Jonathan Foster, Professor of Neuropsychology Studies in Australia. He has been engaged in research and practice in the field of memory for more than 20 years, and has written or edited works such as Neuroimaging and Memory, Memory: Anatomical Region, Physiological Network and Cognitive Interaction, and Psychology (co-authored), and published many research papers in the field of memory and neuropsychology.

About this book

This is a psychological reading in the Oxford general reader series. In this book, the author sorts out the research conclusions about memory in the field of psychology in the past hundred years. This book tells us how memory works, why we can't live without it and even teaches us how to improve it. ?

Core view

Memory is a process of dynamic selection. It is not only a top-down system, influenced by people's prejudices, impressions, beliefs and attitudes, but also a bottom-up system, influenced by people's senses.

order

Hello, welcome to listen to a book every day. Today, I will interpret a psychological reading in the Oxford general reader series. This book is called Memory. Its author is Jonathan Foster, an Australian neuropsychologist, who has devoted himself to the study of memory for many years. In this book, the author sorts out the research conclusions about memory in the field of psychology in the past hundred years, and combines the latest research results of psychology and neurology.

Before we officially begin to interpret this book, let's answer a question. What is memory? According to the usual understanding, memory is nothing more than two words, memory and memory. If the brain is compared to memory, memory is equivalent to storing information, and memory is equivalent to extracting information. However, psychologists have found that the process of memory is not so simple. In addition to storage and retrieval, there is an important step in memory called coding.

In other words, after a person comes into contact with a piece of information, he must first encode it and then store it in his brain. The way of coding is influenced by many factors, such as education, belief and prejudice, and varies from person to person. In other words, we all think that memory exists objectively, just like taking pictures and recording, but in fact it also has subjective components, which come from coding steps. Of course, this coding is a very complicated process, which we will talk about later in the text.

In a word, according to the viewpoint in the book, memory can be divided into three stages: coding, storage and retrieval. On this basis, the author discusses the four parts of the book.

The first part is about the coding and storage of memory. Why are some memories particularly profound, while others are vague? For example, you remember your birthday ten years ago and what gift you received, but you don't remember what you ate the day before yesterday morning; The second part is about the extraction of memory, that is, memory. Are our memories true? Why do two people have very different memories of the same thing? The third part is to teach you how to retrieve the memory you want. There is an ancient Greek proverb, which roughly means that our brain is like a bird cage, and memory is the bird in the cage. Although they are all kept in cages, it is still a bit difficult to catch one. This part is to teach you how to catch the bird you want in the cage of memory; The fourth part is about memory bias. To put it bluntly, it is the reason why our memory is wrong. Some things are clearly remembered, but we can find them back, which is not the case.

In fact, these four questions can be summed up as follows: how to remember, how to remember, why not remember, why not remember, these questions about memory, we have all encountered. In this audio, we use the book Memory to look at it from the professional perspective of neuropsychology.

first part

Let's first look at the coding and storage of memory, that is, how people remember. The first point of this book is that memory is a dynamic selection process, which is not only a top-down system influenced by people's prejudices, impressions, beliefs and attitudes, but also a bottom-up system influenced by people's senses.

If memory is compared to a thing, it is more appropriate to compare it to a river than to a stove, because memory is by no means a reappearance of past experiences in our minds. We can do a quiz now. For example, you must have seen a dollar coin, but if you close your eyes, can you recall the pattern on the dollar coin? Is it an avatar or a flower? What's on it? Where the hell is the text? How's it going? Is it still difficult? It is estimated that most people can't accurately recall the contents of a one-dollar coin.

So you see, even something as ordinary as a coin, most people can't remember it correctly. This shows that memory is not a burner that accurately records our lives. We touch thousands of things every day, and it is obviously a waste of energy to remember them all. People tend to remember the most important and useful information for themselves, such as the size and color of coins, because only these characteristics have obvious relationship with its denomination, and we can complete the transaction by knowing these. So memory is a process of dynamic selection, just like a river, sometimes full of sediment, sometimes crystal clear, and the water quality of the river is affected by the location where it flows.

This influence is sometimes top-down, that is, memory will be influenced by people's prejudice, impression, beliefs and attitudes. These subjective preferences determine what is easy to remember and what is not. For example, after listening to a class, you are deeply attracted by a topic spoken by the teacher. Even if you can't remember the specific content of the teacher's lecture in the future, you can still remember the situation of this class. This is your own preference for specific topics, which affects your memory depth. This topic makes you feel excited and thinking, so it is easier for you to remember it. For another example, a chess fan is easier to remember the score of a game than others, and a chess master is easier to remember the position of a chess piece than others, because they have more knowledge in related fields, so they are easy to remember. This is a top-down influence.

In addition, memory will be influenced by people's bottom-up senses. For example, in a strange parking lot, most people are unlikely to remember where you parked your car, but if there is an accident in the parking lot and your car is damaged, your instinctive stress reaction will make you remember this scene in the parking lot particularly clearly. This is also called flash memory, which refers to people's lasting memory of some special events they have experienced personally.

Many people remember where they were and who they were with when they heard the report of the September 1 1 incident. Why is this happening? Because they are all so excited. This sensory sensitivity was formed in the long evolution of human beings. People are particularly sensitive to sensory stimuli related to threats and rewards, and will also activate physiological and psychological patterns to respond, so that you will be deeply impressed by these stimuli, and their role is to seek advantages and avoid disadvantages.

So let's look at the first point. Memory is a dynamic selection process. People will make choices about the information they come into contact with, leave some after integration and throw away some. Memory is not only a top-down system, influenced by people's prejudices, impressions, beliefs and attitudes, but also a bottom-up system, influenced by people's senses.

the second part

Knowing the coding and storage mode of memory, let's look at the extraction mode of memory, that is, what is memory. When people recall, they do not reproduce the existing memories, but reconstruct them with imagination.

Just as memory itself is not a simple burning of life, memory is not a reactivation of past traces in human brain, nor a mechanical repetition, but a secondary creation. For example, when two people watch the same movie, their descriptions of the movie are similar, but there are also many differences. It depends on their different interests, different emotional reactions when watching movies, and different understandings of stories in movies, so everyone recalls different versions of stories.

In the first half of the 20th century, psychologist Frederick bartlett made a series of famous memory experiments, which confirmed this point. He read an absurd fictional story to volunteers and found that everyone recalled it in a unique way. But one thing in common is that people tend to make stories more reasonable and easier to understand. I remember the vivid plots in the story more accurately, while for other plots, I will reconstruct the story through my own processing.

According to these experiments, Bartley believes that people will give some meaning to what they see when they recall, which will affect their memory of this matter. This can explain why two people watch the same movie, but their memories are different. It is because people are deeply impressed by the plots in the movie that move them and meet their expectations, so their memories are clear, while the memories of other plots are not accurate and may be reconstructed when they recall. In the process of reconstruction, people's existing cognition has been added.

Therefore, Bartley put forward the concepts of basic module, basic foundation and model module in human cognition. This prototype refers to some meaning chunks that people get after processing experience. With these prototypes, we can understand familiar things more quickly, and it will also guide our expectations, give us a general idea of what will happen next, and provide an explanatory framework for processing new information.

For example, you may have such a prototype, a typical step of going to a restaurant, a typical scene of going to the cinema to see a movie, and so on. When memorizing information, if the previous basic model is useless, people will find new information difficult to understand, let alone convenient to remember. Therefore, when memorizing a paragraph of text, it will be easier to give a title in advance and understand the following text with the theme of the title prompt.

For example, let's listen to a passage like this: this step is actually very simple. First, classify the items to be processed. Generally speaking, a pile is enough. If there is no processing equipment, you can also go to a place where they are specially processed. Find the equipment and start the next step. Don't put too much at a time. It's better to put more than less. Ok, can you hear what this article is saying? It's actually about the steps of washing clothes. Even if you know the topic now, is it hard to remember it? But if you hear the title "washing clothes" before listening to this passage, will it be much easier to understand and remember more later? Therefore, giving the title in advance not only explains the content of the text, but also prompts the familiar motif, which will greatly improve the accuracy of recall.

Knowing this, we can better understand the characteristics of memory. Human memory is like a paleontologist, trying to piece together a complete dinosaur with some incomplete remains. The past is like a pile of broken remains, mixed with some irrelevant bones. These bones are your own cognition. When people recall, they are trying to piece together these remains into the original appearance, both real dinosaur bones and irrelevant bones.

Some vague places in people's memory are filled with imagination. This reconstruction process is so common in everyone's memory that we don't realize it exists. So we can't be too confident in memory, it is far from as accurate as you think.

This is our second point. When people recall, they do not reproduce the existing memories, but reconstruct them with imagination. When people recall, they will give some meaning to what they see, thus affecting their memory of this matter. For the fuzzy areas in memory, people will reconstruct their memories when they recall.

the third part

Let's look at how people extract the memories they want, and what factors will affect this matter. The third point of this book is that successful memory depends on the familiar environment and mental state, as well as the prompt information consistent with memory.

Look at environmental factors first. Psychologist baddeley asked some divers to do a memory experiment. He asked divers to remember information when diving, and also asked them to remember some information when they were on shore, and then examined their memory effects in different environments. Baddeley found that divers recall information with the highest accuracy if they remember and recall it both underwater and on land. On the contrary, if their memory information and recall information are not in the same environment, then the memory performance of divers will be significantly reduced. Simply put, the law of memory is that people learn information and recall information in the same environment, and the memory effect is the best.

Interestingly, in addition to environmental factors, the performance of memory also depends on people's mental state. If you are calm when trying to remember a text, but nervous or too excited when recalling it, then your memory performance may not be very good. If you are excited when you remember information and when you recall information, and the mental state of memory and recall is close, then your memory performance will be better. If you are reviewing for the exam, this may attract attention. Try to ensure that you are in the same state as when you review. If you are calm when reviewing at ordinary times, you should also relax during the exam.

Why does memory depend on people's state? Psychologists have an explanation that when people are mentally active, they may lead to different ways of storing and retrieving memories, which is different from the way we take in normal state. For example, drinking can make people have unusual associations with external stimuli and produce some special memory clues, which have a great influence on memory, but under normal circumstances, it is difficult for people to produce the same memory clues to help recall.

The two situations just mentioned are conscious memories. Simply put, successful memory depends on familiar environment and state. Then, in unconscious memory, will this familiar factor also play a role in memory? The answer is yes. If we have been exposed to a certain information before, we may not remember it clearly, but we have a vague impression, which is unconscious. When we come into contact with this information again, we will be willing to believe it, because we are familiar with it and feel very close.

There is a psychological experiment to see whether people believe that the statement that "the tallest statue in the world is in China and Tibet" is actually wrong. But most people who have inadvertently seen this statement in experiments before will believe it, even if they don't remember seeing it at all. This psychological phenomenon is the priming effect. Simply put, people have been exposed to a stimulus before, and then they will accept the same stimulus more easily. In the experiment, people believed this sentence because he had seen it before. Another group of people who haven't read this sentence will choose not to believe this statement. This memory feature is called priming effect, which is likely to be used by some businesses for publicity. This is how advertising works.

There is another factor that will affect whether people can recall smoothly, and that is the prompt information given when recalling. Psychologist Buckley found two groups of ordinary people and also did an experiment on prompting memory. Both groups heard similar words, but one group heard a sentence: that person tuned the piano. Only this group of people can hear this sentence. Another group heard another sentence in the text: the man carried the piano away. Later, when these volunteers were asked to recall this passage, Buckley gave some information about the cue piano, such as "pleasant voice". Those who have heard of "tuning the piano" can recall the word piano smoothly, while those who have only heard of "carrying the piano away" are not easy to recall the word piano.

I wonder if you have found the reason? That is to say, when people memorize information, the group of "tuning the piano" emphasizes the sound of the piano, so when this group recalls, when they hear the hint of "pleasant voice", they will naturally associate the word piano related to the sound. The other group did not hear the information related to the piano sound, but heard the information related to the piano weight. If we remind him of "heavy things" in this set of memories, then there is a high probability that they will also remember the word piano. This experiment also shows that it can play a great role in successfully recalling information and giving information tips consistent with memory.

This is our third point. Successful memory depends on the familiar environment and mental state, as well as the prompt information consistent with memory.

part four

Let's look at the last part, why our memory is wrong. The fourth point of this book is that nervousness, inducing questions and misleading will all cause memory deviation and make people have false memories.

You might say, even if I don't remember the pattern on the coin, I'm sure I can remember unusual things, such as crimes. This is much easier than remembering the details on the coin. So let's see what the facts are. Take the crime scene as an example, there are many factors that distort the memory of witnesses. For example, extreme pressure reduces people's attention and can only focus on dangerous weapons. For example, in violent incidents, people try their best to protect themselves, but they can't remember the criminal's appearance, only the criminal's clothes. Don't believe it? Let's look at a real case.

One day, the police arrested a lawyer named Donald Thompson. At the police station, a woman recognized him from a crowd and claimed that he had raped himself. This is outrageous, because at the time of the crime, he was participating in a TV debate and the whole country had a chance to see him. He has a good alibi. Then why did this woman accuse him? Coincidentally, when the woman was raped, there was a debate on the TV in the room, and the content of the debate happened to be related to the testimony of witnesses. So this lady may have remembered the lawyer's face on TV in a panic and mistakenly put him on the rapist's head, so her memory was distorted.

Another factor that can lead to memory distortion is induction. Instead of "Did you see a man rape that woman?" Did you see this man rape that woman? Obviously, this is a leading question. He is hinting that the man may have committed a crime, which will make it more likely for witnesses to identify him. Induction may force some information into your memory. Suppose you witnessed a traffic accident and the police came to you and asked if the car was parked in front of or behind a tree. Even if there is no tree at the scene, you are likely to "add" the tree to your memory picture and give an unreliable answer. Memories are so distorted. It is difficult for us to distinguish between real memories and added memories.

There is also a memory bias, that is, new memories will distort old memories. Simply put, after the memory is misled, there will be memories that don't exist in the brain. This is also a very important topic in the field of memory research at present, which is of great help to judge the reliability of witness testimony. Psychologist loftus proved that memory can be distorted by misleading. She showed volunteers a set of slides of traffic accidents, and then asked them to answer questions from memory.

When asking questions to one group of people, Lofster called the avoidance sign in the slide a stop sign. As a result, when people answer questions, they choose to see the stop sign, which is the sign mentioned by Loft, rather than the sign actually appearing in the slide. Loft also found that people are very confident in answering misguided questions. This experiment strongly proves that memory can be misled and distorted. It also reminds us to think about how to ask questions, so that witnesses' memories can be as accurate as possible.

Later, loftus asked volunteers to watch a traffic accident film. This time, he asked the volunteers, do you remember the speed of the white sports car passing through the barn in this film? In fact, there is no barn at all in the film, but when people are asked this question, they all say that when the car passes through the barn, it is about 120 mph, maybe 150 mph and so on. Even after a week, ask them again, they still said they saw the barn. Lofster drew a conclusion from these experiments: misleading information can really change people's memory. However, the reason why memory is misled is still controversial.

Some psychologists question this conclusion and think that it is also possible that the memory is not distorted. Asking questions does reveal real information that people don't remember, and asking questions is actually a supplement to memory. Some psychologists believe that these volunteers just tell the answers that researchers expect them to tell, just like children will answer questions in the way that adults expect, and they are embarrassed to say that they don't know. Psychologists have not come to a conclusion on this issue.

Contrary to the misleading and distorted memory, some studies have found that the update of memory is problematic, that is, some things that happened later should have been integrated into memory, but they were not. People think they have corrected the previous wrong information, but they still use the previous information.

We have such an example in real life.

After the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, about a year later, the United States conducted an investigation. 30% of the respondents insisted that weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, and even 20% of Americans believed that Iraq used chemical and biological weapons on the battlefield. In fact, this has not been confirmed. As for what causes this memory deviation, it is still a challenge for future psychological research.

This is our fourth point. Memory may be biased, which may lead to serious consequences, such as whether the witness's testimony is true, nervous, leading questions and misleading, etc., which may distort memory and make people confused whether it is real memory or later added memory. Sometimes it may be that there is something wrong with the update of memory, and people still keep the previous wrong information, but the reason for this memory deviation is not clear. This feature of memory also reminds legal workers to be vigilant against witness testimony, because witnesses may provide false testimony in the case of memory deviation.

abstract

Well, we have finished reading this book. Let's review the four points raised in this issue:

First of all, memory is a dynamic selection process. People will make choices about the information they come into contact with, leave some after integration and throw away some. Memory is not only a top-down system, influenced by people's prejudices, impressions, beliefs and attitudes, but also a bottom-up system, influenced by senses.

Second, when people recall, they do not reproduce the existing memories, but reconstruct them with their imagination. When people recall, they will give some meaning to what they see, thus affecting their memory of this matter. For the fuzzy areas in memory, people will reconstruct their memories when they recall.

Thirdly, successful recall depends on the familiar environment and mental state, as well as the prompt information consistent with memory.

Fourth, there may be memory deviation, which will lead to serious consequences, such as whether the witness's testimony is true, nervous, induced questions, misleading, etc., which may cause memory distortion, making people confused whether it is a real memory or a memory added later. Sometimes it may be that there is something wrong with the update of memory, and people still keep the previous wrong information, but the reason for this memory deviation is not clear.

In a word, memory is an active screening process, not a passive container for faithfully recording life. Psychologists have helped us find many variables that affect memory, but there are still many puzzles to be explored. Even so, we can use our memories more intelligently. What we need to do is to use effective memory strategies to better remember information. Among the books we listen to every day, there is also a book "Memory Psychology", which talks about many ways to improve memory, which may be helpful to you.