network.org. There is an annual conference with the acronym TED (Technology,Entertainment, Design) where the world’s top thinkers and doers give talks. These talks can be found at ted.com. If your interests are in history or if you are an aficionado of the History Channel, you can go to history.com.

For information about medicine and health, webmd.com, is a good source. healthcentral.com is another good source for medical information. The University of Maryland’s Medical Center’s website, umm.edu/videos, has many interesting videos on medicine.

For learning specific tasks or skills, wonderhowto.com is a good source. howcast.com is another good source of how to videos, including belly dancing.

All of this comes under the rubric transactive memory that is used in this blog. Transactive memory is the external record of all information, from the esoteric to the mundane, throughout the world. A key to healthy memory is to access and lean about some of this information and some of these skills. Maintaining a healthy memory requires active learning throughout the life span. When you stop learning, you stop growing, and your memory health declines.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Brain Exercise and Transactive Memory

One of the basic ideas underlying the Healthymemory Blog is that the internet is one form of transactive memory that provides for cognitive growth and enhancement. Recent research indicates that simply performing web searches can be beneficial. An article in the January 10 Issue of Parade magazine related a presentation made at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. The article presented results regarding an experiment examining the brain activity in 24 adults. Twelve adults were daily internet users and twelve were “newbies” to the internet. The youngest was 55 and the oldest was 78. All participants spent an hour each day for a week performing internet searches. Each participant underwent two brain scans, one at the beginning and one at the end of the experiment. At the beginning of the experiment the bran scans of the newbies showed significantly less activity in areas involved in working memory and decision-making compared with the more experienced users. However, by the end of the week their brain patterns were quite similar to those of the old hands.

The authors of the study suggested that Internet searching may be used as a brain exercise in older adults. They speculated that doing so may even delay the onset of dementia.

The Healthymemory Blog is a strong advocate of using the internet and searching cyberspace for brain and cognitive health. It also believes that it is beneficial to go beyond searching the internet. It is good to take the results of those searches to bookmark or tag those of interest so that they become part of accessible transactive memory. Further interaction with topics of interest will also increase the accessibility of some of the information in your own biological memory.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Erroneous Interpretation of the Results of Mammogram Readings

Low base rates of disease occurrences can lead to drastic misinterpretations of test results. The following is taken from Gerd Gigerenzer’s Calculated Risks: How to Know When the Numbers Deceive You.¹ I highly recommend this book. The probability that a woman 40 years old has breast cancer is about one percent. So of 10,000 women, it is expected that 100 will have breast cancer. The probability that the readout of a mammogram will miss a cancer is 0.05. The probability that a woman who does not have breast cancer will test positive is 0.09. So let’s consider how these 10,000 women break down.

Of the 10,000 women, about 100 will have breast cancer. About 95 of these cases will be detected by the mammogram, 5 will not. So a negative mammogram does not guarantee a women that she does not have breast cancer.

Of the 9,900 women who do not have breast cancer, about 891 will test positive. So about 891 women who do not have breast cancer will leave the diagnosis thinking that they have breast cancer. They will be miserable, perhaps terrified. One would hope that physicians would be able to set their minds at ease and tell them that even though they tested positive, it is highly likely that subsequent tests would reveal them to be cancer free. Although one would hope that this is the case, apparently it is not so. The answer given by most physicians was that there was a 0.90 probability that a woman whose mammagrom was positive actually had cancer. This ignorance, defective mindware (see “Mindware” blog poast), among physicians is truly appalling. One should bear this in mind when consulting one’s physician. It is possible, perhaps probable, or maybe even likely that the information supplied by the physician will be in error.

1Gigerenzer, G. (2002). Calculated Risks: How to Know When Numbers Deceive You. New York: Simon & Schuster

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Errors in Probabilistic Reasoning

 Conditional probabilities are of the form, if such and such is the case, then the probability of so and so is y. Stanovich reports an article described by Robyn Dawes that had a headline that said that marijuana use led to the use of hard drugs.¹ The headline implied that the survey was the probability of a student using hard drugs given that the student had used marijuana. But the survey was about the inverse probability, the probability that the student had used marijuana given that he had used hard drugs. If you think about this for a minute, you will realize, if you haven’t already that they are not the same. Many experiment with marijuana, but few, fortunately, move on to hard drugs.

Unfortunately, the inversion of conditional probabilities is not restricted to the above article; it is a common occurrence. Both patients and medical practitioners sometime invert probabilities and think that the probability of a disease, given a particular symptom, is the same as the probability of the sympton, given the disease. Bear in mind that different diseases share many of the same symptoms, and keep this in mind when you are the patient.

Perhaps the most blatant use, or misuse, of inverse probabilities occurred during the O. J. Simpson murder trial. One of Simpson’s defense attorneys, Dershowitz, I believe, presented the conditional probability that a husband who had assaulted his significant other would eventually murder her. That probability, fortunately, is quite low (0.0004) . So this assertion buttressed the defense. The prosecution failed to recognize that it was the inverse probability, the probability that a husband who had murdered his significant other had previously assaulted her is very, very high (0.89). This presentation to the jury would certainly have buttressed the prosecution’s case.²

Please don’t mistake me for taking a position on the Simpson murder case. I hear the jury foreman, who happened to be a woman, state that had this been a civil case, where the standard is the preponderance of the evidence, they would have convicted. However, in a criminal case, the standard is beyond a “reasonable doubt.” Now I would appreciate a definition of a “reasonable doubt.” A jury risks making two errors: letting a guilty person go free and convicting an innocent person. So what is the standard here? Is mistakenly convicting one person in four beyond a “reasonable doubt.” One person in ten? One person in twenty? One person in a hundred? One person in a thousand? I think a definition is needed here to bring the legal system into the 21^st century.

1Stanovich, K. E. (2009). What Intelligence Tests Miss: the psychology of rational thought. New Haven: The Yale University Press.

2Gigerenzer, G. (2002). Calculated Risks: How to Know When Numbers Deceive You. New York: Simon & Schuster

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Transactive Memory: Both Human and Technical

Transactive memory refers to memories stored outside our individual biological memories. These are memories you can access either via fellow humans or via technology such as books, computers and the internet. An early blog posting, “Folksonomies”, wrote about the social bookmarking site, delicious.com. That posting focused on how delicious.com provided a means of categorizing and organizing information you have found on the web with tags. In addition to categorizing and organizing your own information, you could both make your information available to others and to search the tags to find additional information on designated topics.

In addition to serving as a technical form of transactive memory, delicious.com also has the functionality for developing and enhancing human transactive memory. This is done by forming networks on delicious.com. You form the network by inviting people to join. Moreover, in the process of using delicious.com you will likely find new people with similar interests and ask them to join your network. So delicious is a “people aggregator.”

Delicious also provides subscriptions, so you can subscribe to tags of interest. So it is also a “tag aggregator.” However, in the process of receiving subscriptions and aggregating tags, you are likely to meet new people of similar interests. Hence people aggregation and tag aggregation are mutually supportive.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Mindware

Mindware is a term Stanovich uses to refer to specific skills or knowledge that have been acquired through learning.¹ You can think of it as software or an application program that you have acquired for the mind through learning. Scientific reasoning is one kind of mindware. Stanovich writes of “mindware gaps,” which can refer either to the lack of knowledge or knowledge that is not used. One mindware gap is a failure to consider alternative hypothesis. This failure is quite evident in police work. Consider the case involving the missing Chandra Levy and the Congressman Gary Condit. The police honed in on Gary Condit as the chief suspect in the missing and later the death of Chandry Levy. The alternative hypothesis that someone else did it was not actively considered. During the investigation other women were murdered in the same park by the same individual who eventually was convicted of Chandra Levy’s death. I hope this mindware gap is due to cognitive miserliness rather than to a true knowledge deficit. The need to consider alternative hypothesis needs to be central to investigative techniques.

Consider the following data regarding medical treatments:

200 people were given the treatment and improved

75 people were given the treatment and did not improve

50 people were not given the treatment and improved

15 people were not given the treatment and did not improve

Do you think the treatment was effective?

Many people think that the treatment was effective since 200 people given the treatment improved, whereas only 75 people who were given the treatment did not improve. However, the conclusion regarding the effectiveness of the treatment requires a control group in which people were not given the treatment. Of the 65 people in the control group, 77% improved. Of the 275 people in the experimental treatment group , 73% improved.   As you can see there was improvement in both the treatment and the control groups. There is no support for the treatment being effective.

1Stanovich, K. E. (2009). What Intelligence Tests Miss: the psychology of rational thought. New Haven: The Yale University Press.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Waitpersons: Biological and Transactive Memory

A number of years ago a friend of my told me this story about an experienced cocktail waitress he knew in Las Vegas. She did everything from memory. She never wrote down drink orders. Moreover, when serving drinks she never “auctioned them.” “Auctioning” is the term waitpersons use when they need to ask which person ordered which drink. She was able to do this completely from memory, and she pulled it off without a hitch. Her complaint regarded new waitpersons. The new waitpersons could not do this. They continually botched drink orders so that the cocktail lounge developed a policy of writing down all drink orders. In other words, there was a requirement to use transactive memory, an external memory source. The experienced waitress was also forced to write down drink orders. She was livid.

A recent article in the Washington Post (Hendrix, “The old-school way of memorizing diners’ orders is fried,” January 12, 2010:A01, also search the “Transactive Memory” tags on delicious.com) relates a story about Richard Weber, a 20-year professional waiter. Until recently he never needed to take recourse to notes, to rely upon transactive memory. He did not use specific mnemonic techniques, but paid a great deal of attention to his customers, their orders, and where they sat. He did have a system for memorizing his customers at a table. The one sitting closest to the entrance was #1, with subsequent customers at a table being ordered with respect to how far theny where away from the entrance. Using this system he never needed to “auction” specific orders or drinks. He took great pride in being able to work purely from his own biological memory. Besides professional pride he does this to maintain his sharpness. He believes these activities provide mental exercise contribute to a healthy brain.

Perhaps it is ironic that it is technology that is forcing him occasionally to take notes, to take recourse to transactive memory. Apparently the Food Channel Cable has made many patrons aware of new dishes or ways of preparing food. Another waitperson, Timothy Glynn put it this way, “Whoever invented the Food Network should be shot. Everyone’s a chef now. Everyone wants something special done with their meal. It is getting so that you have to write it down.”

Let me make it clear that the Healthymemory does not want anyone shot. Rather, the Food Channel does provide a means, a source of transactive memory, that fosters new learning experiences that can promote brain health. Healthymemory advocates both exercising your biological brain through selective memorization and mnemonic techniques, and using transactive memory, external sources of information, to explore and acquire new knowledge.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

The Costs of Being a Cognitive Miser

Stanovich¹ reported the results from an article in a British publication that asked the question, “Can 70 percent of people be wrong?” According to the article 70% of the people in Britain had money in checking accounts earning 0.10% interest with one of the Big Four Banks (Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds TSB, and the Royal Bank of Scotland) when interest rates more than thirty times that amount were available from checking accounts recommended in the Best Buy columns of leading consumer publications. How could this possibly be? The reason is that most of us most of the time are cognitive misers. People defaulted to the most recognizable banks rather than investing the time and mental effort, as little as it was, in pursuing better interest rates.

Why are celebrities paid such enormous sums for endorsements? For the moment, disregard the scandals surrounding Tiger Woods and ask yourself why was he paid such enormous sums in the first place? There might be some connection if the product he is endorsing is related to golf. But why should anyone care what care he drives or what phone service he uses? This is not singling out Tiger Woods, but encompasses all celebrity endorsements. Endorsements enhance vividness and recognition. The cognitive miser relies on the recognition heuristic rather than engaging in further cognitive effort before making a purchase. The same mechanism is at play when patients pay more for and physicians prescribe brand name drugs rather than the equivalent generic drug.

I find it annoying that I cannot find a generic headband. The only ones I can find have the brand symbol on the headband. My feeling is that if these companies want me to provide advertising space for them, then they should pay me, rather than me paying them.

I must confess to being a cognitive miser myself, especially when it comes to shopping at the supermarket. I find shopping such an unpleasant experience that I purchase the first item that I want and pay little or no attention to price. Fortunately my wife is a very good shopper and does most of the shopping!

As Stanovich notes, “extreme cognitive misers do not have a mind of their own. What their mind will process is determined by the most vivid stimulus at hand, the most readily assimilated fact, or the most salient cue available. The cognitive miser is easily exploited by those who control the labeling, who control what is vivid, who control the anchor.”² At bottom, this is a matter of defaulting to Type 1 Processing (See the Blog Post “The Two System View of Cognition”). An over reliance on Type 1 Processing might also contribute to an earlier cognitive decline (See the Blog Post “Memory and Aging”).

1Stanovich, K. E. (2009). What Intelligence Tests Miss: the psychology of rational thought. New Haven: The Yale University Press.

2Op. cit, p. 89

Transactive Memory and the Legal System

A recent article, “Social Networking Among Jurors is Trying Judges’ Patience” (The Washington Post, Saturday January 9:C01, or search for the tag, “Transactive Memory” on delicious.com) presents the story of a juror on a murder trial of a 23 year-old charged with murdering a homeless man. The juror was confused by the word “lividity” and what role it might have played in explaining the circumstances of the beating death. To clear up this confusion, the juror, a retired engineer, took recourse to transactive memory and looked up the definition in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. The result of his action was for an appeals court to throw out the defendant’s first-degree murder conviction and order a new trial. The court ruled that this inquiry into Wikipedia violated the judge’s order prohibiting jurors from researching the case.

The article proceeds to discuss the judge’s concern with how this technology is interfering with the “legal process.” This is part of a larger judicial effort to enforce ignorance among jurors. Jurors are instructed to avoid reading about the trial, to not conduct any research on their own, and to not discuss the case among themselves outside formal deliberations. So jurors are precluded against recourse to any form of transactive memory, be it human or technical. The objective is to ensure that jurors contemplate only the evidence admitted at trial and at the appropriate time.

A key question here is what is the justification for this objective. Is there empirical evidence supporting this policy that indicates such a policy results in higher conviction of the guilty and fewer convictions of the innocent? The answer is no because the law is predicated primarily on legal precedents. For a cynic, such as myself, this precedent is likely based on a preference of lawyers for arguing their cases in front of relatively unsophisticated juries because they are easier to manipulate. Lawyers usually do not accept jurors with advanced degrees or specialized knowledge. There is a distinct preference to dumb down juries.

The technological age in which we are privileged to live is based upon science and empiricism. The beginnings of our legal system began prior to the development and acceptance of scientific empiricism as being the preferred standard of truth. The legal system is preoccupied with procedure for procedure’s sake, rather than trying to establish which procedures are more likely to lead to accurate outcomes.

Consider the alarming number of people who have been released from prisons and death row for convictions that have been overturned on the basis of DNA evidence. Fortunately, the scientific standard of DNA was allowed to prevail in these cases, but what about the validity of the procedures that led to these false convictions? Heavy reliance has been placed on eyewitness testimony in spite of strong empirical evidence that eyewitness testimony is highly unreliable.

Rather than fearing this new technology, courts should embrace it. It is more likely to lead to truth and more accurate court decisions. So not only should jurors be given access to all relevant technology, they should also be encouraged to discuss the case among themselves throughout the trial. They should also be given access to “lifelines” outside the court.

If the legal system is interested in the pursuit of justice, it should become preoccupied with the pursuit of truth rather than the pursuit of procedure.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Framing Effects and Risk Aversion

(Much of this content is based upon Stanovich, K. E. (2009). What Intelligence Tests Miss: the psychology of rational thought. New Haven:The Yale University Press, a book that is highly recommended).

Framing refers to the way a problem is presented. Framing effects refer to the recipient of the frame taking the frame as focal. Consequently, all subsequent thought derives from this frame rather than from alternative framings. Alternative framings would require more thought. So framing effects are the result of cognitive miserliness.

Consider the following decision, call it Decision 1. Imagine that the United States is preparing for the outbreak of a disease that is expected to kill 600 people. Two alternative programs have been designed to combat the disease. Under Program A, 200 people will be saved. Under Program B there is a one-third probability that 600 people will be saved and a two-thirds probability that no one will be saved. Which program would you choose?

Most people choose Program A, the one that saves 200 people for sure.

Now consider another decision, call it Decision 2. Again imagine that the United States is preparing for the outbreak of a disease that is expected to kill 600 people. Again, two alternative programs have been designed to combat the disease. If Program C is adopted, 400 people will die. If Program D is adopted, there is a one-third probability that no one will die and a two-thirds probability that 600 people will die. Which program would you choose?

Most people choose Program D for Decision 2. Reexamine the two decisions. You should note that they are identical problems with different framings. Moreover, Program A and Program C are different framings of the same program. Programs B and D are different framings of the same program. So why are different decisions made depending on the framings of the decisions and the programs?

The answer can be found with respect to risk aversion. We are risk averse in the context of gains, but risk seeking in the context of losses. Consequently, people found the sure gain of 200 lives attractive in Decision 1 over a gamble of equivalent value. In Decision 2, people found the sure loss of 200 lives unattractive against a gamble of equivalent value.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Google and Transactive Memory

The American Dialect Society has picked “Google” as the word of the decade (2000-2009). It is worth pondering the significance of this selection. “I think my life has been more affected by ‘Google’ than ‘9/11′” said one college student¹. At first, this assertion might seem a bit extreme, but if you were not personally affected 9/11, it just might be true. Google has achieved such dominance in the market that it has become a synonym for internet search. For most of us, it has become a part of our daily lives. We take it for granted and perhaps fail to appreciate its larger significance.

Google is a tool that facilitates the accessing and searching of transactive memory that is located in cyberspace. It is helpful to distinguish three classes of transactive memory on the internet. Accessible transactive memory does not require Google. This is information that you cannot recall from your personal memory, but you do remember how to access via the internet. Google, however, is useful for available transactive memory. This is information that you know is on the internet. You might well have visited this site before, but it is not bookmarked and you do not know how to find it. Then it’s Google to the rescue. Potential transactive memory is truly vast. That is all the information available on the internet, which is a substantial percentage of all human knowledge. Potential transactive memory presents the enormous opportunity for cognitive growth. Google, along with other sites such as delicious.com, are key tools for accessing potential transactive memory and converting portions of it to available transactive memory, accessible transactive memory, or your own personal biological memory depending on how well you need to know this information.

In this light, Google is a key tool for an healthy memory and cognitive growth. As we age there is an increasing tendency to rely upon what we know and not to pursue new knowledge. We should pursue new knowledge as long as we live.

 1Zak., D. (2010). American Dialect Society picks ‘tweet,’ ‘Google’ as top words for 2009, decade. The Washington Post, January 9,2010;C01. Also search tags for “Transactive Memory” on delicious.com.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

The Default Heuristic1

The default heuristic is to stick with what you have and not to change. Like most heuristics, sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn’t. In the 1080’s Pacific Gas and Electric noted that service varied among its districts. Some were more reliable than others. These differences were due to geographical differences that affected the timeliness of service in the different districts. To make matters more equitable, Pacific Gas and Electric conducted a survey. They asked customers with less reliable service if they would be willing to pay more for increased reliability. They asked customers with the more reliable service if they would be willing to accept less reliable service for a decrease in their costs. The customers were overwhelmingly wanting to keep the level of service they had. Now the difference in service was substantial. The unreliable service group suffered 15 outages per year of 4 hours average duration. The reliable service group suffered 3 outages per year of 2 hours average duration.

There are two perspectives to be considered here. The first perspective is that of the person or entity setting the default. If you want people to opt for making 401K contributions, then you set this as the default and offer employees the option to opt out. If you want people to become organ donors, then you make this the default and offer people the option to opt out.

The second perspective is from that of the person being offered the default option. Do not be a cognitive miser. Consider the options carefully before deciding to opt in or out. The exercise of this additional mental effort will be beneficial to your finances. It should also be beneficial to your cognitive health.

1Most of this content is based upon Stanovich, K. E. (2009). What Intelligence Tests Miss: the psychology of rational thought. New Haven: The Yale University Press.

Healthy Memory Wishes You a Happy New Year!

And a prosperous one, especially with respect to personal and cognitive growth. Healthymemory is devoted to cognitive growth and the enhancement of human cognition. Why not make it a resolution to use Healthymemory’s blog to pursue these goals?

The blog Healthymemory pursues three themes. One theme pursues an understanding of how memory works. Such an understanding is basic to a healthy memory. One also becomes aware of the many shortcomings and biases of human cognition. Knowing these shortcomings and biases allows you to make a more objective assessment of your own cognitive performance. It also alerts you to pitfalls and biases, so you can avoid them.

The second theme addresses mnemonic techniques, specific techniques for enhancing memory. Obviously these techniques alone should improve memory. But these techniques also exercise your creativity, imaging ability, and recoding ability, among others. So the techniques are also good memory exercises. The blog post “A Memory Course” provides a syllabus of the postings in this blog that present memory techniques that are common to most memory courses.

The third theme addresses a little known concept, transactive memory. Transactive memory refers to memories that you can access but are not store in your own biological memory. These memories can be found in technological devices, books, journals, computers, in cyberspace, or in your fellow human beings. How to use transactive memory to enhance your own memory and to achieve cognitive growth are all discussed under this theme.

Happy New Year! And please consider becoming a regular visitor to Healthymemory.

This blog will go on a brief hiatus, but it shall return. In the meantime, there is plenty to chew on already.

Note; The blog post, “A Memory Course” , can be found, just as any other post, by entering the title in the search this site box.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Transactive Memory1 and Educational Testing

The most common criterion for learning in our educational system is whether you can remember certain information. Sometimes recognition memory is tested, as in true false or multiple choice tests. At other times recall memory is tested, as in fill in the blank or essay tests. These tests are carried up the educational hierarchy all the way to comprehensive written tests for Ph.D. qualifying exams. Open book exams are the exception and not the rule. And the use of crib notes can get a student into serious trouble.

Educators have tended to regard the proliferation of transactive memory (the internet, for example) as a threat to education. They fret about students plagiarizing text from the internet and their inability to recognize or identify this plagiarism. This blog posting will argue that the abundance and availability of transactive memory should be regarded as an opportunity rather than a threat.

When I taught introductory or lower level courses in college, I placed heavy reliance on multiple choice tests. The main considerations here were time and resources. Given an abundance of students and no teaching assistants, practical considerations dictate multiple choice tests. When I needed to construct make up tests for students who had missed scheduled tests for legitimate reasons, I made up essay tests. It is not practical to construct multiple choice tests for one or several students. Usually I was appalled when I graded these tests. Part of the problem often was poor composition skills, but the conclusion I drew was that the students had but the flimsiest grasp of the material. So students seemed to be learning much less than what I had inferred from their multiple choice test performance.

Now consider this new type of test in today’s world of ubiquitous transactive memory. Students would arrive at the exam with their laptops and would be given full internet interactivity. There would be no restriction on any materials they had prepared for the exam. They would be given a problem, perhaps more than one. And it is possible that these questions would be taken from a set of potential exam questions that the students had been given in advance. They would be required to answer the problem or problems to the best of their ability using all the resources at hand. The premise underlying this type of test is that the critical test of knowledge is how well you can use it rather than whether you can recall it by rote. Using the knowledge of others is not a problem as long as credit is given. Failure to provide sources would be heavily penalized.

What do you think of this new type of test for the 21^st Century?

1Transactive memory, as presented in previous blog postings, is memory external to our personal selves. So this is memory resident in our fellow humans and in the vast expanses of technology, for example libraries and the internet.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Anchoring and Adjustment1

The anchoring and adjustment heuristic was discovered by Tversky and Kahneman. This heuristic is used to make a numerical estimate of an unknown quantity. We begin by retrieving the most relevant number that we know. This number serves as the anchor. Then that anchor is adjusted upwards or downwards based on what other factors we know or what other information that becomes accessible. Tversky and Kahneman demonstrated this heuristic in the following experiment. One group of subjects watched a spinning wheel (that was rigged to stop at 65) and then asked them whether the number of African nations that were members of the United Nations was higher or lower than this number (65). Then they were asked to estimate the number of African nations that were members of the United Nations. A second group of subjects was administered the same procedure except that the spinning wheel was rigged to stop at 10. The mean estimate of the first group (where the spinning wheel stopped at 65) was 45. The mean estimate of the second group (where the spinning wheel stopped at 10) was 25. Clearly the spinning wheel provided an anchor that was used to make the estimate.

The results of this experiment might not impress you as you might think that most students would be completely clueless as to the number of African nations that belonged to the United Nations. Consequently, they were desperate and where grasping (anchoring) at straws. Perhaps a more practical demonstration of the relevance of the anchoring and adjustment heuristic can be found in the bargaining process when purchasing an automobile. The salesperson uses the Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) as the anchor, and bargain down from there. The customer is advised to find the invoice price, the price that the dealer actually paid for the car, and use that as the anchor and bargain up from there.

Anchoring effects can produce reasoning results that are ridiculous. Paul Slovic and his colleagues report a study in which people rated a gamble with a 7/36 chance to win $9.00 and a 29/37 chance to lose $0.05 more favorable than a gamble with a 7/36 chance to win $9.00 and a 29/37 chance to lose nothing! For both bets the amount won and the odds are identical, but in the preferred choice there is a possible loss, albeit a small loss. This bet remained preferred to the no loss bet when the odds and the payout remained the same, but the possible loss was increased to $.25. The only apparent explanation here is the $.05 and $.25 loss conditions provided a reference point that made the $9.00 winnings appear larger than when the bet did not contain a reference point (no loss).

1Most of this content is based upon Stanovich, K. E. (2009). What Intelligence Tests Miss: the psychology of rational thought. New Haven: The Yale University Press.

Transactive Memory and Travel

Transactive memory refers to those memories stored outside one’s own brain. So they can be stored in such technological devices as paper, computer, or the internet, or they can be stored in other individuals. Travel makes extensive demands on memory, so this post provides some ideas on how transactive memory can be effectively employed during travel.

For example, consider the trip to New York City, that my wife and I will be taking. There are a number of tasks that must be accomplished. The first is planning. We need to decide where to stay. Once that is decided, then we need to make the reservations. This is a responsibility that I take. I first discuss this with my wife and later, before actually making the reservations, I confirm them with my wife.

Another responsibility is transportation, how to get there. As my wife is the more frequent traveler to New York, she takes this upon herself. Of course, she discusses this with me, but she is the one who decides upon the mode of transportation and makes the reservations. She is responsible not only for transportation to and from New York City, but also for transportation within the city once we arrive. She does this because she is the more knowledgeable party.

Then we need to decide what to do while in New York. My wife, again being more knowledgeable of the city takes responsibility for the daytime activities. She is very knowledgeable about museums and the like. I take responsibility for the evening activities. We like to go to plays and I try to keep up to date on what is playing of potential interest. Of course, I consult with my wife before booking the shows we are going to attend.

Eating, we need to plan where to eat. Of course, all of this planning does not need to be done in advance. Some activities can be played by ear. But here, I trust the ear of my wife rather than my own.

Of course, technological transactive memory is also involved. Online resources are used to explore the alternatives and to make reservations. There are physical tickets and information on the reservations and the travel. The respective parties can be responsible for their respective holdings of physical transactive memory. This information can be held by both parties in the event that one party misplaces certain information. It is also possible to store this information online via email or some other source from which it can also be retrieved.

Regarding healthy memory in general, travel provides healthy exercise (both physical and mental). This post has already discussed some of the activities that are involved. And travel involves social interactions and new experiences that are also beneficial to healthy memory and effective aging.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

How Do We Become Cognitive Misers?1

The 9/11 tragedy was terrible, and it certainly was vivid. The startling tragic events were presented again and again in the media. As a result some people stopped flying. Now if they simply stopped flying it would have been one matter; but they tended to drive instead. Now which is safer: flying or driving? Compared to almost any other activity in our lives, driving is the most dangerous. However, it is not vivid. We live and come to accept the carnage on the highways year in and year out. We drive and we do not see, from our personal perspective, than many accidents. Researchers estimated that 300 more people died in the remaining months of 2001 because they drove rather than flew. One group of researchers calculated that for driving to become as dangerous as flying an incident of the magnitude of the 9/11 tragedy would need to occur monthly!

Salience is another cue that can save effort, but lead us astray. Consider this question. Which is more dangerous?

A disease that killed 1286 out of 10,00 people

A disease that killed 24.14% of the people

Most thought that a disease that killed 1286 out of 10,00 people was the more dangerous. We can ask why. Well, 1286 is a large number of people, it is quite salient. One needs to do a computation, even though a rough mental calculation will indicate that 24.14% would be more than 2400 people out of 10,000. So the cost of this cognitive miserliness is the wrong answer.

Another example is the money illusion. This occurs when people are overly influenced by the nominal monetary value. It has been found that people underspend in a foreign currency when the foreign currency is a multiple of the home currency (for instance 1 US dollar = 4 Malaysian ringgits) and overspend in a foreign currency is a fraction of the home currency (say, 1 US dollar = .4 Bahraini dinar). This is something to keep foremost in your mind when you travel.

The money illusion can lead to serious public policy problems. In 2006 and 2007 there were calls for political action when gasoline prices reached $3 per gallon. However, when the price was adjusted for affordability (income) the price of gasoline was substantially below what it was from 1978 to 1981.

Key to memory health is its effective use. Miserly cognition is the enemy of rational decision making and cognitive health.

1Most of this content is based upon Stanovich, K. E. (2009). What Intelligence Tests Miss: the psychology of rational thought. New Haven: The Yale University Press.

Healthy Memory Wishes You a Merry Christmas

And, of course, a healthy memory. This blog is devoted to building healthy memories. It is based on three themes. The first theme is that it it important to understand what memory is and how it works.

The second theme is on specific mnemonic techniques for improving memory. These techniques serve two purposes. The first is obvious, they provide a means for improving memory. But they also require creativity, the formation of mental images, recoding, and the searching of brain structures that provide exercise for both hemispheres of the brain.

The third theme is on transactive memory, a concept that is not generally known or understood. Transactive memory refers to memories that are stored outside of one’s own personal brain. These are memories that can be found in technological artifacts, such as paper, books, computers, and the internet. It also refers to memories held by our fellow humans. Transactive memory provides a means for memory growth and enhancement. These sources are found not only in cyberspace and in technological artifacts, but also in our fellow humans. This latter source provides for social interactions and relationships, which are important for healthy brains and memories.

This blog also contains a holiday gift, a memory course. The syllabus for this course can be found in a post titled, oddly enough, “A Memory Course.”

Happy Holidays!

A Memory Course

Buried among these blog posts is what could be construed as a traditional memory course. These posts are scattered throughout this blog. Here is the recommended order in which you should do them:

Paired Associates Learning: Concrete Concrete Pairs

Paired Associates Learning: Concrete Abstract Pairs

Paired Associates Learning: Abstract Concrete Pairs

Paired Associates Learning: Abstract Abstract Pairs

The Method of Loci

The One Bun Rhyme Mnemonic

How to Memorize Abstract Information

More on Recoding: Learning Foreign and Strange Vocabulary Words

Remembering Numbers

More on Remembering Numbers

Three Digit Numbers

Remembering Even Larger Numbers

You can easily find these by using the search this site block and entering the title of the post.

The most fundamental type of learning is paired associates, the learning of what word has been paired to which word. Concrete words are the easiest to learn, so the first post to take is the learning of concrete word pairs. Abstract words are more difficult so the next three posts increase the abstract content of the pairs. These posts are not to read only. To benefit you need to do them. After mastering techniques for paired associate learning you move on to the classical method of loci. This is followed by the simple one bun rhyme mnemonic, which should make it easy for you to remember ten item lists. The ten item list you learn in the next post, “How to Remember Abstract Information,” is the Bill of Rights. The next post is long and difficult and presents techniques for learning not only foreign vocabulary words, but unusual English words which appear to be foreign. The final four posts are on remembering numbers. Developing a facility with this number recoding technique is needed for most advance mnemonic techniques.

Remember, these posts are not simply to be read. They also provide exercises that need to be practiced to develop facility with the techniques.

I hope you also find the remaining posts under mnemonic techniques useful. The above posts present the material most common to conventional memory courses.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Paired Associates Learning: Abstract Abstract Pairs

(If you have not done so, it is recommended that you read, and do, the preceding post, “Paired Associates Learning: Abstract Concrete Pairs”)

Consider these word pairs:

AFTERLIFE   EGO

ALLEGORY  TRUTH

FAULT           MATHEMATICS

Note that both words of each pair are abstract and need to be made more concrete in the image.

The following are possible mental images to help you remember.

Someone being rejected at the Pearly Gates in the AFTERLIFE due to his excessive EGO.

A wise man telling an ALLEGORY about TRUTH

A student finding FAULT in their MATHEMATICS

Now try these ten pairs:

ADVANTAGE          DALLIANCE

CRITERION              JEOPARDY

ADAGE                      CAUSALITY

ESSENCE                  LEGAL

WISTFULNESS         DUTY

WITNESS                   JUSTICE

DEMOCRACY          DEBACLE

ARRAY                      SIMILE

ARBITER                   ELABORATION

CLEMENCY              FIGMENT

Now, without looking above, try to remember the appropriate response to each stimulus or cue by remembering the mental image.

WISTFULNESS

UNBELIEVER

ESSENCE

DEMOCRACY

ADAGE

ARRAY

CRITERION

ARBITER

ADVANTAGE

CLEMENCY

Now try these ten word pairs

CONTEXT                 EXPLANATION

BELIEF                      CRISIS

CONTENTS               DYNASTY

GENDER                   INANITY

INSOLENCE             PACIFISM

SOBRIETY                SENSATION

STEERAGE               OPPORTUNITY

DUTY                         DEMON

UNIFICATION         BOAT

SITUATION              VANITY

Now, without looking, try to remember the appropriate response to each stimulus or cue by remembering the mental image.

INSOLENCE

GENDER

CONTENTS

BELIEF

CONTEXT

SOBRIETY

STEERAGE

DUTY

UNIFICATION

SITUATION

I think you will agree that this is healthy mental exercise that makes demands on your imagination and creativity as well as your memory.  Undoubtedly you noted that the task became more difficult as the words became more abstract.  It takes more practice to become proficient with the abstract words, but this practice can be quite worthwhile, as you have likely noted that much information that you want to remember is abstract, sometimes even nonsensical. 

  I have stressed using mental images. However, it is also possible to use verbal linkages, phrases and sentences.  You might find that the latter technique works better with abstract material. 

Please repeat these blog postings as often as you think it is needed to develop proficiency.  This will serve you in good stead for the remainder of this book.

If you have done all the exercises in this blog, you have accomplished quite a mental workout.  You have exercised both hemispheres of  your brain as well as your imagination, recoding, retrieval, and decoding skills.  You should also be beginning to develop some effective new memory skills.  Remember that you are engaged on a course from which you do not finish and graduate.  You need to keep practicing these skills both to improve your specific memory skills and to exercise and improve your mind and brain.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Paired Associates Learning: Abstract Concrete Pairs

(If you have not done so, it is recommended that you read, and do, the preceding post, “Paired Associates Learning: Concrete Abstract Pairs”)

Consider the following word pairs:

PERJURY                  REVOLVER

ABASEMENT           INN

FOIBLE                      AMBULANCE

Here the stimulus, or cue, is abstract, and needs to be made more concrete in the image and the response is concrete.  Here are some possible mental images to help you remember these pairs.

Someone committing PERJURY because there is a REVOLVER pointing at their head

Someone taking a room in ABASEMENT of an INN

Someone committing some type of FOIBLE and ending up in an AMBULANCE.

Now try these ten word pairs:

ADVERSITY             FOAM

REMINDER               TROOPS

RATING                     PROFESSOR

REPLACEMENT       CASE

FUNCTIONARY       LEAFLET

SENTIMENT             BOOK

BANALITY               FLESH

FACILITY                 BAGPIPE

PREDICAMENT       ARROW

BELIEF                      BOSOM

Now, without looking at the above, try to remember the appropriate response to each stimulus or cue by remembering the mental image.

ADVERSITY

RATING

FUNCTIONARY

BANALITY

PREDICAMENT

REMINDER

REPLACEMENT

SENTIMENT

FACILITY

BELIEF

Now let’s try another ten pairs

ANSWER                   PICTURE

EXACTITUDE          FIREPLACE

PROFESSION           SUNBURN

IRONY                       YACHT

UNREALITY             GRADUATION

FALLACY                 ENGINE

EXCUSE                    GIANT

FACT                          RIVER

FATE                          ROCK

EMANCIPATION     FLOOD

Now, without looking back, try to remember the appropriate response to each stimulus or cue by remembering the mental image.

ANSWER

EMANCIPATION

EXACTITUDE

FATE

PROFESSION

FACT

IRONY

EXCUSE

UNREALITY

FALLACY

I think you will agree that this is healthy mental exercise that makes demands on your imagination and creativity as well as your memory.  Undoubtedly you noted that the task became more difficult as the words became more abstract.  It takes more practice to become proficient with the abstract words, but this practice can be quite worthwhile, as you have likely noted that much information that you want to remember is abstract, sometimes even nonsensical. 

I have stressed using mental images. However, it is also possible to use verbal linkages, phrases and sentences.  You might find that the latter technique works better with abstract material. 

Please repeat these blog postings as often as you think it is needed to develop proficiency.  This will serve you in good stead for the remainder of this book.

If you have done all the exercises in this blog, you have accomplished quite a mental workout.  You have exercised both hemispheres of  your brain as well as your imagination, recoding, retrieval, and decoding skills.  You should also be beginning to develop some effective new memory skills.  Remember that you are engaged on a course from which you do not finish and graduate.  You need to keep practicing these skills both to improve your specific memory skills and to exercise and improve your mind and brain.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Paired Associates Learning: Concrete Abstract Pairs

(If you have not done so, it is recommended that you read, and do, the preceding post, “Paired Associates Learning: Concrete Concrete Pairs”)

In the preceding post, the words being associated were fairly concrete, so it was not difficult to form images for them.  Now consider the following word pairs:

BLACKSMITH          ATROCITY

CHIN                          HINT

HORSE                       LAW

In these pairs the stimulus, or cue, is still concrete, but the response is somewhat abstract and difficult to image.  The word needs to be recoded into a meaningful picture.  Here are some possible mental images you can form to remember these word pairs:

A mental image of a BLACKSMITH  committing some sort of ATROCITY

A  mental image of someone playing a game of charades pointing to her CHIN as a HINT

A mental image of a HORSE attending LAW school.

 Now try forming mental images for these word pairs:

CIGAR                       PERMISSION

FISHERMAN                        FOLLY

LARK                         LEGISLATION

PRIEST                       CHANCE

CAR                            MALICE

FOREHEAD              INTERIM

KETTLE                     MASTERY

ADMIRAL                 MISCONCEPTION

LOBSTER                  ANTITOXIN

MICROSCOPE          AMOUNT

Now, without looking above, try recalling the word that was paired with each of the following:

FISHERMAN

PRIEST

FOREHEAD

ADMIRAL

MICROSCOPE

CIGAR

LARK

CAR

KETTLE

LOBSTER

Now let’s try another set of ten pairs

MACARONI              TEMERITY

TRUMPET                  LENGTH

UMBRELLA              TRUTH

LIBRARY                  SAVANT

MEAT                         PROXY

TOAST                       UNBELIEVER

LEOPARD                 PROMOTION

KING                          METHOD

SOIL                           INGRATITUDE

ROBIN                       PERMISSION

Now, without looking back, try to remember the appropriate response to each stimulus or cue by remembering the mental image.

SOIL

LEOPARD

MEAT

UMBRELLA

MACARONI

ROBIN

KING

TOAST

LIBRARY

TRUMPET

I think you will agree that this is healthy mental exercise that makes demands on your imagination and creativity as well as your memory.  Undoubtedly you noted that the task became more difficult as the words became more abstract.  It takes more practice to become proficient with the abstract words, but this practice can be quite worthwhile, as you have likely noted that much information that you want to remember is abstract, sometimes even nonsensical. 

I have stressed using mental images. However, it is also possible to use verbal linkages, phrases and sentences.  You might find that the latter technique works better with abstract material. 

 Please repeat these blog postings as often as you think it is needed to develop proficiency.  This will serve you in good stead for the remainder of this book.

If you have done all the exercises in this blog, you have accomplished quite a mental workout.  You have exercised both hemispheres of  your brain as well as your imagination, recoding, retrieval, and decoding skills.  You should also be beginning to develop some effective new memory skills.  Remember that you are engaged on a course from which you do not finish and graduate.  You need to keep practicing these skills both to improve your specific memory skills and to exercise and improve your mind and brain.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Paired Associates Learning: Concrete Concrete Pairs

A wide variety of mnemonic techniques have been presented to this point. This posting is presented for practicing the most elemental of associations, word-word pairs. Although this is elemental, it provides practice on a skill important for all mnemonic techniques.

Memory is based upon associations.  A simple type of learning is paired associates learning in which a stimulus word is associated with a response word.  When that stimulus word, or retrieval cue, occurs, we remember the word.  Many of our everyday recall tasks involve this type of memory. 

            Consider the following word pairs:

            ARM               CITY

            FLAG             REFRIGERATOR

            TRIPOD         GEM

            A good way of remembering these word pairs is to form interactive mental images of them.  For example,

            Imagine a giant ARM wrapped around a large CITY

            Imagine a FLAG draped across a REFRIGERATOR

            Imagine a TRIPOD with a giant GEM sitting on top of it.

Try to form vivid mental images of each of these pairs. 

Now some may regard this business of forming mental images as silly.  Certainly some of the images will seem silly, but they serve the purpose of making two words that do not normally go together, meaningful via the image.  You should also  bear two facts in mind.  First of all, the techniques work.  If at first you experience difficulties, please be patient and persevere.  Secondly, you are giving your mind and brain a good workout.  You are being required to use your imagination.  By forming visual images you are using both hemispheres of your brain.  When you recall the images and decode the target word you will be exercising your retrieval and decoding skills.

 Now, without looking, try to recall the items below.

FLAG what mental picture does this elicit and what is the word you recall being associated with it?

TRIPOD what mental picture does this elicit and what is the word you recall being associated with it?

ARM what mental picture does this elicit and what is the word you recall being associated with it?

This was probably easy for you.  If not, relax and try imagining each of the three pairs again. 

Now let’s try this again, but this time you form the mental images.  Take the time to form a good mental image for each pair:

ACCORDION                       FOOTWEAR

TWEEZERS                          APPLE

COIN                                     JUGGLER

BUNGALOW                        IRON

STUDENT                             JELLY

KEG                                        ANIMAL

INSECT                                 ALCOHOL

PLANT                                  ACROBAT

CASH                                      DOVE

MARKET                                KISS

Now, without looking at the above pairs, try to remember the appropriate response to each stimulus or cue by remembering the mental image.

 STUDENT

TWEEZERS

CASH

ACCORDION

INSECT

MARKET

KEG

BUNGALOW

COIN

PLANT

Now let’s try another ten pairs:

ALLIGATOR             JUDGE

JAIL                            SUDS

HURRICANE           ARMY

STRING                     TRUCK

VALLEY                    CORPSE

DAFFODIL                HARP

EARTH                       ABDOMEN

HAIRPIN                   GRASS

GEESE                       INFANT

HOTEL                       AMBULANCE

HOUND                     LEMON

Now, without looking at the above pairs, try to remember the appropriate response to each stimulus or cue by remembering the mental image.

 VALLEY       

JAIL

HOTEL

GEESE

HAIRPIN

ALLIGATOR

STRING

HOUND

EARTH

DAFFODIL

 © Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Shallow and Deep Cyberspace

With respect to cognitive growth, it is useful to make a distinction between shallow and deep cyberspace. A synonym for shallow in this context is popular. Facebook.com,Youtube.com, and similar social networking sites along with such popular portals as yahoo.com and cnn.com. This is not intended to denigrate or belittle these sites. The portals do a good job of keeping you up on current events. The social networking sites do provide a means of hooking up with old acquaintances and establishing new relationships. Youtube.com provides a means of readily sharing and finding videos of interest. There is a reason this websites are so popular. They are useful and they are fun. There is every reason to frequent them regularly. Potential problems for cognitive growth arise when they are visited predominately or exclusively.

Cognitive growth requires the visitation of deeper cyberspace where subjects are explored in greater depth. Examples include answers.com and wikipedia.org. Although these sites typically do not go to the greatest detail and depth, they do provide links to further resources that can lead you to become if not an expert, certainly more knowledgeable. Perhaps one of the best sites for leading you into deep or deeper cyberspace is fletchplatt.com. This is a site developed by an amazing 90 plus years retired automotive engineer. It promises 10,000 links in cyberspace. Although I have not attempted to verify this claim, and I very much inclined to believe it. The news and libraries page provides a wide variety of links including links to the New Yorker, the London Times and Public Broadcasting. The Accident and Medical Info Page, includes links to handicapped aids and the National Institute of Health Library. It also includes links on brain plasticity, the Two Sides of the Brain, a link to a Neurosurgeon, Brain Facts, and a very good book on Brain Plasticity by Doidge. The Arts and Sciences Page includes links to both the arts and the sciences. The Special Subjects including Successful Aging, and Brain Games for the Elderly. There is also a link to TED, which offers ideas by great thinkers and Video Lectures on Subjects you select.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

SQ3R

The mnemonic techniques posted thusfar on this blog have dealt primarily with learning arbitrary associations.  For example, the posting on learning the Bill of Rights by the number of each right.  Although the Bill of Rights is certainly meaningful, the number associated with each right is not.  Similarly the posting on foreign vocabulary.  Although these words initially will become meaningful at the outset they are arbitrary sounds.  So these techniques provide strategies for converting material that is initially not meaningful into something meaningful and memorable.

 However, when the material you are trying to learn is inherently meaningful, you want to capitalize on that meaning and store they key information so that it is easily remembered.  SQ3R is a proven technique for mastering school coursework and other meaningful information.  SQ3R stands for Survey, Query, Read, Recite, and Review.  Here is how the technique would be applied to a reading assignment you might be given or to reading material you wanted to understand and master.

Survey refers to paging through the material to gather what is being covered and how it is organized.  You will encounter books that use what are termed advanced organizers that describe the topics that are going to be covered.  So you are conducting an initial survey of the information.  Sometimes when you are doing research on a topic this initial survey might indicate to you that it did not contain the information you were seeking, or you did not like the organization of the material, that you already knew this material, or that the material was being presented at either a too advanced or a too elementary a level.  When this is the case and the reading is not required, you can stop here.

 However, if the material appears to meet your needs, or if it is required reading,  the next step is to query, ask questions that you hope will be answered in the material.  Actually, you will encounter texts that do this for you.  They will state that at the end of the chapter you should know this, this, and this.  But if this is not done for you, and it usually is not, then it is good for you to construct questions like this before you start reading.

The next step is to read the material.  This must be done by you.  And you want to read it at a speed governed by the organization you gathered during your survey and by questions you generated during your query.  Do not hesitate to reread sections that are not clear.  Do not just read straight through without considering the organization of  the material or the questions you want answered.

The next step is to recite, that is to try to recall the important points from the text from memory.  When you cannot recall something go back and look for it in the text and make an effort to store the meaning in memory.  This recitation is not a one shot thing.  It should be done repeatedly.  Many students remain being poor students because they simply reread material or mark it with a highlighter and do not practice retrieving the information from memory.  Multiple retrieval attempts are important and it is beneficial if you space these retrieval attempts further and further apart.

The final step is review.  This is a matter of reviewing the material and not only putting it in the organizational structure of the material you are reading, but relating it to the larger body of information you know.  These 3Rs are to be repeated many times until you have mastered the material to the desired level.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Are You a Cognitive Miser?

Stanovich has recently published a very interesting book, What Intelligence Tests Miss: the psychology of rational thought.¹ It builds upon the Two Process Theory of Cognition advanced by Kahneman (see the post, “Two Process Theory of Cognition.”). His autonomous mind is identical to Kahneman’s System 1 Processes, which Kahneman calls Intuition. These System 1. or autonomous processes, require little, if any cognitive effort. The run off automatically, they are autonomous.

However, Stanovich divides System 2 processes, which Kahneman terms Reasoning, into the Algorithmic Mind and the Reflective Mind. Do you remember this problem: A bat and a ball cost $1.10 total. The bat costs a dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? Remember that the majority of college students responded that the ball cost $0.10 and the bat cost $1.00. Now this cost some cognitive effort as the algorithm needed to parse the amounts into $0.10 and $1.00. But this algorithm yielded the wrong answer, but according to Stanovich, it took the Reflective Mind to realize that is answer is incorrect. If the bat cost a dollar more than the ball and the ball cost $0.10, then the bat alone would cost $1.10. When $0.10 is added to this, the total cost is $1.20. So this is incorrect. When the reflective mind reflects upon this it discovers that the ball costs on $0.05. $1.00 more than $0.05 is $1.05. $1.05 plus $0.05 gives the desired $1.10 total.

The term “cognitive miser” is invoked as it is the tendency of most cognitive systems to expend as little effort at possible. Although we can often get away with this “cognition on the cheap”, we occasionally bear the cost of the wrong answer.

Here is another example. It comes from the above referenced book.

Jack is looking at Anne but Anne is looking at George. Jack is married but George is not. Is a married person looking at an unmarried person?

a) Yes

b) No

c) Cannot be determined

So what is your response? Do you agree with the more than 80% of the people who answered c) Cannot be determined? If so, you, along with the large majority of the respondents are cognitive misers! Answering this question correctly places heavy demands on the Reflective Mind. It requires disjunctive reasoning that is slow and systematic. Both possibilities of Anne’s marital status need to be considered. What is she is married? Then Jack is looking at a married person and Anne is looking at an unmarried person. What if Anne is unmarried? Then Jack is looking at an unmarried person and Anne is looking at an unmarried person. So the correct response is a) as there needs to be a married person looking at an unmarried person when all the possibilites are concerned.

These might seem like trivial problems, but they reveal the fundamental miserliness of our cognitive processes. In subsequent postings examples of how this fundamental miserliness leads to wrong decisions, important decisions, will be discussed. If you cannot wait for these postings, then buy the book.

1Stanovich, K. E. (2009). What Intelligence Tests Miss: the psychology of rational thought. New Haven: The Yale University Press.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

There is More To Healthy Memory Than That

When searching through cyberspace for healthy memory, or something along those lines, much will be found. Much of this will be in regard to food or some type of pill. Much will also be found regarding gadgets or software. Now food, diet, and a healthy lifestyle are important to maintaining a healthy memory. There are also useful gadgets and software that can aid in keeping memory healthy. But, as the title of this post implies, there is more to healthy memory than that.

This blog employs three themes to aid in achieving a healthy memory. One theme concerns theory and data regarding human memory. It is worthwhile to gain some understanding as to how human memory works. Included here is also some understanding regarding the physiology and structures of the brain that are important to memory. Moreover, the very activity of learning is healthful, so why should not some of that learning concern memory and the brain?

There is nothing new about wanting to build better memories. Indeed, as far back as the ancient Greeks memory techniques were a central part of rhetoric. Phenomenal achievements of memory have been recorded. However, with the invention of the printing press and the increasing availability of paper, memory techniques started to fall into increasing misuse. Today, with the smart phones, personal digital assistants, and the internet, one might conclude that we do not need to remember anything. Strictly speaking this is not quite true as one needs to remember how to use these devices and to look information up on the internet. Even so, it seems prudent to have some memory stored internally in our brains. Mnemonic techniques represent another theme of this blog. They do offer a means of improving memory. Beyond that, however, they require us, at a minimum, to exercise our imagination, to recode and relate information, and to use both hemispheres of our brain. These activities in and of themselves should foster healthier memories.

The third theme to this blog is transactive memory. Now transactive memory includes those types of external memory storage that led to the decline of mnemonic techniques. This might be a tad ironic, but it would be a serious mistake to ignore transactive memory and try to use mnemonic techniques to commit all information of interest to our internal memories. Transactive memory provides another avenue for a healthy memory. It does provide a backup to our internal memories. Something that is important should be written down or placed in some type of external storage. And it also provides a means of memory growth. There are so many things to discover and learn in cyberspace!

Transactive memory is not restricted to technology. It also includes other humans. Information discovery should not be restricted to cyberspace. Our fellow humans contain a wealth of information. We need to share information among ourselves. There is also a social benefit here that is important to all and is especially important to healthy aging.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Transactive Memory: Means to a Healthy Memory and Brain

In human memory a distinction is made between memories that are available and memories that are accessible. Accessible memories are those that can be recalled right away without any difficulty. Memories can still be available but be inaccessible at the moment. So these are memories that you know are stored in your memory, but you cannot find them now. Later, or given the appropriate prompt or cue, these memories can become accessible.

Transactive memory refers to memories that are stored external to your brain. Books, computers, the internet, as well as other human beings are all types of transactive memory. Information that is accessible in transactive memory is information that you can locate or retrieve quickly. You know where it is. It is literally at your fingertips. Information can also be available but not accessible in transactive memory. This is information that you know is available someplace, but you do not remember how to locate or access it. If you are on your computer, this is when you use your search function.

There is yet another type of transactive memory. This is potential transactive memory. Potential transactive memory could include all memories stored in the world.  This would include both technological (paper and electronic) storage and biological (data held in human memories) storage. It is termed potential transactive memory because of its huge potential for enhancing an individual’s transactive memory. This is information that can be brought to different levels in either transactive memory, available or accessible, or personal memory, available or accessible. As the amount of information in potential transactive memory is truly overwhelming, one must be careful what to pursue. But purse, we must, particularly if we want to age effectively.

Remember also that your fellow humans are also a source of potential transactive memory. Learn from others. They provide the benefit of social interaction, which is beneficial to all, but which becomes particularly beneficial as we age.

 © Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Remembering Even Larger Numbers

(It is recommended that you read the posts “Remembering Numbers,” “More on Remembering Numbers,” and “Three Digit Numbers,” before proceeding with this post.

       There will be times, and you have probably encountered them already, when it is difficult to develop reasonable words using just the consonants.  Jerry Lucas, the former Ohio State University All America and Hall of Fame basketball player, is an accomplished mnemonist who has written many good books, as well as training courses, on learning and memory improvement.  One of them is Learning How to Learn¹ He calls the memory consonant system used in previous blog postings the one sound method.  He has developed another technique, the one word method, not to replace the one sound method, but rather to supplement it when it is difficult developing mnemonics to the consonants available for a given number.  In the one word method, the same consonants are used, but the only the first consonant in a given word is used.  Consider the following number:

208117111889

Here is a recoding using the one word technique.

Now iS THe Time To Come To The aiD oF The Party.

Now consider this number:

1942198087

And a recoding using the one word technique.

To Be oR Not To Be That iS The Question

or

8021589

and a recoding using the one word technique

THere iS No Time Like The Present.

Of course the two techniques can be combined as the problems presented by the number dictate. 

Consider the following number

4307699

And a recoding using a combination of the one sound and one word techniques

RaMS Can’t Jump Big Pigs

So here 430 was recoded by the one sound technique and the remainder of the number by the one word technique.

Now consider

5039051

LeaSe Me Before Someone Else Does

So 503 is recoded using the one sound method and the remainder of the number by the one word method.

And here’s another

5718303

Let’s Go To The MuSeuM

Now here the first four digits are recoded using the one word method and the remainder using the one sound method.

            From now on, feel free to use both techniques.

            Let’s try some five digit numbers now

It is good to try your own recodings before looking at the possible recodings.

41946

10553

99477

32195

27335

Here are some possible recodings

41946  raT BRuSH (a rat brushing himself)

10553  TuSSLe LaMb (a lamb in a fight)

99477  BoB ReGGae (Some guy named Bob doing the reggae)

32195  MooN DouBLe (two moons)

27335  MuG MoMMa Law (momma testifying to a judge about being mugged)

Now for some six digit numbers

246802           

200201

296621

939766

844764

Here are some possible recodings:

246802            hoNoR SHaVe sun (a judge shaving the sun)

200201            Noah SeeS hoNeSTy

296621            NaP CHoo CHoo NeT  (a train taking a nap in a net)

939766            BuM BaG CHoo CHoo (a bum with a bag on a train)

844764            FiRe RuG CHaiR (a rug and chair are burning)

Now for some seven digit numbers

7487337

9720454

9720386

Here are some possible recodings

7487337          CaR RaCK MoMMa Cow

972454            BaG iN SouR LaiR

9720386          Big Nose Move SHoe

If you can handle seven digit numbers, then you can remember phone numbers less the area codes. 

Now for some eight digit numbers

19461492       

22429131       

50293450

63027120

78902134

85673022

And here are some possible recodings.

19461492        TuB RoaCH TiRe PiN

22429131        NaNNy RaiN BaT MuT

50293450        LiCe MaP MaRe LooSe

63027120        JaM SuN CaT NoSe

78902134        CalF BooZe NighT MaRe

85673022        ViLe SHaKe MooSe NuN

Often, before I resort to this recoding technique, I look for any meaning inherent in the number.  For example for 19461492, I would recode it by the year of my birth,1946   and the year Columbus sailed the ocean blue 1492.  The consonant sound systems provide a fall back technique when there is no inherent meaning. 

Now for some nine digit numbers

134498919

324457890

464856789

585450220

693279044

747254321

889122020

Here are some possible recodings

134498919      DaM RoweR PaVe BeD Bee

324457890      MiNoR RiLe CalF BooZe

464756789      RaSH RaKe LaTCH FoP

585450220      LauGH LuRe LiCe NuNS

693279044      SHiP MaN CaPS RoweR

747254321      CaR CaN LuRe MeN Die

889122020      FiFi BaT NuNS NoSe

As was mentioned previously, the first step can be to look for personal meaning in the numbers.  For 747254321 above, I could have recoded it as the year (last 2) I finished my Ph.D., the year (last 2) I finished my Masters Degree, then to count down from 5.

Now here are some ten digit numbers.

0287591313

1345980217

2738598211

3585903510

4211980221

5877352120

6410948296

7686430910

And here are some possible recodings.

0287591313    SuN MuG LaP ToM ToM

1345980217    ToMb RaiL BeeF SuN DoCK

2738598211    NeCK MoVie LaP MaN ToT

3585903510    MaLe FaiL BooZe MaiL DoZe

4211980221    RuN ToT TouGH SuN NeT

5877352120    LoVe Coo Coo MaiL MaT MooSe

6410948296    SHaRe TieS BeeR MeN BuSH

7686430910    CaSH fiSH RuM SouP TieS

Once you’ve mastered ten digit numbers, now you can handle phone number to include the area codes.

            Now for some 11 digit numbers

19834589020

33941127820

53859123998

Here are some possible recodings.

19834589020              TuB FoaM RoLL SoNS

33941127820              MuMMy BeeR RaiDeD NeCK FaNS

53859123998              LooM VeiL BuTToN MaP BeeF

Twelve digit numbers

298764529874

697234902210

821309567841

029913434571

And their possible recodings.

298764529874            NaP FiG CHaiR LioN BuFF CaR

697234902210            SHiP CaN MooR BooZe NuN ToeS

821309567841            ViNe TiMe SouP LuSH CalF RaT

029913434571            SoN Boo Boo duMb RuM RiLe CaT

Thirteen digits

1357982441123

5012897843291

765732143592

And possible recodings

1357982441123          DuMb LuCK BeeF NeaR RaT TiN Ma

5012897843291          Louse TiN FoP CalF RaM KNee BooT

7657321435921          CaSH FiG MaN TouR MaiL BiN NeT

fourteen digits

22428917312250

66223904678123

02913221471121

And possible recodings

22428917312250        NuN RaN iVy BiTTeN NaiLS

66223904678123        CHoo CHoo NooN MaPS RoaCH CalF FooT NuMb

02913221471121        SuN BooT MoNey GNoT Tie DiNNeTTe

fifteen digits

166289123422178

332178934567012

545658213131332

994433891221345

and possible recodings

166289123422178      TuSH CHiN CalF BooT NaMe ReigN  GoaT CaVe

332178934567012      MuMMy GNaT CaVe BooMeR LuSH CaSe DoNe

545658213131332      LuRe LuSH LiVe FaN DiMe ToMb TiMe MeN

994433891221345      Boo Boo RoWeR MuMMy FiBBeD NuN TiMe RaiL

Now you’re to the point where you can handle some credit card numbers.

sixteen digits

4973568902120034

6490345782341229

8292785437212102

and possible recodings

4973568902120034    RoPe CoMb LaSH FiBS NeT NoSe SuMMeR

6490345782341229    SHaRe BooZe MoweR RaKe FuN MaRe TiN kNoB

8292785437212102    FuN BooN CalF LuRe MuG NeT kNoTS Noah

Now you should be able to handle most credit card numbers.

We shall go no further here.  If you want to make it to 79 digits, as the student at the beginning of this chapter did, or memorize pi to 100,00 decimal places or more, you are now on your own.

[1] Lucas, J.(2001).  Learning How to Learn. Dallas:  Lucas Educational Systems

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

The Underappreciated Benefits of Spaced Learning

The spacing effect, which refers to the superior recall of information studied at different times as opposed to the same time (with the total amount of learning time equated), is well known in the memory literature. Unfortunately, this benefit is not well known to educators and students. Recent experiments studied the spacing effect in the realistic context of flashcard use.¹ Learners often divide flashcards into small stacks. However, small stacks decrease the spacing between study trials. The experiments were conducted online.

In the first experiment there were forty pairs of synonyms (for example, Abrogate:Abolish). The first synonym was less likely to be known than the second synonym. Half of these pairs were presented in the same order four consecutive times (the spaced condition). Half of these pairs were divided into four sets of five pairs. Each set was presented four consecutive times before the next set was presented (the massed condition). The cue word (for example, Abrogate) was presented first followed by a blank. This word remained visible until the learner pressed the next button and the second word of the pair appeared. The learner controlled the timing of the presentations and did not need to respond overtly. At the end of the session each learner was asked what percentage of the items they thought they would remember under each condition of learning. At a later time the learners took a test in which the first word of each synonym was presented and they were asked to recall the second word. Recall was 49% for the spaced condition and 36% for the massed condition. The self-estimated rate of recall was 41% for the spaced condition and 60 % for the massed condition, the opposite of the actual result!

The second experiment was similar to the first experiment except that each of the four study sessions occurred on different days as did the test session. This time the spacing effect was even larger with 54% recall for the spaced condition and 21% for the massed condition. Again the learners expectation of the results was in the opposite direction of the actual results with the estimate of massed condition performance being 60% and the spaced condition performance being 41%.

Experiment 3 added a final review session, which would be typical of most academic sessions. Again the spaced condition outperformed the massed condition 65% to 34%. Prior to the final review session the predicted performance was again in the opposite direction of the actual performance 51% to 66%. However, after the final review session massing was rated lower than spacing 47% to 59%. Apparently, the experience of the final review session corrected the learners misperception of the effectiveness of spacing.

1Kornell, N. (2009). Optimal Learning Using Flashcards: Spacing is More Effective Than Cramming. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 23, 1297-1317.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Baby Boomers and Healthy Memory

I was born in 1946. Hence I am at the lead of the baby boomers. I, like many others at the lead of the baby boom, are concerned about aging. For those at the tale end of the baby boomers, this concern might come later, but it will come. These concerns center around health, particular cognitive health. By cognitive health I mean the ability to think and remember clearly and to be able to learn new things. Aging can take these abilities away from us. So, to the extent possible, we need to be proactive in engaging in activities that will preserve and enhance these abilities.

That is the principle objective of this blog. To achieve this objective, this blog pursues three themes. One is to achieve an understanding of human memory and how it works. After all, if you seek to maintain something, it is important to learn something about it. Moreover, human memory is prone to failures and shortcomings. As we age, it is easy to think that these failures and shortcomings are due to aging rather than be part of normal memory processes that we have ignored until now.

The second theme deals with mnemonic techniques. Now mnemonic techniques are techniques that help us remember, so the reason for this theme should be obvious. However, the practice of these techniques can also be beneficial to brain health. These techniques require planning and they involve creativity and imagination, activities that in and of themselves should benefit brain health.

The third theme is transactive memory. Few people know about transactive memory. Transactive memory refers to memories that are stores someplace other than your own brain. So these are memories that can be stored on paper, in a computer, or on the internet. They can also be stored in other humans. Your fellow humans not only supply a means of information storage, but they also provide for social interaction, which is important for effective aging.

Please read previous posts made under each of these memory themes (categories). Please add comments and ask questions. The more input I receive from my readers, the better I can target my blog posts.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Sources of Growth for Transactive Memory

Wikipedia.org was discussed in the blog “Wikis.” Larry Sanger, a co-founder of the Wikipedia, has gone on to other projects. Sanger’s concern about the internet harming education was discussed in the blog “Can Transactive Memory Be Harmful?” His current focus is on citizendium.org. Its goal is of being a “citizens compendium of everything.” It wants to improve on the Wikipedia concept through the use of “gentle expert oversight.” The encyclopedia will be free, reliable and enormous. Beta version is online, citizendium.org, and is open and available to users. Sanger’s most recent graduate from its beta version is watchknow.org. It is a directory of free educational videos for children of all ages. The directory is sorted by subject. Currently more than 11,000 educational videos are offered. These videos are hosted elsewhere on the web.

Sanger’s ultimate internet endeavor is textop .org. This is a set of projects that would organize the information in books, dictionaries, essays, and news articles into a “single outline of human knowledge.” The proposal can be viewed at the website, texttop.org.

It is interesting to compare Sanger’s proposal to some similar earlier historical efforts.   In 1532 Giulo Camillo built a so-called Theater of Memory.  It was a predecessor of post-Renaissance Information Technology, and an early precursor of transactive memory.   Users tunneleld their way through a series of conceptual hierarchies moving from the physical plane of the theater to the metaphorical House of Wisdom, continuing through successive layers of abstraction, and finally arriving at the realm of divine truths.[1]

In the late 1500’s Giordano Bruno developed a memory wheel, which was a complex mnemonic device, so complex that it took 400 years before someone could develop a theory of how the memory wheel operated.  This a description that Francis Yates provided. “The list of images given in the book are marked off in thirty divisions marked with these letters, each division having five subdivisions marked with the five vowels.  These lists, each of 150 images, are therefore intended to be set out on the concentric revolving wheels.  Which is what I have done on the plan, by writing out the lists of images on concentric wheels divided into thrity segments with five subdivisions in each.  The result is the ancient Egyptian looking object, evidently highly magical, for the images on the central wheel are the images of the decans of the zodiac, images of the planets, images of  the mansions of the moon, and images of the houses of the horoscope.  The descriptions of these images are written out from Bruno’s test on the central wheel of the plan.  This heavily inscribed central wheel is the astral poweer station, as it where, which works the whole system.[2]“  Obviously serious dedication was required to master this wheel of memory. 

Shakespeare’s Globe Theater was called the memory theater and Shakespeare is said to have used trained-memory systems.   Francis Bacon included a memory system in his book The Advancement of Learning.  Moreover, in his house in Gorhumbury, he had taken great pains to incorporate a mnemonic system in the lattice of stained glass windows.[3]

[1] Wright, A. (2007).  op. cit.   pp.  122-123.

[2] Yates, F.A. (1999).  The art of memory. London:  Routledge, pp.212-213.

[3] Wright, A. 2007) op. cit., pp 131-132.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Remembering Historical Dates and Appointments

(This blog will be much more meaningful having read the following blogs: “Remembering Numbers,” “More on Remembering Numbers,” and “Three Digit Numbers.”)

 Some years are easy to remember, when Columbus discovered America for example.  In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue is likely the mnemonic you used to learn the year.  An image of Columbus on his ship embedded in a large TiRe BuN is another mnemonic using the consonant sound system.  Most every American knows the year the Declaration of Independence was signed, 1776.  But fewer Americans can recall the year that the Constitution was written, 1787.   TaCK FiG is a recoding for 1787.  You could imagine a tack being driven through a fig into a copy of the Constitution.  Most everyone knows the years for World Wars I and II, but what about the Mexican-American War?  It ran from 1846 to 1848.  DoVe RiCH DiVe RooF (a rich dove diving from a roof into a unit of Mexican soldiers).  What about the Spanish-American War?  The Spanish-American war took place in 1898.  DoVe BeeF (a dove having a beef with a Spanish soldier).  It took place between April and August, but we shall get to months later.   What about the Korean War?  This war raged from 1950 to the signing of a cease fire in 1953.   You could imagine a TuB of LiCe and a TuB with a LaMb on a hill in Korea.   And that War in Viet Nam?   With respect to American involvement, this war ran from 1959 (TaBLe Bow) to 1975 (ToP CLay), when the North Vietnamese entered Saigon.  You could imagine a table with a bow on it on top of a mound of clay in Viet Nam.

I taught my wife this trick when she was studying Art History in graduate school.  She found it quite helpful in remembering historical dates.  It has obvious uses for remembering numeric pin numbers and passwords, phone numbers, and for credit card numbers, to name just a few.

Now let’s consider the 12 hour clock.  Here you can use only the numbers 1 through 12 and indicate AM and PM with some sort of image.  For example, you could use the sun or a rooster to denote AM, and the moon in a dark sky to indicate PM. 

            Using numeric peg words for 1 through 12 we have

1          Dye

2          kNee

3          hoMe

4          haiR

5          Lye

6          Chow

7          Key

8          hooF

9          Bow

10        Dice

11        ToT

12        TuNe

 Now the half hour can be handled by adding MouSe (30) to each of the above hours.  You can do this to any level of precision desired by simply adding appropriate numeric pegwords.            

Suppose you want to remember the day of the week for a particular appointment.  This can be done by numbering the days of the week and using the corresponding pegword.  That is,

Sunday            1          Tie

Monday           2          Noah

Tuesday           3          Ma

Wednesday     4          Rye

Thursday         5          Law

Friday              6          SHoe

Saturday          7          iVy

 So suppose you have a dental appointment at ten o’clock Tuesday morning.  As your dentist does not have evening hours, you can dispense with either the AM/PM distinction or with the 24 hour clock.  So you would form an image of Ma playing DiCe at your dentist’s office.  Or suppose you wanted to remember your son’s baseball game being played at 2 on Saturday.  Again, you can dispense with AM/PM considerations.    You could form an image of your son playing baseball standing in iVy up to his kNee. 

Or suppose you needed to remember that you were meeting your wife after work at 6 on Thursday for dinner.  You could form an image of your meeting your wife for dinner at a Law office, having Chow.

 © Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Split Brain Studies

 Some people who suffered epileptic seizures were able to find relief from these seizures by having a commissurotomy in which the neural pathways between the two hemispheres were severed. These “split-brain” patients had two independent hemispheres. However, the neural pathways from the eyes are so wired that each hemisphere receives inputs from both eyes. So under normal circumstances each hemisphere is aware of what is happening in the other hemisphere, so the person acts and behaves quite normally. Michael Gazzaniga has been quite creative in designing experimental situations in which stimuli are selectively input to each hemifield of the eye so that the two hemispheres receive different inputs and are oblivious of what the other hemisphere has received. For example if the command “Walk” was sent to the right hemisphere, the individual would begin walking. However, when asked to explain why he was walking, which went to the verbal left hemisphere, the individual would be perplexed and would try to think up some reason, such as I was going to get a soda. In another experiment a picture of a snow-covered house was presented to the right hemisphere while a picture of a chicken’s claw was presented to the left hemisphere. The participant was instructed to pick a line drawing of an object that related to the picture he saw. The right hand, which is controlled by the left hemisphere, chose a rooster to match the chicken claw, while the left hand, which is controlled by the right hemisphere picked a snow shovel to match the winter scene. Confronted with the problem of his two hands pointing to different drawings he consulted his left hemisphere, which had no knowledge of the winter scene, which offered the explanation that he picked the snow shovel to clean out the chicken coop. This was an after the fact rationalization offered confidently and honestly to make sense of his choice. Gazzaniga proposed that the left hemisphere contains an interpreter that is constantly drawing on general knowledge and past experience to try to make sense of our cognitive world. Gazzaniga and Elizabeth Phelps showed split-brain subjects pictures of sequences of everyday activities such as going to work. They later tested memory for these sequences. They were also asked about items that had not been presented such as a man fixing a television. There were also pictures of activities that fit the schema of a days work, sitting up in bed, brushing teeth, but which had not been presented. Although the left hemisphere often falsely recognized novel incidents that were consistent with the stereotype, the right hemisphere rarely ever did.[1]

There is a resemblance here between this type of rationalization and the stereotypical biases that were discussed earlier (See the blog, “Seven Sins of Memory). The left brain interpreter needs to rely on rationalizations, inferences, and generalizations to try to relate the past to the present. It is likely that this contributes to consistency, change, hindsight, and egocentric biases. The right hemisphere needs to serve as a check on the workings of the left hemisphere, as the right hemisphere appears to be more closely aligned with what really happens in the external world.

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[1] Schacter (2001).  op cit. pp 157-158

Wikis

Wiki technology allows content to be created and edited easily. This enabling technology was incorporated into the title of a new type of website, wikipedia.org. This website is for an encyclopedia created and edited by its users. Its first editor was Larry Sanger. When you arrive at the home page you are confronted with a vast choice of languages that requires a drop down menu. The English version contains more than 3 million articles. You could spend the rest of your life perusing this encyclopedia and never finish it. Not only is it large, but it is also dynamic. New articles are continuously added and existing articles are updated and errors are corrected.

There is also a Wiktionary, a wiki generated dictionary, or should I say Wiktionaries, as it is multilingual.

There are Wikibooks, again multilingual. Browsing this books is like walking through a university bookstore.

Speaking of universities, there is also a Wikiversity, and it is, of course, multilingual. These are open learning communities.

One can read Wikinews, a free news source, or contribute your own articles.

Wikiquote is an online compendium of sourced quotations from notable people and creative works. Like the others, this is also multilingual and links back to the Wikipedia for more detailed information.

Wikisource is an online of free content publications, It currently holds 134,360 texts in its English language library.

Wikispecies is a free directory of species.

Wikimedia commons is a database of 5,521,091media files to which anyone can contribute.

All projects can be found in the Meta-Wiki.

There have been criticisms regarding quality control for these wikis. They are self policing and seem to do fairly well, although subject coverage can be somewhat uneven. To mitigate some of these shortcomings Larry Sanger has launched a new wiki site , Citizendium.org.

All these provide great sources for personal development and the expansion of transactive memory.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Three Digit Numbers

This blog has the following blog posts as prerequisites: “Remembering Numbers” and “More on Remembering Numbers.” Now let’s consider some three digit numbers.    If you do not like the suggested recoding, please generate your own. 

 201      NiCe Tie

202      iNSaNe

203      NiCe Ma

204      Nice Seer

205      NiCe Lie

206      NiCe Show

207      NiCe Cow

208      NiCe Fee

209      NiCe Boy

210      NeTS

212      NoT Now

213      ANaToMy

214      wiNTeR

215      NeTTLe

216      kNoTCH

217      iNDiGo

218      NaTiVe

219      NighT Pay

224      NuNNeRy

225      soN iN Law

226      NuN Shoe

228      NuN Fee

229      oNioN Bee

231      gNoMe Tea

234      New hummer

239      No MoP

240      No RoSe

242      No RaiN

246      No RuSH

248      HonoR Fee

250      kNee LiCe

251      kNee LighT

252      kNeeLiNg

253      NiLe Ma

254      NaiLeR

256      kNowLedGe

260      kNotCHeS

262      NoSHiNg

264      iNJuRy

267      No CHecK

268      No CHieF

269      No CHiP

270      kNecKS

276      kNecK Shoe

281      No FooT

284      No FiRe

289      No ViBe

301      MouSe Tie

302      MoiSteN

303      MuSeuM

304      MiSeR

305      MuZZLe

306      MeSSaGe

307      MuSiC

308      MiSSiVe

309      MiShaP

310      MuTTS

312      MuTToN

313      MaDaM

314      MaTTeR

315      MeTaL

316      My DaSH

317      My TaCK

318      MoaT Fee

319      My TuB

320      MiNeS

321      MiNT

323      My eNeMy

325      My LooN

330      MuMS

331      MaiMeD

334      MuMMeR

336      My MuSH

337      My MuG

339      My MaP

340      My RoSe

345      MuRaL

347      My RuG

351      My Lot

352      My LoaN

360      My Show

361      My SHoT

386      hoMe VoyaGe

401      RoSe Tie

402      RaCe Now

403      heRoiSM

404      RaCeR

405      wReStLe

406      haiR SaSH

408      RuSh iVy

409      ReCiPe

410      RoaDS

412      RoTTeN

413      ReDeem

414      wRiTeR

415      RaTTLe

416      RaDiSH

417      ReTaKe

418      RoaD Fee

419      Rat Pie

423      ReNaMe

424      RaiN weaR

425      uNReaL

430      RaMS

432      RaMeN

434      aRMoR

435      aiR MaiL

438      ReMoVe

440      RoweRS

441      RoaReD

443      rewaRM

450      RaiLS

469      waRSHiP

470      RoCKS

473      wReCK haM

478      aRChiVe

479      RuGBy           

480      RaVeS

484      RiVeR

501      LiCe Tea

502      LeSSoN

503      LoSe Me

504      LoSeR

505      LaSaLLe

506      LoSe Show

507      LoSe Cow

508      LoSe Fee

509      LoSe Bow

510      LoTS

511      Low ToTe

512      All DiNe

513      LighT Ma

514      LeTTeR

515      LiTTLe

516      LaTCH

517      aLL DuCK

518      LaTe Fee

519      aLighT Bee

520      LighTS

530      LaMbS

540      LaiRS

541      aLRighT

542      aLL RaN

551      aLL LooT

559      aLL LaP

561      LaSHeD

562      LoTIoN

563      aLL CHiMe

567      aLL SHaKe

570      LaKeS

571      LiCKeD

573      LiKe Me

574      LiQuoR

575      aLCoHoL

580      LauGHS

585      LeaF Lay

586      LeaF Shoe

601      CHaSTe

602      CHoSeN

603      ChooSe Me

604      CHaSeR

605      CHiSeL

606      ChewS Shoe

607      CHeeSe Cow

608      CHaSe Cow

609      CHooSe Bow

610      SHoTS

612      SHooT Noah

613      SHooT Me

614      CHaTTeR

615      CHaTTLe

616      Shot Shoe

617      SHoot Cow

618      SHoW DiVe

619      SHoW ToP

620      CHaiNS

623      CHaiN  Me

626      CHaNGE

630      CHiMeS

631      SHaMeD

636      GyM Shoe

641      SHaReD

646      CHaiR Shoe

647      CHiRaC

649      CHeRuB

650      JaiLS

651      JaiLeD

660      ChooChooS

661      SaSHeD

662      SHoeSHiNe

664      CHeW CHaiR

670      SHaKeS

671      SHoCKeD

678      SHooK Foe

682      CHieF Noah

684      CHieF Row

701      CaST

702      CaSiNo

703      ChaSM

704      KaiSeR

705      CaSuaL

706      Cow SaSH

707      CaSSoCK

708      KiSS oFF

709      GoSSiP

712      CoTToN

713      KiD Me

714      CaTeR

715      CaTTLe

716      Got Cha

717      heCTiC

718      CuT oFF

719      CuT uP

720      CaNS

724      CaNNeR

727      eGGNoG

731      GaMeD

732      CoMMoN

734      GaMeR

740      CaRS

754      CoLLaR

757      CoLiC

758      CaLiPH

760      CaSHeS

762      CaJuN

763      hoKey CHuM

765      eGG Shell

767      CoSSaCK

769      CaSH Bee

770      CaKeS

772      CoCooN

773      hoCKey GaMe

774      CouGaR

775      CaCKLe

778      KiCK oFF

779      KiCK Bee

780      CaVeS

781      CaVeD

784      GiVeR

785      GaVeL

786      hoG FiSH

787      Key FaKe

800      PHaSeS

801      FuSSeD

802      FuSSiN

803      FuSSy Ma

804      PHaSeR

805      FoSSiL

806      ViCe Shoe

807      Fee SoCK

808      FoeS Fee

809      ViCE Bee

810      VaTS

812      FaTTeN

813      halF TiMe

814      FaTTeR

815      ViTaL

816      FeTCH

817      FighT Cow

818      VeT hiM

819      FeD uP

828      FINe Foe

829      FiNe Bee

830      FoaMS

831      VoMiT

832      FaMiNe

843      FaRM

845      FeRaL

847      FRoCK

848      FaR oFF

850      FiLeS

856      FLaSH

857      FLaCK

858      FLuFF

859      FLoP

860      VouCHeS

862      FaSHioN

863      halF GeM

864      FiSHeR

865      FaCiaL

866      halF JewiSH

867      FiSH hook

868      FiSH Fee

869      iVy SHoP

870      FaKeS

876      heaVe  CouCH

877      heaVe CooK

878      heaVy CouGH

888      hiVe JiVe

901      PaST

902      PoiSoN

903      PoSSom

904      PoSeR

905      PuZZLe

906      PaSSaGe

907      BaSiC

908      PaSSiVe

909      Pea SouP

910      PoTS

912      BuTToN

913      BoTToM

914      BuTTeR

915      BaTTLe

916      PoTaSH

917      PaDDoCK

918      PaiD oFF

919      PuT uP

920      PiNS

925      PaNeL

928      haPPy KNaVe

931      BuMMeD

936      Pea MaSH

937      Bow MuG

939      PuMP

940      PouRS

941      PaRRot

947      BaRRaCK

949      PRoP

951      PLoT

952      PLaN

954      PiLeR

956      PLuSH

970      PaCKS

971      BuCKeT

972      PeCaN

973      PoKe hiM

978      PaCK Fee

979      PiCK Pie

980      PuFFS

985      BaFFLe

989      BeeF Pie

            Some of these are a piece of cake, FarM, BaTTLe (or PuDDLe).  As are PoTS and PiNS.  Whenever a number ends in 0 you can usually make the item plural.  Others require a little imagination,  LiCe Tea might be very refreshing.  The consonant sound need not begin the word, halF GeM, haPPy KNaVe.  Then you need to use your imagination to generate an image to represent the word or words.  This will give you quite a mental work out.  You need to recode a number into a word using sounds and then generate an image.  This involves creativity, a variety of mental faculties and both sides of your brain.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

What Neuroimaging Studies Tell Us

 Neuroimaging (See the blog “How Can the Brain Be Imaged”) has also shed light on some of the “sins” of memory (See the blog”The Seven Sins of Memory”). With respect to blocking, PET scans have been done while people were trying to retrieve both proper names and common names. Activation of several regions within the left temporal lobe was observed when people were recalling proper names. When people recalled common names, the same regions in the temporal lobe were activated, but additional activation was observed further back in the temporal lobe. According to Schacter the the left temporal lobe provides a fragile link between the characteristics of an individual person and the label by which she or he is known to others.[1]

Source misattribution and memory conjunction errors can occur due to incorrect binding at the time of recall. The hippocampus plays an important role in binding processes that, when disrupted, can contribute to memory conjunction errors. The hippocampus seems to provide the glue that holds together parts of a face or word in memory. Brain imaging studies have shown that the hippocampus becomes especially active when people learn unrelated word pairs that place heavy demands on the binding process.

PET scans have also proved useful in identifying pathological cases of blocking. NN was an amnesiac who showed no overt signs of brain damage. His family provided instances of emotionally salient events that had occurred in NN’s past. When healthy people perform a similar task recalling emotionally salient events from their past, the scans reveal increased activity in parts of the right cerebral hemisphere, especially towards the back part of the frontal lobe and front parts of the temporal lobe. NN showed no activation in these regions, Instead, he showed activation of much smaller part of the frontal and temporal regions in the opposite, left, hemisphere.[2]

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[1] Schacter, D. (2001). The Seven Sins of Memory, Wilmington, MA: Houghton Mifflin p. 71.

[2] Schacter, D. (2001)  op cit. p. 85.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Healthy Memory: Its Maintenance and Enhancement

The name of this blog is healthy memory. Accordingly, the objective of this blog is the maintenance and enhancement of memory. There are three themes to support this objective. One theme is about human memory, how it works, and some of the brain structures underlying memory. A second theme concerns mnemonic techniques, specific techniques for improving memory. The third theme is termed transactive memory. Transactive memory concerns memory that you can use, but is external to your personal biological memory. Transactive memory can be found in fellow humans and in technology. The assumption underlying this blog is that all three of these themes are important to the maintenance and enhancment of memory and provide the means to achieving a healthy memory.

First of all, if you want a healthy memory, you should have some understanding of exactly what it is. So under this theme some theory regarding memory is presented. Data on how memory works is also presented. When you read these articles you might discover that memory problems that you either have had or are just noticing as you age are common to all people of all ages. It is also important to understand what brain structures underlie memory, how they change as we age, as well as the compensatory mechanisms that occur as we age.

Mnemonic techniques are specific techniques for improving personal memory. These techniques serve two goals. One is that they provide the means of improving memory. The other is that the use of these techniques likely provide exercise to the brain that is important for its maintenance and enhancement.

Transactive memory provides yet another means of maintaining and enhancing memory. Teamwork and sharing of memory chores among your friends and family not only provides a means of memory enhancement, but it also provides for social interactions that are important to brain health. Making use of technology be it paper, a Personal Digital Assistant, or a computer is yet another means of maintaining and improving memory. Moreover, the internet provides a vast resource for cognitive growth and enhancement.

You can find the blogs under each of these categories. Unfortunately. one of the features of blogs is that they are organized in reverse chronological order. So to start at the beginning, you need to begin at the bottom and work your way up.

There is a comments section under each individual blog. You are encouraged not only to leave comments, but also to raise questions. I would like to have discussions with you and make this blog a. two way street. The more I know about you, the better I can target the blog to address your interests.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Can Transactive Memory Be Harmful?

Larry Sanger is an interesting fellow. He holds a Ph.D in philosophy and is a co-founder of Wikipedia, wikipedia.org, an on-line encyclopedia written by users. Yet he is concerned that the internet is harming education¹. If so much information is available, and you know how to find it (an important proviso), why do you need to learn it when you can just look it up? Why do we need schools? Could not all children be home schooled if they had a computer and an internet connection? Would that not be so much cheaper? College is expensive. Who needs it?

Remember the phrase, “Jack of all trades, master of none? That reflects part of the concern. Now the knowledge landscape is so vast there is no chance that anyone can be familiar with all of it. Indeed, it is growing so fast that it would be impossible for an individual just to keep up with new information. But one can spend most of his or her time, social networking, playing online games, participating in chat boards, following incoming news events, etc.. If one were so disposed, one could spend the entire day on the internet and become familiar with a vast amount of information. I write information rather than knowledge, as knowledge implies some depth of understanding. This is Sanger’s concern, that people will become information savvy, yet lack knowledge. It is important to achieve some depth of knowledge in some areas. Some topics warrant careful study and the exploration of different media.

There is a trade-off that needs to be made between breadth and depth of knowledge. Too much concentration in one area will result in lack of knowledge in other areas. No concentration in any area and you can be accused of being a dilettante. People differ in their interests and how they spend their time. You want to do what is enjoyable and interesting, keeping in mind the dangers of being extreme in one direction or the other.

So the problem is not with transactive memory. Indeed, transactive memory encompasses both people and technology. Technology is not bad, but the manner in which it is used can be destructive. It is interesting to know that Socrates was appalled when the Greek alphabet (an early form of technology) was developed. He feared that the richness of the spoken language and the interaction with others would be lost. Clearly, his fears were misplaced.

1Casey, M.A. (2009). Ohio State Alumni Magazine. Nov-Dec, p.37

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

More on Remembering Numbers

Developing a facility in remembering numbers is central to most advanced mnemonic techniques. The blog, “Remembering Numbers” presented the technique developed by the French mathematician and astronomer, Pierre Herigone (1580-1643). His system recodes numbers into sounds, which then can be recoded into words and images that are much more memorable than numbers. Remember that it is the sounds the letters represent rather than the letters themselves that are used for recoding.

1                    t or d sound

2                    n sound

3                    m sound

4                    r sound

5                    l sound

6                    sh or ch sound

7                    hard c, g, or k sound

8                    f or v sound

9                    p or b sound

0                    s sound      

The blog, “Remembering Numbers”, used this technique to provide an alternative to the one-bun rhyme mnemonic technique (see the blog, “The One Bun Rhyme Mnemonic”). Here are 100 more pegwords developed using this technique.

1. Dye
2. kNee
3. hoMe
4. haiR
5. Lye
6. CHow
7. Key
8. hooF
9. Bow
10. DiCe
11. ToT
12. TuNe
13. ToMb
14. TiRe
15. ToweL
16. DiSH
17. TacK
18. DoVe
19. TuB
20. NoSe
21. kNoT
22. NuN
23. gNoMe
24. hoNoR
25. NaiL
26. kNotCH
27. NecK
28. kNiFe
29. kNoB
30. MouSe
31. MaT
32. MaN
33. MuMMy
34. MaRe
35. MaiL
36. MuSH
37. MuG
38. MoVie
39. MaP
40. RoSe
41. RaT
42. RaiN
43. RooM
44. RoweR
45. RaiL
46. RiCH
47. RaCK
48. RooF
49. RoPe
50. LouSe
51. LoT
52. LaNe
53. LaMb
54. LuRe
55. LuLu
56. LuSH
57. LaKe
58. LoVe
59. LaP
60. ShoeS
61. SHoT
62. SHiN
63. SHaMe
64. SHaRe
65. JaiL
66. JudGe
67. JoKe
68. CHieF
69. SHiP
70. CaSe
71. CoT
72. CaN
73. CoMb
74. CaR
75. CoaL
76. CaSH
77. CooK
78. CaVe
79. CaPe
80. VaSe
81. FooT
82. FaN
83. FaMe
84. FiRe
85. FooL
86. FiSH
87. FoG
88. FiFe
89. FoP
90. BooZe
91. BaT
92. PaNe
93. BoMb
94. BeeR
95. PooL
96. BuSH
97. BooK
98. BeeF
99. PoPe
100. DooZies

 So you know have 100 peg words for memorizing lists of up to 100 items. If you do not like these peg words, you can make up your own. I hope from the examples provided that it is clear how the consonant sound system works.

Once you have learned your pegwords, you can use them to memorize anything you want to know or anyone you may want to impress. You could learn the names of the seven dwarfs, the 44 Presidents of the United State, the fifty states of the union according to their entry as a state, or the winners of the Super Bowl by Super Bowl # by forming an image between the numeric peg and the item to be remembered. Abstract items might require some recoding (See the blog “How to Memorize Abstract Information.”).

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

HAROLD

HAROLD is an acronym for Hemispheric Asymmetry Reduction in Older Adults. It is also the name for a model that contends that activity in the Pre-frontal Cortex is less lateralized in older than in younger adults.¹ Remember the specialization of the cerebral hemispheres. The left hemisphere is more specialized for the processing of verbal information, and the right hemisphere is more specialized for the processing of visual-spatial information. According the the HAROLD model this lateralization of function reduces as we age. Electrophysiological, fMRI, (see the blog, “How Can the Brain Be Imaged” to learn about these techniques) and behavioral evidence support this model in a wide variety of domains in both memory and perception. In one study young adults showed right PFC activations during word pair cued recall, whereas older adults showed significant activations in both both right and left PFC. The notion here is that this bilateral pattern of PFC is compensatory. That is, to counteract cognitive decline, older adults recruited both hemispheres whereas young adults recruited mainly one hemisphere. Similar age-related asymmetry reductions during retrieval have been found for other tasks to include word stem cued recall, word recognition, and face recognition. So HAROLD has been demonstrated for both recall and recognition tasks for both verbal and nonverbal materials during retrieval.²

Age-related asymmetry reductions have also been found during memory storage. Older adults still show a lack of hemispheric asymmetry when they are provided with strategies that raise their PFC activities to the level of young adults. So HAROLD has been shown for both information storage and retrieval.

HAROLD has also been shown for verbal vs. spatial asymmetries. PFC activity tends to be left lateralized for verbal working memory and right lateralized for spatial working memory. Older adults showed significant PFC activity bilaterally for both verbal and spatial symmetry. A reasonable question to ask is what is meant by older adults. Sometimes older participants are under the age of 50 and still show effects predicted by the HAROLD model. However, research does indicate that HAROLD does become more pronounced with advancing age.³

HAROLD indicates an age-related increase in hemispheric cooperation. A compelling view is that this cooperation is a compensation mechanism for age-related decline. That is, to counteract cognitive decline, older adults recruit both hemispheres during task conditions for which young adults primarily recruit one hemisphere. One study had participants match two letters projected either to the same visual field (hemisphere) in which the comparison could be done within the hemisphere. Or the projection was made to opposite visual fields (hemispheres)., in which the comparisons had to be made between hemispheres. The letter matchings involved three levels of difficulty:  low (physical matching with one distractor), medium (physical matching with three distractors), and high (name matching with three distractors). Here the critical comparisons are the reaction time differences between the within- and cross-hemisphere conditions. For young adults, the within-hemisphere was faster when difficulty was low, and the across-hemisphere conditions was faster when difficulty was high. The two conditions did not differ significantly when the difficulty was medium. The interpretation here is that at high levels of difficulty, the benefits of engaging resources from both hemispheres outweigh the costs of interhemisphereic communication. For the old adults the benefits of bihemispheric processing became evident at moderate levels of difficulty. Thus, the old adults benefited from interhemispheric processing earlier than the young adults, suggesting that old adults rely more on interhemispheric processing than do young adults.⁴

 

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1Cabeza, R. ((2002).  Hemispheric asymmetry reduction in older adults:  The Harold model.  Psychology and Aging, 17, 85-100.

2Cabeza, R., Nyberg, L., & Park, D. (2005).  op. cit. p. 334.

3Cabeza, R., Nyberg, L., & Park, D. (2005).  op. cit. p. 334-335.

4Cabeza, R., Nyberg, L., & Park, D. (2005).  op. cit. p. 338-340.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

What Do We Need to Know

This is the question we ask whenever we encounter new information, be it an article, a website, or whatever. If it is of no interest the answer is simple, no we do not need to know this and we proceed no further. The question becomes more difficult when the answer is “yes.” Then the question becomes “how well do we need to know it?” If it is of extreme importance or interest, then one decision might be to commit it, or the gist of it, to memory on the spot. Rarely do we encounter something of this importance or interest, but if we did commit it to memory we would need to devote some attention to its maintenance. Otherwise it could become lost from or inaccessible to memory. So it might also be a good idea to store it in some sort of transactive memory, either to save the file or to tag or bookmark it. If it is also of interest to an acquaintance you could also tell them about the item and why it is so important to you.

In most cases you would either save, tag, or bookmark the item. Should you fail to do so, at a later time you might recall there was something of interest or importance, but be unable to find it. So you need to take recourse to transactive memory frequently or you will be in a state of having a wealth of memories, but being unable to access it.

Essentially, you need to decide what level of effort the information affords. You cannot remember everything and to a large extent what you do remember depends on the amount of effort you expend. Although you could commit a great deal of information to memory, you would do this at the cost of remaining ignorant of other information (to say nothing of the free time lost). Some idiot savants commit enormous amounts of information to memory (remember Dustin Hoffman in the movie “Rain Man?”), but these people are often socially inept. So you want to learn thing, have social relationships, and enjoy life. And you do this by relying on transactive memory

This is an interesting question because it is asking what does it mean to “know” something? In most tests taken at school the standard is whether the information can be retrieved from memory. Sometimes, as in multiple choice or true false tests, the criterion is whether the information can be recognized. In fill in the blank or essay questions, the criterion is whether the information can be recalled. Usually one of the requirements for a Ph.D. that needs to be passed before you can do a dissertation is a comprehensive exam. Usually this exam is written and is an enormous closed book test on the relevant material in the subject in which you are trying to earn a Ph.D. That was true in my case in which I had to answer question without the aid of external supports (no lifelines!)

A reasonable question is whether this is the only criterion for knowing. Suppose you know where to find the specific material. So you know what the material is about and where it fits into some general scheme of knowledge. Does this not also imply that you have some knowledge about a topic? Does not having information in transactive memory and being able to access it also count as knowledge?

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

Remembering Numbers

Numbers are among the most difficult items to remember. Psychologists at Carnegie-Mellon University conducted a study[1] in which, after more than 230 hours of practice, a student increased his memory span from 7 to 79 digits. The study concluded that there was no limit to memory performance with practice. This conclusion is significant as the common wisdom was that memory span could not be increased. The student used an interesting technique for increasing his memory span. If you have been following this blog, you should know by now that one of the keys to effective remembering is to make material more meaningful. This individual was a runner who maintained a key interest in running times. He knew the records and what were good and poor running times for any distance you could name. He recoded the number he was to remember in terms of running times. It took practice (more than 230 hours worth) to expand his memory span from 7 to 79 digits, but he did it by recoding the series of numbers into running times and then decoded them back for recall.

In the memory span experiment one number is presented every second. So strong demands are placed on short term memory   The record for reciting the irrational number (one with a never ending series of decimals) pi (the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter) is, at the time of this writing, 10,000 decimal places.  This is likely to become longer as this seems to be a popular record to break. People trying to break this record can study and practice as long as they like. The must, however, recite the entire number correctly from memory.

Remembering numbers is the topic. There is no expectation, however, that you know anything at all about running times. This blog covers some more conventional techniques for remember numbers. The material in this blog is central to most advanced memory techniques. Please give it your detailed attention. If you find this difficult, please be patient and persevere.

The basic idea is to have a system of sounds to recode the numbers. Pierre Herigone (1580-1643), a French mathematician and astronomer, devised a system for recoding numbers into letters by using sounds. These sounds can be made into words and images that are much more memorable. Remember that it is the sounds the letters represent rather than the letters themselves that are used for recoding.

1                    t or d sound

2                    n sound

3                    m sound

4                    r sound

5                    l sound

6                    sh or ch sound

7                    hard c, g, or k sound

8                    f or v sound

9                    p or b sound

0                    s sound     

 So here are some mnemonic pegwords to replace the one- bun rhyme mnemonic peg words presented in One Bun Rhyme Mnemonic blog.

1                    Tie

2                    Noah

3                    Ma

4                    Rye

5                    Law

6                    SHoe

7.                    Cow

8.                    iVy

9.                    Bee

10.                 ToeS

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[1] Ericsson, K.A., Chase, W.G., and Faloon, S.  (1980).  Acquisition of a memory skill,  Science, 208(4448), 1181-1182.

 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

How Can The Brain Be Imaged?

Technologies that allow us to view what is going on inside the brain are a fairly new and exciting development. This blog provides a very brief explanation of these techniques. There will be frequent references to this blog in future presentations of brain imaging studies.

One of the first techniques was Positron Emission Tomography (PET). PET imaging requires that a radioactive substance called a radiotracer been injected into the bloodstream. This radiotracer makes its way into the brain. The level of radioactivity is extremely low so that the individual undergoing the imaging is not put at risk. The individual lies down within the PET imaging machine and is asked to perform different tasks. A computer processes the data to produce 2- or 3 – dimensional images. The images show blood flow and oxygen and glucose metabolism in the tissues of the brain. These images reflect the amount of brain activity in the different regions of the brain.

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) is a more recent development that does not require the injection of radioisotopes into the blood stream. It is an enhancement of Magnetic Resonance Imaging where the individual lies on a table with her head inside a giant magnet. Protons inside the atoms in the brain align themselves with the magnetic field and are wacked temporarily out of alignment by a pulse of radio waves aimed at the brain. As the protons relax back into alignment again, they emit radio waves that a computer uses to create a brain snapshot. fMRI takes advantage of two more facts about the body: (1) blood contains iron and (2) blood rushes to a specific part of the brain when it is activated. As freshly oxygenated blood zooms into a region, the iron distorts the magnetic field enough for the scanner to pick it up.

Prior to the development of these imaging techniques, researchers were restricted to recording electrical activity in the brain from the scalps of humans. Still much valuable data was obtained and these techniques are still used today. Event-related potentials (ERPs) are electrical waveforms that are elicited by specific sights, sounds, or other stimuli. The P300 is a bump in the electrical waveform that occurs within one-third of a second after a person is exposed to a word or some other external stimulus. This heightened activity reflects the additional processing that the brain devotes to novel, distinctive events. Larger P300s tend to be associated with greater subsequent recall.[1]

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[1] Reported in Schacter (1996).  Searching for memory:  the brain, the mind, and the past.    New York:  Basic Books.   p. 55.

 

 

Blog

Blog is a contraction of the term weblog, a type of website. It is usually run by an individual posting regular entries. Technorati reported tracking more than 112.8 million blogs in June, 2008. One of the reasons there are so many blogs is that it is easy to start a blog. No technical expertise is required. For example, to launch a blog at wordpress.com, you basically fill out some forms, sign an agreement, all online, and you have your blog. There is no cost for beginning or maintaining a log at wordpress, although one can sign up for various add-ons and enhancements. But the free service offers a substantial degree of functionality and is easy to operate.

The vast majority of blogs are run as a hobby. Some are basically on-line diaries, others provide a ready means of sharing information with family, colleagues, or friends. Moreover, there are groups of blogs organized into blog communities like blogcatalog.com or mybloglog.com. Technorati.com is a search engine specialized for searching blogs. So you can use technorati.com to search of blogs that are of interest to you. A substantial number of blogs are commercial enterprises. They are bought and sold. Blogs can be viewed as a new publishing medium.

Blogs provide a tremendous opportunity. They can be started and maintained at little or no cost. And some do grow and become quite profitable. Of course, the competition is fierce. As a hobby, blogging is a cinch. As a business, blogging is demanding and can be quite frustrating.

Although I blog, I cannot say that I consult them much. There always is a potential problem of quality control with blogs as anyone can publish anything. Most blogs allow readers to comment, which does serve as a feedback mechanism. And one can come to know and trust different blogs. In my case, I have so much to read with respect to both conventional and on-line media, that little time is left for blogs.

Blogs can contain extremist views that become self-reinforcing because they attract readers of like minds. Here comments can serve to inflame further rather than to moderate extreme views or to correct erroneous information.

But blogs also provide a means of easily disseminating information. That is the objective of this blog, healthymemory.wordpress.com. The objective here is to disseminate interesting information about human memory, techniques for maintaining and enhancing human memory, and discussions of how technology can aid and enhance human memory. Readers can provide comments, which can be either feedback or questions. Readers are encouraged to do so. Reader input provides the information that helps me in improving this blog.

 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

The Relaxation Response[1]

  Key to maintaining a healthy memory is to remain free, or as free as possible, from stress. Stress has adverse effects on both attention and memory. The relaxation response is a physical state of deep rest that changes a person’s physical and emotional response to stress. Herbert Benson, a physician affiliated with the Harvard School of Medicine and the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital [2] since the 1960s found that the approach is really no different than that achieved through prayer, chanting, meditation, and repetitive motion. They lower heart rates, blood pressure and oxygen consumption. They can alleviate symptoms associated with conditions such as hypertension, arthritis, insomnia, depression, infertility, cancer, and anxiety. Aging can also be added to this list. Recent research[3] examined how the relaxation response affected cach of the body’s 40,000 genes and found that those who regularly used the relaxation response induced anti-oxidation and anti-inflammatory changes that counteracted the effects of stress on the body.

Eliciting the relaxation response is easy. One sits in a relaxed position with the eyes closed and repeats a word or sound as one breathes. When thoughts stray, just refocus on the breathing and the word repetition.  This should be done for 10 to 20 minutes once or twice a day.

Usually anything that breaks the train of everyday thought can evoke this physiological state. So participating in repetitive sports such as running, as well as progressive muscular relaxation, yoga, knitting, and crocheting. Playing musical instruments also work, assuming that you can play well such that you can become one with the instrument also works. Effective techniques can vary from individual to individual, and it is important to find the technique that works best with oneself.

 Here are some suggestions as to how to start. This is from the website of the Benson Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine.[4]

Elicitation of the relaxation response is actually quite easy.  There are two essential steps:

1. Repetition of a word, sound, phrase, prayer, or muscular activity.

2. Passive disregard of everyday thoughts that inevitably come to mind and the return to your repetition.

The following is the generic technique taught at the Benson-Henry Institute.

1. Pick a focus word, short phrase, or prayer that is firmly rooted in your belief system, such as “one,” “peace,” “The Lord is my shepherd, “Hail Mary full of grace,” or “shalom.”

2. Sit quietly in a comfortable position.

3. Close your eyes.

4. Relax your muscles, progressing from your feet to your calves, thights, abdomen, shoulders, head, and neck.

5. Breathe slowly and naturally, and as you do, say your focus word, sound, phrase, or prayer silently to yourself as you exhale.

6. Assume a passive attitude. Don’t worry about how well you’re doing. When other thoughts come to mind, simply say to yourself, “Oh, well,” and gently return to your repetition.

7. Continue for 10 to 20 minutes.

8. Do not stand immediately. Continue sitting quietly for a minute or so, allowing other thoughts to return. Then open your eyes and sit for another minute before rising.

9. Practice the technique once or twice daily. Good times to do so are before breakfast and before dinner.

Other techniques for evoking the relaxation response are:

·         Imagery

·         Progressive muscle relaxation

·         Repetitive prayer

·         Mindfulness meditation

·         Repetitive physical exercises

·         Breath focus.

You may want to try more than one technique to find the one that suits you best.

The relevance of the relaxation response to improving memory and warding off cognitive decline due to aging should be obvious. Attention is critical to effective memory, but mental fatigue depletes the amount of attention that can be effectively allocated to memory. The relaxation response allows for the refreshment of attention. Attention needs also to be used selectively as there is simply too much information to attend to effectively. The relaxation response facilitates the ability to attend selectively to the information of interest and to ward off distracting stimuli and thoughts.

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[1]Much of this blog is based on  Martin, S.  (2008)  The power of the relaxation response. Monitor on Psychology, 39, 33.

[2] http://www.massgeneral.org/bhi/basics/rr.aspx

[3] Benson, H., (2008).  Genomic counter-stress changes induced by the relaxation response.,  2 July  edition of PLoS One at www.plosone.org.

[4] http://www.massgeneral.org/bhi/basics/eliciting_rr.aspx

 

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How Much of our Brain Do We Really Use?

 The brain, an organ that weighs slightly more than 3 pounds, is divided into two hemispheres. The left hemisphere controls the right side of the body and the right hemisphere controls the left side of the body. The left side is specialized for processing verbal information and the right hemisphere is specialized for processing spatial information. This specialization is usually reversed for left-handed people, and, as will be seen, the proportion of contribution of each type of processing by each hemisphere can change. This will be discussed in later blogs.

 The brain is way too complex to discuss in any detail here. So only portions of the brain key to memory and attention will be discussed. These are the frontal lobes, the prefrontal cortex is especially key. Then there is the hippocampus, which is a small horseshoe shaped structure deep in the inner or medial parts of the temporal lobes. The temporal lobes are found on the left and right sides of the brain. These brain structures are found in both hemispheres.

So how much of our brain do we actually use? You will hear figures like only 10 % or 5%, but it is good to ask where do these figures come from? How are they estimated? They certainly do not come from physiological measures of brain activity.

It is interesting to note that although the allocation of blood flow changes within the brain, the overall amount of blood flow and oxygen uptake remains the same. Whether we are engaged in intense mental activity or are daydreaming or engaged in some other type of reverie, the amount of blood flow and oxygen uptake remain the same. It is also interesting to note that whether we are recalling the past or imagining the future, the same regions of the brain are activated. So are minds deal with the past, present, and future using the same structures. Our minds are like time travel machines. It is estimated that the average person spends about 12% of waking hours are spent thinking about the future. This is not idle daydreaming, this is important as our survival and fortune depends on our ability to anticipate and prepare for the future.[1]  Still there is the requirement to recognize what is real and what is imagined. As has already been discussed (see the blog. “Seven Sins of Memory”), this requirement often fails.

So the bottom line is that our brains are always working, even when we sleep. So the problem is not the use of the brain, but rather the effective use of the brain.

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[1] Marshall, J. (2007).  Future recall, New Scientist., 24 March,  pp.36-40.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Transactive Memory Supports for Those Difficult to Recall Items

The verbosely titled blog “If We Know So Much More When We Are Older, Why Do We Have Difficulty Recalling and More Importantly, What Can Be Done About It”, explained that it is agreed that older people have more crystallized knowledge. Crystallized intelligence consists of your general storehouse of knowledge and facts. I have found as I age that the instances in which I try to recall something, but cannot retrieve it have been increasing. So how is it that although we have more knowledge, it is more difficult to access? As was explained in that previous blog, there is a distinction between what is available in memory and what can be accessed at any given time. So, yes, as we age more information becomes available in memory. One could argue that the difficulty is accessing this information is due to there being a greater mass of information to retrieve it from. Although this might be true to a certain extent, it is also likely that the act of retrieving also slows down and becomes more difficult at certain times. This certainly seems to be true in my case. The question is what to do about it?

That blog and the related blog, “Recalling Information that is Difficult to Remember,” offered a variety of techniques and strategies for recalling these items. This blog suggests how transactive memory can further facilitate this process, by enlisting the aid of others. Remember that fellow humans can serve as sources of transactive memory, and engaging them can be an enjoyable activity My wife and I make a practice of doing this. Whenever one of us tries to remember something, the name of an actor or old acquaintance, for example, and fails, that one will challenge the other to remember it. If the other party remembers it, then the problem is solved, but see the warning later in this blog. Otherwise the challenge continues. Both of us will be using the strategies and techniques discussed in the aforementioned blog. Mind you, we do get on with our lives, but the activity will continue, sometimes across days. I believe that these memory searches are healthy to the brain because unused brain circuits are being reactivated in the search for this information. So these failed retrieval attempts, although frustrating, can still be beneficial. And in most cases, these attempts eventually prove successful.

I strongly recommend this activity to other couples. And I think it can be expanded to groups of friends with like interests. These can be trivia games that can extend for days and, given today’s technology, over great distances. The social activity is beneficial in itself.

But what to do when failure persists. Here one can switch to the technology mode of transactive memory and search for the items on the internet (sure libraries and older technology are also acceptable). So technology can serve as a backup. Should the information be of special importance, it is always advisable to check your, your partner’s or your group’s recall. Biological memory is fallible. Of course, technology is also fallible, but it is always advisable to check information against multiple sources.

 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

If We Know So Much More When We Are Older, Why Do We Have Difficulty Recalling It, and More Importantly, What Can Be Done About It

It appears to be generally agreed that as we age our crystallized intelligence increases. I have found as I age that the instances in which I try to recall something, but cannot retrieve it have been increasing. So how is it that although we have more knowledge, it is more difficult to access? Isn’t that just a tad ironic?

Here it is important to distinguish between what is available in memory and what can be accessed at any specific time. So, yes, as we age more information becomes available in memory. One could argue that the difficulty in accessing this information is due to there being a greater mass of information to retrieve it from. Although this might be true to a certain extent, it is also likely that the act of retrieving also slows down and becomes more difficult at certain times. This certainly seems to be true in my case. The question is what to do about it?

I have faith that the information is available in memory and that the problem I am experiencing is temporary and that I eventually will remember it. Remember some of the techniques offered in the blog, “Recalling Information That Is Difficult to Remember.”

One of the first things to try is to alter the context of what you are trying to recall is to get new memory circuits to fire in an attempt to find the desired node. When trying to recall a name, and perhaps even a movie title, try running through the alphabet. Does it begin with an A…a B…. and so forth.

Another way of altering the context is to stop trying to recall the name and to think about the general topic. Start free associating regarding actors, actresses, and their films. This strategy has the potential for getting you out of your unsuccessful memory loop and into new associations that could lead to the desired item. What are other movies in which this actor/actress has starred?   What were the names of other actors and actress in these films?   So the general strategy here is to think about related topics with the goal of getting to the desired memory.

Another useful strategy is to think of the time period in which an event occurred. Often this is a good strategy to check to see if recalled information is correct. Some events presuppose others, so if the sequence is out of order something about the memory is incorrect. But even in this case of trying to recall the name of an actor, thinking about the movie, when you saw the movie, and the events that were occurring at that time can cause you to stumble upon, somewhat surprisingly perhaps, the name you are seeking.

When all these techniques fail, I fall back on my favorite technique, incubation. Incubation is a problem solving technique in which you stop trying to actively solve the problem. Instead, you let the problem incubate. I find that sometimes what I was trying to recall will pop into my mind when I am thinking about something else entirely. That suggests that your subconscious mind has been working on this problem. It is also a good idea to try to recall the information at a later time. Given the passage of time and a new context, sometimes what you want to recall will be retrieved quite easily.

I remain aware that I do have these occasions when I cannot retrieve available information that is not accessible at the moment. So as a preventive action I will practice retrieving the names of individuals and the key facts and terms immediately prior to a meeting. If it is an important meeting it is a good idea to start this well in advance of the meeting so that there is time to use all of the techniques we have just covered.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Some Good News About Aging and Memory

There are changes in the way that the brain processes information that compensate for losses that occur. There are also differences between the young and the old in the processing strategies employed during reading. In one experiment[1] younger readers (average age = 20 years) were more likely to recall information from factoids. Older adults (average age = 66 years) were more likely to recall information from highly elaborated text. One way of interpreting these results is to think that older adults have more highly developed memory systems that benefit more from highly elaborated text. The younger adults are still building their memories with simple factoids.

Now for some good news about aging and memory. Skills we have learned and practiced might very well be at their finest. In any case, they are vastly superior to what we had when we were young. Our vocabularies should be greater and our word use and writing skills should be superior. Although processing might be slower, STM and LTM should function well into old age. Our ability to analyze situations and solve problems should remain strong. A study of Air Traffic Controllers attests to this fact.[2]  This study compared ATC performance of older (mean age =57) and younger (mean age = 34).  It demonstrated that the older controllers were quite capable of performing at high levels of proficiency even on fast-paced demanding real-world tasks.

We should gain wisdom as we age. We should grow wiser through our increasing years of experience. From childhood on, we have been learning. This gives us a vast resource to call upon and to apply. This provides an advantage in making judgments and decisions.

Perhaps the prominent memory researcher, James McGaugh, has expressed it best. “We can make the brain work better by simply accumulating more knowledge, which builds more networks of connections in the brain. The wisdom we acquire can compensate for the decline that may be gradually occurring.” So keep learning.           

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[1] Shake, M.C., Noh, S.R., and Stine-Morrow,  E.A.L. (2009).  Age differences in learning from text: evidence for functionally distinct text processing systems.  Applied Cognitive Psychology, 23, 561-578.

[2] Nunes, A. & Kramer, A.F.  (2009).  Experience-Based Mitigation of Age-Related Performance Declines:  Evidence from Air Traffic Control.  Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied., 15, 12-24.

 

 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

 

Recalling Information that is Difficult to Remember

There are many more stored memories than you can recall at any one time. This characteristic was referred to as the availability/accessibility distinction. That is, there is much more information available in memory than can be retrieved at any one time. So a common experience is to know that you know something, but be unable to retrieve it from memory. You can think of this information as being blocked (if you don’t remember see the blog “The Seven Sins of Memory”). I have described (TOT) Tip-of-the-Tongue phenomena where you can almost recall something so that it seems that it is literally on the tip of your tongue. There are many other less vivid occasions when you know you know something, but try as you may, that memory does not come when summoned. For example, who was the actor who won the Oscar in such and such year, and what was the name of the movie in which he won the award. You might be able to describe the physical characteristics of the actor, other movies in which he starred, but you cannot recall his name. You might also be able to describe the plot of the movie in addition to what you liked and disliked about the picture, but be unable to recall the title. Why can you not recall this information? Strategies exist for recalling these memories

One way of thinking about the way memory is constructed that helps understanding of recall failures is to think of memory as a vast, remember 100 billion nerve cells and 500 trillion synaptic connections, set of interconnecting nodes. Memory is a network of enormous complexity These recall failures can be regarded as a result of the failure for the memory circuit to excite the node with the information you want to recall. Repeated attempts to recall result in repeating the thoughts that were previously recalled without eliciting the desired information. Here trying harder can be a self-defeating strategy.

 So what can be done to recall what appears to be irretrievable information? Well, one approach is to be patient. This is analogous to the incubation strategy for solving difficult problems. Sometimes after working long and hard on a difficult problem, the solution appears out of the blue. Similarly, in the middle of the night the both the actor’s name as well as the name of the movie are recalled apparently out of the blue. How can this happen? It is important to realize that we are aware of a fairly small percentage of our cognitive activity. Remember the 100 trillion instructions per second the human brain can perform? These means that we are not aware of most of the brain circuits that are firing. So this brain activity, of which you are not aware, can eventually recall the information, retrieve the answer. Of course, there is no guarantee that the information will be retrieved, but your brain is at work even when you might not realize that it is at work.

Apart, or perhaps in addition to, subconscious mental activity, the next time you consciously try to remember the information, it might occur to you quite easily. Here the likely reason for success was a change in context that caused the memory circuits to fire differently so that the previously unactivated memory nodes were activated this time.  Again, there are no guarantees that the memory will eventually be recallable, but the possibility of recall always remains

Moreover, it is good to exercise memory in this way. This recall attempts strengthen rarely used brain circuits. Try making a regular habit of trying to recall the names of old acquaintances, experiences, and bits of knowledge that you have learned. It can be an interesting exercise to compare what you learned in school to what you have learned now. Knowledge changes rapidly in this information society.

But what strategies can be employed when there is a time constraint, when you need to recall the information now and do not have time to wait. Strategies can vary depending upon the nature of the information you are trying to recall.

One of the first things to try is to alter the context of what you are trying to recall is to get new memory circuits to fire in an attempt to find the desired node. When trying to recall a name, and perhaps even a movie title, try running through the alphabet. Does it begin with an A…a B…. and so forth.

Another way of altering the context is to stop trying to recall the name and to think about the general topic. Start free associating regarding actors, actresses, and their films. This strategy has the potential for getting you out of your unsuccessful memory loop and into new associations that could lead to the desired item. What are other movies in which this actor/actress has starred. What were the names of other actors and actress in these films. So the general strategy here is to think about related topics with the goal of getting to the desired memory.

Another useful strategy is to think of the time period in which an event occurred. Often this is a good strategy to check to see if recalled information is correct. Some events presuppose others, so if the sequence is out of order something about the memory is incorrect. But even in this case of trying to recall the name of an actor, thinking about the movie, when you saw the movie, and the events that were occurring at that time can cause you to stumble upon, somewhat surprisingly perhaps, the name you are seeking.

Always remember that memory is fallible, and even information that you are certain you have recalled correctly could be in error. So it is best to couch your recall results in terms such as, “I believe …” , I think it might have been…”, and so forth. If the information is important, never rely solely on your memory. Even if the information is something as mundane as your address, it is possible to make output (pronunciation or spelling) errors.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Misconceptions About the Brain and Aging

  There are prominent misconceptions about the brain and aging. One is that you cannot change your brain, which is often caught in the expression, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” This expression is not a truism. It is, to coin a term, a falsism. Perhaps you cannot teach an unwilling dog new tricks, but if the dog is willing, the brain will support new learning. The brain retains its plasticity well into old age. Brain imaging studies have shown that when we change our thinking there are corresponding changes in the relevant brain systems.

It is true that we loose brain cells every day. But what most people do not realize is that when we are born is when the number of brain cells we have is the greatest. The paradox is that as we move from infancy to childhood to adolescence to adulthood, the brains performance improves but does so with fewer neurons.[1] Although the number of neurons decreases, the number of connections between the neurons increases. And even though neurons do die, the brain continues to make new brain cells into the golden years of 70 and beyond. Although some nerve connections might be lost, the brain reallocates functions to compensate for these losses. It is also the case that it can be beneficial to lose nerve connections. This is called pruning. When we use our brains we can grow new brain cells, create new connections, and prevent useful connections from withering.

 Perhaps the worse myth is that memory decline is inevitable as we age. If we remain physically healthy, maintain social connections, manage stress, maintain or develop a positive attitude towards ourselves and our world, and engage in intellectually stimulating mental activity, we can maintain good brain and memory functioning throughout our lives. This blog provides techniques and ideas for stimulating mental activity.

Now it is true that things happen to the brain that at first sound bad. For example, the outer surface of the cortex thins. However, this process starts when we are about 20 years old. Studies have also linked aging with decreases in the brain’s white matter. This could affect the speed of our mental processes. As the brain ages, chemical messengers decrease, which can also affect processing. Here it is important to remember the parable of the tortoise and the hare. The greater storehouse of knowledge that has been built up due to the increased opportunity for learning that aging affords can more than compensate for losses in speed of processing.

 Some people, beginning in their 60’s or 70’s, experience a loss in overall brain mass. Important areas such as the frontal lobe and the hippocampus, which transfers information from Short Term Memory (STM) to Long Term Memory (LTM), can be affected. Again, there are compensatory mechanisms that can be found in the brain itself, in the storehouse of knowledge and, it is hoped, wisdom that has accumulated as a function of age, as well as some of the techniques and methods that are offered in past and future blogs.

Moreover, not all people experience in overall brain mass. Recent research² concludes that healthy older brains are not significantly smaller than younger brains contrary to earlier findings. Researchers believe that brain volume loss observed in past studies is likely related to pathological changes in the brain that underlie significant cognitive decline instead of aging itself. As long as people keep healthy memories, the gray matter of areas supporting cognition might not shrink as much as the current opinion holds.

 

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[1] Restak, R.  (2009).  Think Smart:  A neuroscientist’s Prescription for Improving Your Brain’s Performance.  New York:  Riverside Books, p. 9.

2Burgmans, S., van Boxtel, M.P.J., Vuurman, E.F.P.M., Smeets, F., & Gronenschild, E.H.B.M. (2009). The Prevalence of Cortical Gray Matter Atrophy May Be Overestimated In the Healthy Aging Brain., Neuropsychology, 29, 541-550

 

 

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Inherent and Ad Hoc Mnemonics

The distinction between mnemonics and mnemonic techniques or mnemotechniques, is that mnemonics are usually specific to certain material, mnemonic techniques, or mnemotechniques, are general techniques for leaning material. The one-bun rhyme mnemonic (see previous blog on this technique) could be regarded as a mnemonic technique. More advanced mnemonic techniques will be presented in later blogs.

Sometimes information will contain its own inherent mnemonic. Say the pin number you need to remember is 1950 and you were born in 1950, that should be an outstanding mnemonic. Should you not have had the luck to be born in 1950, you might remember that 1950 was the year that the Korean War began. Now suppose you were trying to learn the following list of words: Baptist, Hockey, Apples, Sister, Oranges, Football, Brother, Catholic, Bananas, Mother, Moslem, Baseball. This list contains an implicit organizational mnemonic. Do you recognize it?

The twelve words can be grouped into four categories: religion, sports, relatives (or family members), and fruit. So, you could simply reorganize the list and recall: Baptist, Catholic, Muslim, Hockey, Football, Baseball, Sister, Brother, Mother, Apples, Oranges, Bananas.

All too often there is no apparent meaning, familiarity, or organization to the material, so you need to generate your own. Suppose you were trying to remember the following sets of letters: MKB, TLN, NGU. You could transform them into the following meaningful phrases: Mother Knows Best, Too Late Now, Never Give Up. These are, in effect, acronyms in reverse. Acronyms, however, can be used as mnemonics to remember specific information. To remember the names of the Great Lakes, there is the acronym HOMES, Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior. ROY G. BIV is used to remember the colors in the spectrum in order of their wavelength, from long to short, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green Blue Indigo Violet.

Learning the names of the following twelve cranial nerves is a task that has confronted many students:

• I-Olfactory nerve,
• II-Optic nerve,
• III-Oculomotor nerve,
• IV-Trochlear nerve,
• V-Trigeminal nerve,
• VI-Abducens nerve,
• VII-Facial nerve,
• VIII-Vestibulocochlear nerve/Auditory nerve,
• IX-Glossopharyngeal nerve,
• X-Vagus nerve,
• XI-Accessory nerve/Spinal accessory nerve and
• XII-Hypoglossal nerve.

 

Consequently a host of mnemonics have been developed for learning them. Here’s one:

1. On Old Olympus’ Towering Top A Finn And German Viewed Some Hops

There are many more that can be viewed at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mnemonics_for_the_cranial_nerves

 

Be forewarned, some might be regarded as vulgar or in poor taste.

 

 

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Neo-Symbiosis and Transactive Memory

Prior to the development of the personal computer, the psychologist J. C. R. Licklider introduced the vision of Man-Computer Symbiosis. He said “That men and computers so supplement each other…and that jointly they possess the capabilities to think and comprehend, to decide upon effective action…in a way totally beyond present realization…are the primary means on which we base our hope.”¹ In Man Computer Symbiosis², Licklider chose the fig tree and the insect Blastophaga grossorun as his example of symbiosis. The larva of the insect lives inside the ovary of the fig tree where it gets its food. The tree cannot reproduce without the insect; the insect cannot eat without the tree. Together they constitute not only a viable, but also a productive and thriving partnership. The cooperative living together in intimate association, or even close union, of two dissimilar organisms is called symbiosis.

When I was a graduate student I was deeply impressed by Licklider’s vision. Unfortunately, I believe that this vision has been lost. All too often the goal is to replace humans with technology rather than to view technology as a tool for leveraging human potential. I tried to resurrect Licklider’s vision and to make it more politically correct in my paper “Beyond Usability: The New Symbiosis.³ So I termed it human-computer symbiosis. I also placed the human in the superordinate position in the relationship.

This blog has three themes. One is on human memory itself. Although human memory is quite remarkable, it is fallible and error prone. With perhaps the exception of some idiot savants, this is true of all humans. Moreover, as we age, there can be a deterioration of memory and in pathological cases this deterioration can be quite severe. The second theme focuses on memory techniques that not only offer improvements, but also provide mental exercise that can foster brain health. The third theme, transactive memory, concerns with the potential of technology not only for ameliorating memory decline, but also for providing for memory growth.

So think of computer technology as a means of leveraging your human potential. Think of it as a tool with the potential of not just maintaining and supplementing your memory, but of also enhancing and growing your memory. Think of the computer as a partner. You cannot remember everything, but if you know where to access information, you are leveraging your memory. If you cannot access information, but knows that it exists, then you can search for it. The information available on the internet is enormous, much more than one could learn in multiple lifetimes. It is like being at an all-you-can-eat gourmet banquet. Although there is much too much to sample, you can still avail yourself of a reasonable amount you can accommodate.

1Brate, A. (2002).  Technomanifestos:  visions from the information revolutionaries.  New York:  Thomson Texere.

2http://groups.csail.mit.edu/medg/people/psz/Licklider.html

3Griffith, D. (2005). Ergonomics in Design, 13, 30-31.

 

 

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Transactive Memory Meets Human Memory

When you save a file on your computer you are saving information in transactive memory. Subsequently you are likely to want to retrieve information from transactive memory. When you remember that there is information that you want on the internet, then you need to retrieve this information from transactive memory. However, just as in the case of human memory, and this is analogous to the tip-of-the-tongue (TOT), you sometimes know, are virtually certain, that the information is there, but you cannot find or retrieve it.

In the case of a computer, you cannot remember either the folder, the file name, the URL, or tag, or bookmark. I have had the experience, on more occasions than I would like to admit, where I was absolutely certain when I saved the file that given the filename I had used and the folder in which I had saved the information virtually guaranteed that I would be able to retrieve it whenever I wanted to no matter how far into the future I attempted. But when I tried to retrieve the file I could not and had to resort to searching for it. I have had similar problems on the internet. When I left the information, the location was so obvious that I was certain I could find it again with no difficulty. Or when I had either bookmarked or tagged the information, I was certain to be able to access it. Yet I ultimately ended up searching for this information.

These failures are not transformational memory failures. Rather they are failures of human memory. These failures are well understood and their remedies are known. Key here is the encoding specificity principle. To retrieve information, you need to use the same retrieval cue, or think about it in the same way, when you try to retrieve it as when you stored it. It is also important to pay adequate attention to this information. I believe most of my retrieval failures are due to being overconfident at the time of storage. I was so sure that these were obvious that I did not pay adequate attention.

The basic principles of all mnemonic techniques apply here. Have a plan for both storing and retrieving the information. This plan will include a method for generating retrieval cues and for accessing these retrieval cues at the time of retrieval.

To this point the discussion has focused on the technological part of transactive memory, but the same problems can apply to the human component. You can forget who knows what. Ultimately failures to retrieve information from transactive memory, both of the technological and human varieties involve searching. Fortunately in the technological case, there are tools and these tools function rapidly. Unfortunately in the human case, searching can be both slow and embarrassing.

 

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Memory and Aging

Cognitive aging can be thought of as a process in which two competing forces determine the course of our individual cognitive abilities as we age. One force is the decline of the effectiveness of our nervous systems as we age; the other force is the vast accumulation of knowledge that has been stored over our lifetimes. Younger cognitive processes might be faster, but the amount of knowledge should be much larger in older cognitive systems. The amount of knowledge does vary considerably among older individuals and those with larger amounts of knowledge can be thought to have an advantage in countering the effects of aging.

 It is also important to realize that it is not only biological changes that can affect memory as we age. Cultural stereotypes also play a role. Unfortunately there is a stereotype in the United States that memory declines with age. The Chinese revere the elderly for their knowledge and to not have this negative stereotype.It is also the case that the deaf in America do not believe that the memory of deaf people declines with age. There is an interesting study[1] that documented these phenomena. This study involved six groups. There were three young groups (15-30 years) of American Hearing, American Deaf, and Chinese, and three older groups (59-91 years) of American Hearing, American Deaf, and Chinese. Although the three young groups performed similarly on memory tasks, the older American Deaf and older Chinese outperformed the older Hearing Americans on the memory tasks. Moreover, there was a positive correlation between the view toward aging and the view towards memory performance among the older groups. That is, those who believed that they would do well, did well; those who believed that they would do poorly, did poorly. So it is quite possible that negative stereotypes and the expectancy of memory declines can work to magnify any losses due to neurological changes.

Research continues to mount that the cognitive capacity of older adults can be preserved and enhanced through relevant kinds of intellectual, social, and physical activities.[2] Cognitive training studies have demonstrated that when older adults are provided with intensive training strategies that promote thinking and remembering, cognitive functions can improve.

The psychologist Dr. Stine-Morrow has an interesting hypothesis about cognitive aging[3]. She argues that choice in how cognitive effort, attention, is allocated may be an essential determinant of cognitive change over the life span. Subsequent discussions in this blog will further underscore the importance of attention in memory. Stine-Morrow argues that cognitive effort can directly impact cognitive change in the form of attentional engagement and indirectly as it alters neuronal changes that give rise to component capabilities.

Perhaps the most exciting finding to emerge from recent research is that the brain maintains its plasticity well into old age.[4] One needs to take advantage of this plasticity and to continue to invoke neuronal changes in ones’ brain. This book contains a large variety of memory techniques that result in the formation of new neuronal changes. These techniques require the focusing of attentional processes. They employ both hemispheres of the brain and require the recoding of information and the transfer of information between the two hemispheres. It is hoped that the practice of these techniques will have beneficial effects on brain health and reduce the risks of Alzheimer’s and Senile Dementia.

 

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{[1]Levy, B. &Langer, E. (1994).  Aging Free from Negative Stereotypes:  Successful Memory in China and Among the American Deaf.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66, 989-997.

[2] Hertzog, D., Kramer, A. E., Wilson, R. S., &Lindengerger, U.  (2009).  Enrichment Effects on Adult Cognitive Development:  Can the Functional Capacity of Older Adults BE Preserved and Enhanced?  Psychogical Science in the Public Interest, 9, 1-65.

[3] Stine-Morrow, A. L. (2008).  The Dumbledore Hypothesis of Cognitive Aging.  Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16, 295-299.

[4] Doidge, N. (2007).  The Brain That Changes Itself.  New York, New York.  Penguin Books.

 

 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

More on Common Sense Approaches to Improving Memory

When learning material it is important to know that spaced practice is superior to massed practice. So if you have three hours to learn something, it is generally better to distribute the learning over three one hour sessions rather than one three hour session. This is another reason that it is not good to postpone study to the end of a course. Apart from running out of time, the time you do spend would have been more effective had it been spread out the entire course rather than being crammed into the end. So if you want to remember someone’s name try to remember the person’s name later along with any facts you might have associated with the name. Paying attention is not a one time thing. Making repeated attempts to recall important information at different times enhances memory. Memory is more than a matter of study. Practicing retrieving information is also important. Basically you are strengthening and enhancing routes back to the memory. LTM is vast and contains an enormous amount of information. It is easy to get lost trying to find information. Therefore it is important to practice finding this information. Basically you are learning your way around your memory.

Throughout all my years as a student, all the way to my Ph.D., I never once used a magic marker in a book. My thinking was that I needed to have this information marked in my brain. So I mentally marked important sections of a book. It may be that poor students think they have completed the task by marking in the book. This might facilitate the finding of information, but important information needs to be well-encoded in the brain. It is also important not to forget practicing retrieval. Mentally recalling the content of the book and establishing relationships between relevant concepts and ideas is very important. Useful study can be accomplished when we are walking and are well away from any books by thinking about the content in the book and relating it to lectures and other relevant knowledge.

 What was written about recalling a person’s name is relevant to any information we want to remember. Pay attention. Make the information meaningful and interesting by relating it to other concepts and facts. Practice recalling and thinking about the information at different times.

The effectiveness of retrieving information at increasing longer intervals has been proven to be effective even for people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. The technique is called spaced-retrieval training.[1]

Finally, do not procrastinate. If something needs to be done that can be done now, do it. Having a long list of things to do increases the likelihood that something will be forgotten or neglected. So prioritize what needs to be done and try to work off this list as soon as it is convenient.

Still you are going to experience memory failures. It is helpful to consider the size and the activity of the human brain to appreciate the phenomena of human memory. It is estimated that there are 100 billion nerve cells in the human brain and that one million new neuronal connections are formed every second. It is estimated that there are 500 trillion synaptic connections in the typical adult brain. A typical desktop computer can perform  about 25 billion instructions per second, whereas the estimated processing capacity of the human brain is 100 trillion instructions per second.[2] So it should not be at all surprising when you have difficulty finding information. It should also be clear that it is likely the information is somewhere in there, if only you could find it.

 

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[1] Camp, C. J., Foss, J. W., Stevens, A. B., & O’Hanlon, A. M. (1996).  Improving Prospective Memory in Persons with Alzheimer’s Disease.  In Prospective Memory:  Theory and Applications, ed. Brandimonte, M.,  Einstein, G. O., & McDaniel.  Mahweh, N. J.:  Erlbaum.

[2] From Huang, G.T.  “Essence of Thought”, New Scientist Vol 198 No. 2658, 30-33.

 

 

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More on How Memory Works

  Understanding memory failures are key to understanding how memory works. Why can we not always recall the information stored in our brains? Well, one reason might be the enormous size of the brain in terms of nerve cells and synaptic connections. Memory theorists have made a distinction between information that is available in LTM and information that is accessible in LTM. There is much more information available in LTM than can be accessed at any one time. To retrieve information, the right retrieval cue must be used. This is known as the Principle of Encoding Specificity. The cue that was used to store the information is needed at the time the information is retrieved. If this cue cannot be found, or if the person is thinking in a different context, the information will fail to be retrieved. During these failed retrieval attempts we can often think of other items. We can also feel that we can almost recall the item. This is called the tip of the tongue (TOT) phenomenon. This also reveals yet another type of memory, metamemory. Metamemory is knowledge you have about your own memory. If asked a question about which we know nothing, we will not even bother to try to retrieve it. If we think we might know, we shall try to retrieve it. What is especially annoying is when we know we know something, but just can’t remember it. Then, at some later time, when we are not even trying to remember, the answer will come to us. Why this happens and techniques you can use to prevent this from happening will be discussed later in this blog.

LTM can be subdivided into other types of memory. Episodic memory refers to events we have personally experienced, that is, episodes. Amnesia, when people forget who they are and where they came from is commonly referred to as a loss of memory Actually, it is usually a loss of a specific type of memory, autobiographical memory, which is a component of episodic memory. This is the memory of someone’s own specific history. When someone loses all memory, they lose the ability to function. The final stages of Alzheimer’s disease provide a graphic example of what it means to lose all memory. What something was, when and how it occurred are all examples of episodic memory. Remembering that the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776 in Philadelphia is an example of episodic memory. However, the wider significance of that event would be stored in semantic memory. Semantic memory is the storehouse of general knowledge. To solve a problem or to answer an essay question on an exam requires semantic memory.

 

 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

An Embarrassing Failure of Prospective Memory

  As you know if you have been reading previous blogs, prospective memory is the memory to do things. Today I had a breakfast meeting with two important people, one a dean, from the University of Utah. The meeting was set for November 2. I missed the meeting this morning. I had been planning on meeting them tomorrow, not today. I am profoundly mortified by this failure. Moreover, I inconvenienced and wasted the precious time of people I respect.

Do you love irony? How about this fellow who writes blog on memory health, memory errors and how to avoid them, and he forgets such an important meeting. I think it is instructive to examine the reason behind this prospective memory failure and how it could have been avoided. The reason for the failure was that I had mistakenly encoded November 2 as a Tuesday. This morning I was telling my wife about this important breakfast meeting I was going to have tomorrow, Tuesday.

How could this have been avoided? It could have been avoided by taking recourse to transactive memory. Had I written the meeting on a Calendar or entered in in the Outlook Calendar, it would not only have served as a reminder, but it would also have pointed to my error in encoding November 2^nd as a Tuesday. Had a asked my wife to remind me of this meeting, a human source of transactive memory, she too would have corrected me of my misconception that November 2^nd was a Tuesday.

Now back to the irony. If I know all this stuff, why don’t I use it? This is a very good question. In this case I probably did not think that this meeting warranted a transactive memory entry because it was so important it was inconceivable that I could forget, or in this case, erroneously encode the prospective memory. It is ironic that we often forget those items that we are so sure that we shall remember them. This can lead to carelessness in their storage due to overconfidence.

Generally speaking when I fail to remember when I need to remember, it is usually due to a failure to attend and use the appropriate encoding techniques. Especially important information also needs some form of supplementary storage in transactive memory. So mental laziness is responsible for most of my memory failures. I have no other excuse. I would guess that I am not unique in this regard.

 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Human Transactive Memory

To this point, previous blogs on transactive memory have focused on technology. But transactive memory also includes memory in other humans. Indeed, most of the research that has been conducted into transactive memory has involved memories shared among humans. For example, the role that transactive memory plays in team performance. Or the relationship between couples given the quality and nature of their transactive memory.

Human transactive memory has benefits beyond being an additional source of memory. As it involves other humans it concerns social relationships which are beneficial to cognitive health and effective aging. Friendships and mutually beneficial relations develop from transactive memory.

Perhaps the simplest example of human transactive memory involves one spouse asking their counterpart to remind them of something. Or when you’re watching a movie and cannot remember the name of one of the actors and you ask your viewing partner(s), “do you recognize who so and so is?”

You can form groups of like interests, divide up the memory tasks, and astound others with your expertise. For example, in a group interested in sports, one could commit all the World Series winners to memory, another could memorize the NBA champions, and a third could memorize the Super Bowl Champs. If the group is larger you could expand both breadth and depth of your expertise.

Identifying individuals knowledgeable in certain areas can be difficult. The problem of misleading and incorrect information has received much attention. An earlier blog (answers.com) argued that this is also true of the printed word. Similarly with people, there are many phony experts, so it is important to evaluate whether an individual knows whereof he speaks regarding specific topics. I remember watching a cricket match in Windsor, Canada, and hearing how the English developed cricket from the game of baseball (in case you don’t know, he had the lineage in the wrong order). So you need to assess your sources of transactive memory regarding their trustworthiness on various topics.

 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to [Douglas] and [healthymemory.wordpress.com] with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Common Sense Approaches for Improving Memory

To this point, previous blogs have discussed specific mnemonic techniques for improving memory. There are simple common sense approaches to improving memory that should be practiced and not overlooked. Most memory failures are due to the failure to pay adequate attention to the information you want to remember. Part of my doctoral dissertation studied the relationship between attention expended and memory performance. The relationship is simple, the more attention expended, the better the memory. Consider the problem of remembering the name of someone to whom you have just been introduced. Advanced techniques for remembering names will be discussed later, but the basic problem for most is that we do not pay attention to the name when the person is introduced. I know that this is my problem, and I know the advanced techniques! Usually, I am thinking of what I am going to say or some other aspect of the situation, and I miss the name. Then I spend the remainder of the night waiting for this person’s name to come up in a conversation so that I can have a second chance at it. This difficulty can be avoided by paying attention at the outset. It is good to repeat the person’s name when you are introduced. Most people will be flattered when you express interest in their name. So if you can ask a question about it, you will both flatter the person and strengthen your memory. If the name is a difficult one and paper and pencil are handy, you might even want to ask the person to spell the name. Try to strike up a conversation and learn some interesting facts about the person to associate those facts about the person with the name.

 The term absentmindedness implies a failure to pay attention. It literally means that the mind was absent at the time you needed to pay attention. So when you can’t remember where you put your car keys, the problem stems from not paying attention to where you placed the car keys. The simplest way to deal with these problems is to keep items in a common place. Remember the dictum, “A place for everything and everything in its place.” You should organize your environments to support your memory. For example, you could put a tray atop a table near the entry to your home where you place your keys and anything else you typically need when you leave the house. Use trays of files to organize your mail. Put things back where they belong. Minimize distractions when you are trying to learn something. A quiet room is best. If you cannot turn off the television or stereo, consider wearing earplugs or headphones.

 Of course, this is not always possible, and in this mobile society of ours we need to place things in different places. The key here is to make it a habit to pay attention to where you are putting things. You can stop for a moment a form a mental image of where you are putting something important down.  It is also a good idea to occasionally prompt yourself to remember where you have placed various items of importance.

Although paying attention is important to memory, attentional capacity is limited. Moreover, you would not want to remember everything. You would be so overloaded with information that it would be difficult to cope. Selective attention is key. When it is important to remember something, then sufficient attention needs to be expended.

 

 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to [Douglas] and [healthymemory.wordpress.com] with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

How Memory Works

There are different ways of defining different types of memory. Previous blogs have made a distinction between where memories are stored. There is a personal memory, memories held in someone’s personal, biological brain, and transactive memory, memories held by others or in technological devices (including books and paper). Distinctions can also be made along the time dimension. As its name implies, short term memory (STM) refers to memories that can be only briefly held. STM is limited with respect to both time and capacity. The most common example of the limitations STM is the example of someone looking up a phone number from a source away from the phone and trying to remember it so it can be successfully dialed. Rehearsing the number to yourself will keep the number active in STM until you dial it. If you do not rehearse the number, or if you are interrupted on the way to the phone and need to stop your rehearsal, the number is likely to be forgotten. That’s why it’s called STM. STM is a fundamental limitation all humans have in processing information. The renowned psychologist George Miller wrote a classic paper titled, “The Magic Number Seven Plus or Minus Two.”¹ Note that seven is the number of digits in a local phone number and the long distance area code puts it outside of Miller’s limit. Now there are techniques for getting around this limitation, which will be discussed later on this blog. For now, just try to appreciate what this limitation means. It limits the number of ideas, concepts, things or people that can be thought about at one time. Actually, subsequent research has indicated the the magic number 7 can be lower, depending on the nature of the material Just think what limited creatures we would be if all we had was STM.

 Long term memory (LTM) is where all that information resides that we can recall and use without having to rehearse it. That is a vast amount of information indeed. This vast amount of information is stored in the brain, an organ than weighs less than three pounds. But there are about 100 billion nerve cells in the brain with about 500 trillion synaptic connections. So that would appear to be sufficient to store the memories of a lifetime. There is a particular part of the brain that is crucial for the transfer of information from STM to LTM.  This is the hippocampus. Actually the plural, hippocampi, is appropriate here as there is a hippocampus in each hemisphere of the brain. When damage is done to the hippocampi, then there can be no transfer of information to LTM. That is, no learning can occur. There was a famous patient, H. M., who did not have hippocampi , who was studied extensively. You could converse with him and conclude that he was perfectly normal. However, if you left the room and returned a short time later, he would have no memory of you or of your conversation. 

An interesting study was done with London Cab Drivers. To be licensed as a cab driver in London requires a very extensive and difficult examination. Essentially cab drivers are required to commit the map of the entire city of London to memory. When autopsies were done on deceased London cab drivers, it was found that their hippocampi were significantly larger than normal. Although this was not a controlled experiment, it is still reasonable to conclude that their hippocampi actually grew to accommodate this large requirement on the memories. An extensive amount of information needed to be transferred from STM to LTM.

 It is clear that these memories were not purely verbal. The cab drivers needed to know more than street names. They needed a mental map of the spatial location of the streets as well as where important buildings and places were located. So visual memories were clearly involved. The two hemispheres of the brain are specialized for the types of information they process. For most people (right handed people), the left hemisphere specializes in the processing of verbal information and the right hemisphere is specialized for the processing of images and spatial information. The corpus callosum is a bundle of nerve fibers that communicates between the two hemispheres.

1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two

 

 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to [Douglas] and [healthymemory.wordpress.com] with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Folksonomies

  Folksonomies are taxonomies developed by ordinary users, folks like yourself. So you can classify items any way you wish. You define the categories and you can place items in as many categories as you like. delicious.com is a folksonomy. It describes itself as a social bookmarking site. It provides a great resource for building transactive memory. Remember that transactive memory is memory stored in technology or in other human beings.

As you explore the internet, delicious.com provides a free resource for storing and organizing articles on URLs. This differs from browser bookmarks or favorites. They will return you to the URL, but the material on that URL might likely have changed. The content you bookmark on delicious will not change, so it is a great way of storing and organizing articles of interest. Moreover, this content is stored on the delicious website, so you can access it from any computer with an internet hookup.

You have the option of keeping your bookmarks private or in sharing them with other delicious users. Of course, sharing is the default option as it is sharing that makes delicious a social bookmarking site. You have the option of viewing the most popular bookmarks or the most recent bookmarks. You can also look up specific URLs, or you can explore the tags of others. This provides for the building and enhancement of transactive memory.

Remember that transactive memory includes people as well as technology. You can build a network of fellow users. Your Network is an easy way to view all the bookmarks saved by interesting people, such as your friends, coworkers, and favorite bloggers. After you add them to your Network, this page will collect and display all their recent bookmarks for you to enjoy. You can also create a personal profile to inform others about yourself. So you can not only build transactive memory, but you can also build personal relationships. Both these activities contribute to healthy memories and brains.

 

 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to [Douglas] and [healthymemory.wordpress.com] with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

More on Recoding: Learning Foreign and Strange Vocabulary Words

  As we learned in the blog “How to Memorize Abstract Information” the key is to recode abstract information into something concrete so that an image can be formed as your aid to memorization. Learning a foreign language can be quite useful. In any case, it is a great way to exercise the brain and memory. Learning a new language develops new neural pathways, makes new connections, and builds mental flexibility.

 Memory techniques make the nonsensical meaningful or imaginable. The keyword technique is used primarily for the learning of foreign vocabulary, but it can be used to learn the meaning of any difficult new or unfamiliar term. Basically, the technique involves the development of a keyword as bridge between the meaning and the new or foreign word.

Suppose you were learning German, and you wanted to learn the word for sick.  The word for sick is krank (kraank). A keyword is used a bridge between the sound of the foreign word and its English translation. A possible keyword here is cranky. You could form an image of a cranky sick person. That would serve as the bridge to the meaning “sick.” When you hear the word krank that would remind you of the image of the cranky sick person. Similarly, when you try to think of the German word for “sick” the image of the cranky sick person would remind you of the word krank. The term keyword might be somewhat misleading. Often more than a single word is involved, and it is quite common to generate images to capture the keyword(s) and their link to foreign vocabulary word.

Suppose you were learning German and had the following vocabulary words to learn:

kaufen  (cow’ fin)                                 buy

bitte     (bit’ah)                                    please

fahren  (fah’ren)                                  drive

gefallen (ge fal’len)                             to please

arm      (arm)                                       poor

regnen (reg’ nen)                                rain

traurig (trau’rig)                                 sad

zwishcen (zwi’ schen)                          between

vergessen (fer ges’sen)                        forget

weil (vile)                                             because

This is how you could apply the keyword technique

kaufen  (cow fin)          buy

Form an image of a cow with a fin buying something.

bitte     (bit’ah)                        please

Picture someone who has eaten something bitter and is asking, please, for something to wash away the taste.

fahren  (fah’ren)                      drive

Picture driving a car from far away using a reign to control the steering wheel

gefallen  (ge fal’len)                to please

Picture a clown dresses a a key falling to please the crowd.

arm      (arm)                           poor

Picture a poor beggar holding out his arm asking for alms for the poor.

regnen (reg’ nen)                    rain

Picture a nun raking in the rain.

traurig (trau’rig)                     sad

Picture an oil rig worker who has ripped his trousers on the oil rig and is very sad.

zwishcen (zwi’ schen)              between

Picture an electric current switching between two relays.

weil (veil)                     because

picture a bee wearing a veil causing mischief at a picnic

vergessen (fer ges’sen)            forget

Picture a lady in furs forgetting the answers on a quiz show.

Now try remembering the German for the English word.

poor

please

buy

sad

drive

to please

between

rain

because

forget

Now try the reverse

weil (veil)

kaufen (cow’ fin)

gefallen (ge fal’ len)

regnen (reg’ nen)

traurig (trau’ rig)

vergissen (fer ges’ sen)

bitte (bit’ ah)

fahren (fah’ ren)

arm (arm)

traurig (trau’ rig)

zwischen zwi’ schen)

An important point is that this keyword technique can be used to learn the meaning of unfamiliar words or terms in any language, including English. Consider the English word peduncle.  Unless you are into flowers and botany, it is unlikely that you would know the word. It means flower stalk. Keywords here might involve your paying an old debt to your uncle using flower stalks. Unless you are a student of anatomy you are unlikely to know what an omphalos is. It is the navel (belly button). An image here could be some fellow humming um into his belly button. What about the word factotum? Might that be somewhat who totes facts? Almost, but not quite. A factotum is a handyman. You could conjure up an image of a handyman toting packs from a truck to a garage. To be remembered, something needs to be meaningful. Keywords can provide this meaning when none is initially found. Thus, this technique should have practical value for you. Using this technique also exercises your imagination, creativity, recoding, decoding, and retrieval skills.

 

 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to [Douglas] and [healthymemory.wordpress.com] with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

The Distinctiveness Heuristic

  The distinctiveness heuristic is a rule of thumb that leads people to rely upon recollection of distinctive details of an experience before they are willing to say that they remember it. The distinctiveness heuristic is a System 1 process (See the blog “Two Process Theory of Cognition”) that is beneficial most of the time, but can lead to serious errors. Elderly adults sometimes are especially prone to false recognition, misattribution errors. They have a harder time of calling up specified recollections than do younger adults, and they tend to rely more on general familiarity. This is a strong combination for producing misattribution errors. Moreover, older adults sometimes do not expect to recall specific details of past experiences. Having low expectations for memory can create serious problems for the elderly and con artists know how to exploit this feature of elderly memory. One scam is called “Where’s the check?” Here con artists collect information from the elderly individual during a phone conversation. Then they call back the next day to assess whether the elderly individual has forgotten the conversation and would be likely to have forgotten other events. If so, the con artist makes a false claim about an incident that never occurred. For example, the con artist might say that he had received a check for $1100 from the elderly individual, when it should only have been for $911. Then he says that if he receives a check for the correct amount, $911, he will return the original check for $1100. Or the con artist might say, we have received a check from you for $1000, leaving a balance of only $500. Please send a check for $500 so we can close out the account. As the elderly individual does not remember the conversation, and does not expect to remember such conversations, he sometimes sends the check to avoid further complications. When provided with highly memorable information, older adults can invoke a distinctivemess heuristic as effective as younger adults to reduce false memories. Memory techniques such as those offered in this blog can not only reduce false memories, but can also build an effective memory and confidence in those memories so that such scams will not work.

 

 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to [Douglas] and [healthymemory.wordpress.com] with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Answers.com

The internet is a vast resource for building potential transactive memory (see About this Blog), for cognitive growth and memory enhancement. A good question is where to begin. Perhaps the best place is answers.com. Answers.com is a wikipedia. A wikipedia is an encylopedia built by it users. Its articles are contributed by its users. These articles are refined and critiqued by fellow users. Answers.com has grown so that its breadth of coverage is essentially equivalent to a conventional encyclopedia. One could argue that for some topics the depth of coverage is substantially greater than a conventional encyclopedia.

One of the common fears expressed about the internet is that there is no quality control. Essentially anyone can post anything on the internet, so how can one ascertain what is valid? I would argue that this fear should not be unique to the internet. The amount of junk found in commercial media and heard on talk radio is enormous. I do not see a distinction between the cyberworld and the conventional world with a possible exception of the speed with which information can be disseminated in cyberspace. Speed can work both ways. While it can spread misinformation quickly, it also has the potential of correcting misinformation quickly.

Answers.com does publish incorrect information. Usually, however, it is not long before this information is corrected by other users. Where opinions are concerned, multiple opinions can be viewed and one can get a feel for what is opinion and what is either fact or approaching fact. If there is a complaint regarding answers.com it is that coverage is uneven. The coverage of some topics is extensive, while the coverage of other topics is shallow. When the coverage is missing, one needs to resort to searches on the wider internet.

One can use answers.com in a passive manner. That is one can search for topics and answers to questions by simply entering them into a search box. Or one can become an active participant with a login. One can enter interests and receive feeds regarding these interests. One can contribute new material or edit or correct published materials.

For cognitive growth, it is good to use answers.com in an expansive manner. That is, try to used it to expand and widen your interests.

 

 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to [Douglas] and [healthymemory.wordpress.com] with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

How to Memorize Abstract Information

To this point the memory techniques that have been offered used concrete items. The techniques also involved generating mental images. It is easy to generate mental images to concrete items, but what about abstract items? What about the Bill of Rights? They’re abstract. How could one use the One Bun Rhyme Mnemonic (see earlier blog) to memorize each topic of first ten amendments of the Constitution? Here’s how.

First Amendment. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

            So this is the guarantee of free speech and religion. Try forming an image of a bun (One bun) jabbering away in a place of worship.

Second Amendment. A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

            So here is the right to bear arms (for the purpose of maintaining a well regulated Militia).  Try forming an image of a shoe ( Two shoe) bearing arms.

Third Amendment.

No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

            This prevents the quartering of soldiers in private homes: try forming an image of soldiers carrying Christmas trees (Three tree) in an attempt to be quartered in a home, perhaps with a large X through it.

Fourth Amendment. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

            This prevents unreasonable searches. Try forming an image of a strong door (Four Door) preventing someone from conducting an unlawful search.

Fifth Amendment. No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb, nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property,without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.

            This is the famous Fifth Amendment that you hear witnesses invoking to keep from incriminating themselves. Try forming an image of someone throwing a hive (Five hive) into a court to disrupt the proceedings.

Sixth Amendment. In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed; which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defence.

               Try forming an image of a judge using sticks (Six sticks) to expedite a trial.

Seventh Amendment. In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no act tried by a jury shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

               This is the right to trial by jury. Think of a trial being conducted in heaven (Seven heaven) in front of a jury.

Eighth Amendment. Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

               Try an image of someone being rescued from being tortured on a gate. (Eight gate).

Ninth Amendment. The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

               Try an image of someone being arrested for using wine (Nine wine), getting drunk and trying to get people to stop smoking in a designated smoking area.

Tenth Amendment. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

               Try an image of a hen (Ten hen) flying to the states informing the states of their rights.

So the trick is recoding. Try to recode the abstract idea or information into something concrete. This recoding can exercise your creativity,

Now try recalling the ideas for each of the Ten Amendments. First Amendment, one is a…

 

 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to [Douglas] and [healthymemory.wordpress.com] with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

The Two System View of Cognition

The two system view of cognition provides a means of understanding both how we can process information so quickly and why cognition fails and is subject to error. There are many two systems views of cognition, all of which share the same basic ideas. Perhaps the most noteworthy two system view is that of Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahenman.¹

System 1 is named Intuition. System 1 is very fast, employs parallel processing, and appears to be automatic and effortless. They are so fast that they are executed, for the most part, outside conscious awareness. Emotions and feelings are also part of System 1. Learning is associative and slow. For something to become a System 1 process requires much repetition and practice. Activities such as walking, driving, and conversation are primarily System 1 processes. They occur rapidly and with little apparent effort. We would not have survived if we could not do these types of processes rapidly. But this speed of processing is purchased at a cost, the possibility of errors, biases, and illusions.

System 2 is named Reasoning. It is controlled processing that is slow, serial, and effortful. It is also flexible. This is what we commonly think of as conscious thought. One of the roles of System 2 is to monitor System 1 for processing errors, but System 2 is slow and System 1 is fast, so errors to slip through.

Consider the following problem. A bat and a ball cost $1.10 total. The bat costs a dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

The mind tends to offer the answer $0.10 because the answer seems simple, just the parsing of the $1 from the $0.10 In fact, 50% of Princeton students and 56% of the students at the University of Michigan came up with this answer. But this answer is wrong. If the bat costs $1 more than the ball and the ball costs $0.10, then the bat would cost $1.10, which when added to the ball cost would reach $1.20. The correct answer is $0.05. That would mean that the bat costs $1.05, and the two added together would yield the desired $1.10.

So this simple example illustrates how System 1 processes can lead us astray and how System 2 processes can set us right. System 1 processes are essential. Were it not for their speed, we would never have survived as a species. But they are flawed. System 2 processes are needed not only to monitor System 1 processes, but they are also the processes that cause us to learn and advance. With System 1 processes only, we would have remained a primitive species.

The important point is to be aware of potential cognitive illusions, errors, and shortcomings, so we can identify and compensate for them.

1Kahneman, D. (2003). A Perspective On Judgment and Choice: Mapping Bounded Rationality. American Psychologist, 58, 697-720.

 

 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to [Douglas] and [healthymemory.wordpress.com] with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Prospective Memory and Technology

Prospective memory refers for memory for actions to be taken in the future. In other words it refers to “memory to do things.” We shall identify three means of dealing with prospective memory: via mnemonic techniques, via low tech, or via high tech. There is a substantial literature on prospective memory, but in the pursuit of theoretical knowledge, to the best of my knowledge, these three techniques have not been employed in formal research.

Suppose you have a number of things you want to accomplish during the day. One method would be to use either the method of loci or the one bun rhyme mnemonic, both of which have been discussed in previous blogs, to remember what you needed to do. Another technique, the low tech technique would be to write these items down in a list or to use a daily planner. One study, however, found that 25% of the items in a daily planner were overlooked.¹ The high tech solution would involve entering the to do list into a personal digital assistant (PDA)and perhaps adding an alarm alert. Pick whichever solution best fits your need. However, if something is of more than ordinary importance, then it is best to employ at least two methods. Memory, even aided by mnemonic techniques, can fail. Lists or daily planners can be lost or not consulted. PDAs can be forgotten or misplaced, and there is always the possibility of data entry failures.

Perhaps the most dramatic and depressing examples of prospective memory failures is when parents forget they have left their child in their car. The incidence of this has increased dramatically since the child has been relegated to the back seat as a result of the dangers from an expanding air bag in the front seat. There are stories of parents stopping by day care on their way home from work only to discover that they had forgotten to drop the child off in the morning and that their child had expired from the heat.

This a matter of out of sight out of mind. And this occurs even with a beloved child. The parent needs a reminder to drop off the child. The high tech solution here might be a PDA with an alert. Or perhaps future cars will offer this alert as an option. A low tech solution would be a written reminder in a conspicuous place. Mnemonic techniques could also work, but one should not rely on them alone. And there are explicit reminders one could employ, such as a string around the finger or the steering wheel, or a doll or hat placed in the empty front seat.

1, M.A., & Einstein, G. O. (2007).  Prospective Memory.  Sage Publications:  Thousand Oaks, CA.

 

 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to [Douglas] and [healthymemory.wordpress.com] with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

The One Bun Rhyme Mnemonic

The One-Bun Rhyme Mnemonic is a simple technique for remembering up to ten items. The first step is to remember the following rhyme:

One is a Bun

Two is a Shoe

Three is a Tree

Four is a Door

Five is a Hive

Six is Sticks

Seven is Heaven

Eight is a Gate

Nine is Wine

Ten is a Hen

Now suppose you wanted to pick up the following ten items at the supermarket:

Eggs

Potato Chips

Tomatoes

Orange Juice

Milk

Bread

Bananas

Pies

Lettuce

Snickers Bar

 

You could form the following images:

Picture Eggs in a Bun (an egg sandwich, perhaps?)

A Shoe filled with Potato Chips

Tomatoes falling from a Tree

Orange Juice flowing over a Door

Milk being poured over a Hive

Loaves of Bread on several Sticks

Angels eating Bananas in Heaven

Pies hanging on a Gate

Wine being poured over a head of Lettuce

A Hen snacking on a Snickers Bar

When you arrive at the Supermarket you simply need to recite the rhyme and recall the image for each rhyme in the mnemonic.

This simple technique exhibits the following requirements for a good mnemonic technique.

A plan for both generating and retrieving the cue words. The recoding of the items into more readily recalled images. This technique uses both hemispheres of the brain.

 

 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to [Douglas] and [healthymemory.wordpress.com] with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Cognitive Illusions

Most everyone has heard of perceptual illusions. These are perceptions that mislead or are wrong. In the cognitive realm, there are also cognitive illusions. Cognitive illusions are common beliefs or tendencies of thought that are wrong or misleading. Consider the following statement:

            Reno is further west than San Diego.

Most agree with this statement, but check a map.

Another example is

Detroit, Michigan is south of Windsor, Ontario.

Again, check a map. Generally speaking, absent a map or an extensive knowledge of geography, these appear to be reasonable statements, as Nevada, for the most part, is east of California. Similarly, for the most part, Canada is north of the United States. So these guesses are reasonable, but wrong.

Now consider the following statement:

            On seven flips of a fair coin, the sequence HTHHTHT is more probable than the sequence TTTTTTT. Again, most agree with this statement, as the toss of seven straight tales seems much less likely than a mixture of heads and tales. But note that the sequence calls for a specific occurrence of heads and tales.  So the probability of both sequences is the same .5⁷ , or . 0078125.

Now consider the next statement:

            You have a greater chance of winning the lottery with numbers that you’ve chosen yourself than with numbers randomly chosen by a computer. People tend to agree with the statement because they feel they have some control in the first case. In reality, they do not. Random is random.

We need to be aware of these cognitive illusion so that we can counter them with critical thought. There are reasons why such cognitive illusions occur, which will be discussed in subsequent blogs.

 

 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to [Douglas] and [healthymemory.wordpress.com] with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Transactive Memory: An Important Concept Not to Be Overlooked

Transactive memory refers to memories stored outside your biological brain. Writing a list of items to be purchased at a store on a piece of paper is an example of transactive memory. So is asking your wife to remember the directions to a friend’s house. There are two generic media for storing transactive memories: technological and external biological. Memories can be stored in external technology (paper and pencil is an example of technology) or in other people. So you can get by not only with a little help from technology, but you can also get by with a little help from your friends. You can upgrade your technology and move from a paper pad to a personal digital assistant.

It is also useful to make a distinction between accessible transactive memory, available transactive memory, and potential transactive memory. Accessible transactive memory refers to memories you can readily retrieve. Information you can readily retrieve from the internet is an example of accessible transactive memory. Knowing someone who know the baseball statistics you are trying to find is an example accessible memory. Knowing that information is available on the internet, but not knowing where to find it is an example of available transactive memory. Knowing that there is some baseball expert who can answer your question, but not knowing exactly who that individual is provides an example of available transactive memory. Potential transactive memory could include all memories stored in the world.  This would include both technological (paper and electronic) storage and biological (data held in human memories) storage. 

Potential transactive memory provides the opportunity for cognitive growth. Most all internet activities can be helpful to the brain. You retrieve and store information, search for information, evaluate information. This can be done as part of a job, for pure enjoyment, or for personal growth. Multimedia provides the means of processing different modes of information. One way of looking at cognitive growth is to look as it as a matter of transferring information and knowledge from potential transactive memory, to available transactive memory, to accessible ttansactive memory, to personal biological memory. Of course, the objective here is not to try to store all the information in the world in your brain. This would be helpful and perhaps even harmful. When you encounter new information, you need to make a decision as to whether to ignore it or consider it further. One can be content knowing simply that information is there and that at some point in the future one might be interested in finding it (transferring it to available transactive memory). Or one can make a decision that one needs to be able to access the information when needed (transferring it to available transacive memory). And there is some information one would like to be able to retrieve without needing external memory aids.

Do not forget that other humans provide another means of storing information. Knowing that somebody somewhere does have a certain bit information is an example of available accessible transactive memory. Knowing who that individual is is an example of accessible transactive memory. Human forms of transactive memory also provide the basis for the development of beneficial human relationships, which also foster cognitive health.

Fletcher Platt is a gentleman in his nineties who shows not only what can be done with the internet, but also the potential of the internet. fletchplatt.com is the website he has developed and continues to develop. Not only has he personally benefited from developing his website, but he has provided an invaluable source of growth for others. I encourage you to peruse this website and give it the attention it deserves. It is likely to become a bookmark that you frequently access.

 

 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to [Douglas] and [healthymemory.wordpress.com] with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

The Method of Loci

Perhaps the oldest known memory technique is the method of loci (places). Its development is attributed to the Greek poet Simonides of Ceos, who lived in the 5^th and 6^th centuries BC. After a banquet hall collapsed, Simonides was able to identify the bodies of the deceased by using the seating arrangements to call to mind the deceased guests.

In the method of loci the items to be remembered are placed in specific loci and an image is formed between the loci and the item to remember. Say you needed to pick up the following items at the supermarket:

bread

eggs

tomatoes

potatoes

asparagus

bananas

orange juice

milk

ice cream

apples

 

You could use the following locations in your home, place an item in each loci, and form a mental image of the item in that spot. For example, you could form the following mental pictures:

your bed                          bread

your desk                        eggs

your closet                     tomatoes

the hall                             potatoes

the shower                      asparagus

the bathroom sink       bananas

dining room table        orange juice

the coffee table              milk

the television                  ice cream

apples                                your exit door

When you are at the supermarket, you could take a mental walk through your house and remember the image you had formed at each location.

There are many more mnemonic techniques that will be discussed in this blog. Although some find this one useful, I believe that other techniques are more effective. Nevertheless, this is perhaps the oldest mnemonic technique, and it illustrates the general characteristics of all mnemonic techniques. It provides a plan or template for storing and retrieving the information you want to remember. It also involves elaboration in the formation of mental images. As will be discussed later, these activities also involve the prefontal areas of the brain and both hemispheres. So the technique not only aids you in membering, but it should also contribute to brain health.

 

 

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to [Douglas] and [healthymemory.wordpress.com] with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

The Seven Sins of Memory

It is important not to attribute every memory failure to aging. Normal, healthy memory is far from perfect. An outstanding book by Daniel Schachter, The Seven Sins of Memory (How the Mind Forgets and Remembers)¹,provides a good overview of memory failures. This brief blog provides a quick summary of these “sins.” They are transience, absent-mindedness, blocking, misattribution, suggestibility, bias, and persistence.

Transience simply means that information in memory is transient. That is, it can be lost. Our minds are not recorders that record everything that happens. Most of the information that bombards us goes unattended and never makes it into memory. This is good as most of this information, and the term is being used loosely here, is of no value. The information might not have been attended to and been quickly lost from memory. Or the memory might have either decayed from memory or been lost among the billions upon billions of associations in memory and is for all intents and purposes, forgotten.

 Absent-mindedness refers to such failures as failing to remember where you put your keys, or to forget to stop by the dry cleaners on your way home. Absent-mindedness might be one of the most annoying memory failures. It might also be one of the most common reasons older people think that their memories are starting to fail. But absent-mindedness is a common occurrence among all age groups. The failure to pay attention, for example when you placed your keys down if you did not place them in a standard place, is the most likely cause of absent-mindedness. More will be written about absent-mindedness and techniques will be presented for dealing with it.

The tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon is an example of blocking. You know that you know the information, but you cannot recall it. It feels as if the information is on “the tip-of-your-tongue,” Something is blocking this information and preventing you from retrieving it. More will be written in subsequent blogs about blocking and how to deal with it.

Misattribution is a memory failure that has legal implications and can result in law enforcement officers pursuing red herrings or the conviction of innocent people. Misattributions are quite common. A psychologist was accused of rape based on the victim’s detailed description of his face. However, the psychologist was cleared because he had a rock-solid alibi; he was being interviewed on television (ironically on the fallibility of memory) when the rape occurred. The victim was watching the show and misattributed her memory of the psychologists face to the rapist. Unfortunately the courts, or more correctly juries, place great weight on eyewitness testimony. Due to misattribution errors, the innocent can be convicted. A recent analysis of forty cases in which DNA evidence exonerated wrongfully imprisoned individuals revealed that 36 of them (90%) involved mistaken eyewitness testimony. It is disconcerting when one looks at the number of convictions that have been overturned on the basis of new DNA evidence. More will be written about these issues in later blogs.

The sin of suggestibility can produce similar difficulties. Suggestibility in memory refers to the tendency to incorporate into personal recollections misleading information from external sources. These external sources can be other people, picture or written materials. The media can also be the source of misleading information. Schacter makes the following distinction between misattribution and suggestibility: they both involve the conversion of suggestions into inaccurate memories, but misattribution often occurs in the absence of overt suggestions. In the sin of suggestibility, the suggestions are overt.

Biases tend to help us feel better about our situations, our knowledge, and our opinions. Bias has a variety of causes. Information can be biased to make it consistent with our beliefs. When we are expecting a change we might remember a change that did not occur or exaggerate a change that did. There is a hindsight bias, or the “I knew it all along” bias. There is a tendency to think that we predicted certain events, when we did not. This is not simply a matter of lying, our minds have a tendency to work this way. There is also a tendency to remember ourselves in a light that is a tad more favorable than others might remember. And there is a wide variety of stereotypes around that do affect memories. It is important to be aware of these biases so we can correct or mitigate them. There will be more about this in future blogs.

Persistence refers to unwanted thoughts that keep occurring. A song or jingle that keeps running through one’s mind is an innocuous example of persistence, but persistence of certain thoughts can have pathological implications. Schacter recounts the tragic tale of the relief pitcher of the Los Angeles Angels, Donnie, Moore. He was brought in to relieve in a playoff game in a crucial situation against the Boston Red Sox. He served up the game winning home run from which the Angels did not come back. Consequently the Red Sox advanced to the World Series. The memory of this loss persisted in Moore’s memory and he sank into a deepening depression that undermined his marriage and his career. He shot his wife marriage and his career.  He shot his wife numerous times before committing suicide.

So clearly, memory problems do not begin with old age. They are with us throughout our lifetime. It is important to be aware of them and to understand them so our memories do not lead us astray.

1Schacter, D.  L. (2001).  Boston:  Houghton-Mifflin.