Friendly Reminder

1. The notes are too long, so you should read carefully
2. There are advertisements at the end of the article

summary

I am curious about people's memory. I can remember that the first memory was that there was a bed in the corner of the door of a dark house. That should be the scene when my father opened the furniture factory, but I'm not sure if it is earlier. Another early memory is that I walked on the country road with my brother, and went to his relatives' home with another partner. Then there were pomegranates blooming outside the wall. I got lost, and then I returned home somehow.

In recent years, I also feel that my memory has begun to decline. For example, I remember carrying a knife with me in the morning, but I couldn't find it. I turned around and found that the time between putting down the knife and looking for it should be less than five minutes. But there was hardly any impression.

When I was a child, my memory was very good. I had never worried about writing a composition since the third grade. The reason was that my mother bought a composition selection. In the scarce youth, the book was turned over several times, and then in the subsequent exam, almost most of the compositions were written from memory.

I have also seen many movies about genius. Without exception, the characters in the movies have super memories, even the memory of copying photos. When memorizing words, I have seen Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve, but I have never practiced it. I don't know if talent is not gifted, but a person with a good memory should not be a fool.

With curiosity about memory, I opened this Oxford general knowledge book Memory to understand how science has done research on memory and what conclusions can be falsified.

Contents and footnotes

Chapter 1: You are your memory

1. Except for a thin layer of 'now', everything in our life is memory.

2. We tend to remember the most significant and useful information for ourselves. For example, we can better remember the size, size and color of the coins, but it is easy to ignore the direction of the head portrait and the content of the text on the coins, because the size, size and color of the coins are the most important characteristics for us, and these information is conducive to our payment and trading activities, which is the direct purpose of the birth of money. Similarly, when we remember different people, we usually remember their faces and other representative features that have little change, but not those that often change (such as personal dress).

   Here, the author asks us to try to recall coins that you are very familiar with, but as the author said, we think we are very familiar with coins, but we actually know very little about many details of coins, or We only remember the most significant information of coins for ourselves 。

3. Episodic memory It refers to the memory of events (scenes) experienced by individuals at a certain time and place. For example, the memory of meeting a friend in the park yesterday is situational memory.

4. Semantic memory Also called semantic memory, it is a type of memory. It is an understanding of the facts and concepts of general knowledge, and forms memory through the abstract understanding of language, characters, numbers, algorithms, etc. Semantic memory is usually developed from episodic memory, which is an objective knowledge and has nothing to do with personal experience.

5. If there are important events in our daily life (such events are often associated with“ threaten ”Or“ reward ”), our unique physiological and psychological models will start to work, so we will be easier to remember these events. For example, most people have forgotten where they parked their cars in a large parking lot. But if we have an accident in the parking lot and crash our own car or the car next to us, we will have an instinctive stress reaction, so that we can remember this kind of event (and our parking space at that time) clearly.

6. Stress response It is a reaction mode, which refers to a series of non-specific response reactions produced by animal body after being stimulated by external adverse factors without specific pathological damage. When the stimulus event breaks the balance and load capacity of the organism, or exceeds the ability of the individual, it will be reflected as pressure. When stimulated by the outside world, the sympathetic nerve of the body will be excited, which will lead to increased secretion of pituitary and adrenocortical hormones, resulting in abnormal functions and metabolism such as elevated blood sugar, elevated blood pressure, accelerated heart rate, and accelerated respiration. These reactions have certain protective effects on the body.

   According to the virtue of memory, a plain life is not worth living. I seem to be able to understand which extreme sports fans, this may be a reward mechanism of the brain, and this reward mechanism is even beyond life and death (This is the highest mechanism in the eyes of ordinary people).

   Stimulating events to break the balance and load capacity, and gradually improve their load capacity, may be the way to big heart. At the beginning of running, the leg cramps due to backache and backache. After a period of time, the muscles of the body are familiar with this extra load, and then become stronger and stronger.

7. Memory is a selective and interpretive process. In other words, memory is more than passive storage of information. After learning and storing new information, we can select and explain it, and integrate different information, so as to better use the information we have learned and remembered.

8. We have five senses, including hopelessly abstract intelligence, memory of one-sided choice, and a series of preconceived ideas and assumptions, so many that people can only detect a small part of them, but can't fully detect them. How many facts can this configuration reflect?

9. Many contemporary scholars believe that the most important feature of memory mechanism is that it is a dynamic activity, or a process, rather than a static entity or thing.

---

The Study of Ebbinghaus

method

Ebbinghaus taught himself 169 syllable groups, each containing 13 meaningless syllables. Each syllable consists of three "meaningless" letters, which are composed of consonant vowel consonant (e.g. PEL). After a time interval ranging from 21 minutes to 31 days, Ebbinghaus memorized these syllable groups again. He was particularly interested in the forgetting rate during this period and used“ Savings ”(the ratio of the time saved when learning again to the time saved when learning for the first time) to measure the degree of forgetting.

conclusion

• The speed of forgetting roughly shows a negative exponential law, that is, in the initial stage after learning materials, forgetting progresses quickly, and then the speed of forgetting will slow down. Therefore, the speed of forgetting is a negative exponential law, rather than a linear law.

• For those "lost" information, such as those forgotten French words, you can master them again faster than beginners (this is the concept of "saving" proposed by Ebbinghaus).

  This discovery means that these "lost" information must still leave traces in the brain. This also confirms the importance of unconscious cognition: obviously, we can no longer consciously remember these "lost" French words, but research shows that we still have relevant memories in our subconscious.

  For this conclusion, I believe that many people have personal experience. This is also what many people say is the importance of erudition. You have read and forgotten a lot of knowledge. What's the use of reading? Not so. It still exists in the subconscious. It is the same when I write. Sometimes I think of a word inexplicably. If you trace it carefully, you can find the source.

Pros and cons

• Ebbinghaus used experimental research methods to control many external factors that may distort the experimental results.
• Ebbinghaus's method is too simple, simplifying the delicate memory process into an artificial and mathematical composition. The risk of this method is that the essence aspects that really make memory play a role in daily life may be eliminated.
• Personal opinion: This may be the extent to which the model is adaptable to the problems studied , too simple or too complex models may deviate from the essence of things.

---

Bartlett's Research

Questioning Ebbinghaus

The study of meaningless syllables can not reflect how people's memory works in real life. In life, how many people will spend time memorizing meaningless syllables?

Bartlett's method

Focus on the use of meaningful materials (more accurately, the materials we are trying to give meaning to), and the subjects he selected will learn and remember these materials under relatively natural conditions. Indeed, we naturally give meaning to what happens around us, which seems to be one of the basic characteristics of "human nature". In some of Bartlett's most influential studies, the subjects were asked to read some stories (the most famous one is called "the war of ghosts"), and then recall the stories.

conclusion

• The stories people recall are often shorter than the actual stories
• The story becomes more coherent. In other words, when people try to understand unfamiliar materials, they will associate these materials with the existing ideas, knowledge and cultural presuppositions in their minds [This conclusion reminds me of the original mind of the Zen, which is now the word "original mind" of the bad street]
• The changes people make to the story when they recall it are often related to their reactions and feelings when they first hear the story.

Summary

1. Bartlett believes that for the events to remember, People's emotional color and attention are different , which will affect the content actually remembered. In Bartlett's words, Memory will retain "some vivid details" , and we Other things to remember Just under the influence of the original event, Our own carefully processed products 。 Bartlett called this key feature of memory“ reconstruction ”Instead of "reproduction". In other words, Our memories of past events and stories are not copies ， It is a reconstruction based on the existing presuppositions, expectations and our "psychological set".
2. There are important differences between Bartlett and Ebbinghaus in their methods of memory research. The core of Bartlett's view is that, People will give meaning to the events they observe, which will affect their memory of these events. This may not be important for laboratory research using relatively abstract and meaningless memory materials, as is the meaningless syllable experiment by Ebbinghaus. But Bartlett believes that in the more natural scenes of the real world, This pursuit of meaning is one of the important characteristics of memory operation 。

---

Build Memory

1. Memory is different from DVD (digital multi-function disc) or video tape, and it is not an objective and true copy of the world. It may be more helpful to see memory as the impact of the world on individuals.
2. When we recall, some parts of the film will immediately come to mind, while others may be reconstructed by us. This construction is based on the part we remember, and other parts that we think or believe must have happened - the latter is likely to be inferred through our reasoning and imagination of the world, combined with the elements in the film that we can remember
3. In view of this, the act of "recalling" was once compared to: A knowledgeable paleontologist tried to piece together a group of incomplete remains into a complete dinosaur. This analogy tells us that past events make us have a set of incomplete "debris" (occasionally with some "bones" completely unrelated to past events). Our understanding of the world will play a role in the process when we try to piece together the remains into their original shape. In the end, our memories may contain some real parts from the past (that is, "real dinosaur bones"), but on the whole, this is still an imperfect reconstruction of the past at present.

Observation and Reasoning: Modern Memory Research

problem

As long as the events we experience have an impact on our subsequent behavior, we can prove the existence of memory. But how can we be sure that subsequent actions are indeed affected by past events?

difficulty

• Memory cannot be observed directly
• The behavior change of subjects in the task process will not only be affected by the memory of the original event, but also by other factors, such as personal motivation, interest, common sense and related reasoning process

Differentiation point

• What is observed (this is often affected by other non memory factors)
• What is inferred

terms of settlement

1. In memory research, different groups of subjects are usually compared. Each group involves different operations on memory. A past event or some operation on memory only appears in one group, not other groups [control single operation Variable]
2. When selecting subjects in all groups, it is necessary to ensure that they are consistent in all possible relevant dimensions, at least very close: for example, there should be no differences in age, education level and IQ between groups [control subjects' Related dimensions However, it is still difficult for me to make a qualitative analysis of education, IQ and other dimensions]

Example: "Learning in sleep"

hypothesis

When you sleep, you play tapes with information to yourself, hoping or expecting to remember the information. How can you know if listening to tapes is effective?

method

You may play these messages to some people while they are sleeping, and then wake them up to see whether their behavior can reflect any information played before. After the subjects fall asleep, the staff will read out pairs of words aloud. Each pair consists of a category name and an item name in the category (for example:“ Metal: gold ”）Each pair will repeat it several times. Ten minutes later, the subjects were woken up and asked to name the items they could think of according to the categories given. The basic hypothesis of this study is that if the subject can remember the words read by the staff when he was asleep, then the metals he listed later are likely to include "gold".

doubt

Even if the staff did not read the word "gold" aloud when the subjects were asleep, many subjects would still mention "gold" when listing metals later

terms of settlement

Researchers can examine the performance differences of different experimental groups under different experimental conditions

Specific implementation

1. The first comparison is between different experimental groups: when the staff read the word group aloud, some subjects were awake, while others were asleep. The subjects were randomly assigned to the "sleeping group" or the "awake group". Therefore, comparing the frequency of the content read aloud in the two groups can show that people are more likely to be affected by which of the following situations: 1) hearing reading aloud when awake; 2) "Hear" reading aloud during sleep. The experimental results showed that the proportion of subjects who were awake to hear the staff read aloud was more than twice as high as those who "heard" the reading aloud in sleep. The result of this comparison is not surprising, It shows that the effect of learning when awake is better than that when asleep 。 However, it should be noted that this experiment cannot rule out another possibility: for those sleeping subjects, the reading they "hear" can also play a positive role in their later memory performance.
2. The second is to use two different lists of word groups, one of which includes "metal: gold", and the other includes "flower: iris". Facing all the sleeping subjects, the staff will read one of the word group lists aloud. After being woken up, the subjects were asked about the contents of two lists of word groups. This process allows the experimenter to compare the word groups listed after the subject wakes up, Whether the frequency of phrases "heard" during sleep is higher than that of phrases not heard 。 In other words, the researcher also conducted multi aspect observation and comparison on the same subject.

Final conclusion

• No matter whether the staff has read some word groups to them, there is no real difference in the frequency of their later reference to these contents

---

Chapter 2: Memory

1. (a) How the memory system works (b) How do we define various kinds of memory Functional composition

2. Any memory system, whether it is a human brain, a computer hard disk, a video recorder, or a simple file cabinet in the office, needs to be able to do three things if it is to operate normally: code 、 storage , and Extract information effectively 。 If any of the three processes has problems, the memory operation will fail.

   1． code (i.e. receiving or obtaining) information, coding problems, usually Inattention related

   2. Accurately storage Or retain information (if it is a long-term memory, it can be retained for a long time). The storage problem is what we say in our life forget

   3． extract Or read the stored information, whether the information available , and whether the information Accessible 。 Sometimes we can't remember a person's name, but we feel that the name is on the tip of our tongue. We know that we have stored the information somewhere, and we may still remember some of its contents, so in theory, the information is "available", but at this moment, the complete information is far away from us. Although There is a large amount of information stored in people's memory, which has always existed in theory, but usually only a small part of it can be extracted and used at any time. 】

3. Memory is composed of many different components, short-term memory and Long term memory It has different functional components

4. The model proposed by Atkinson and Schifflin in the 1960s

5. Sensory memory Features of
   

   • Sensory memory seems to be Consciousness The following play a role. It obtains information from various senses and retains it for a short time, in which time we will decide which information to pay attention to
   • Sensory memory can store a large number of emerging sensory information very briefly, and the brain will only select a part of it to process.
   • Sensory memory for storing visual information is called Image memory , sensory memory for storing sound information is called Echoic memory

6. Sperling's partial reporting method (Sperling's research method mentioned in the article is too simple to understand, excerpted from Wikipedia)
   

   In 1960, Sperling became the first person to use the partial reporting paradigm to study the dichotomous model of VSTM. In Sperling's initial experiment in 1960, the observer would see an array of 3 × 3 or 3 × 4 letters and numbers as a quick visual stimulus in a short time (50 milliseconds)

   P Y F G

   V J S A

   D H B U

   The subjects recall according to the clues after the stimulus subsides, and guide the subjects to recall a line of letters initially displayed. Memory performance will be compared in two situations: full report and partial report.

   All reports

   Sperling's initial partial reporting paradigm.
   All reporting conditions require participants to recall the location of the element initially displayed as far as possible. Participants were generally able to recall three to five characters out of twelve (approximately 35%). This indicates that all reports are limited by the memory system with a capacity of 4-5 items 。

   Partial report

   Some reporting conditions require participants to use clues to recall and recognize some characters from the visual display. After the stimulus subsides, the tones emitted at different time intervals (about 50ms) are used as clues. The frequency of the tone (high, medium, low) indicates which group of characters in the display to report. Since participants do not know which line will be recalled, the performance in some reporting conditions can be regarded as a random sampling of all the displayed memories of the observers. This type of sampling shows that after the stimulus subsides, participants can recall most letters (9 out of 12 letters) in a given line, indicating that 75% of the whole visual display can be touched by memory, The assumed capacity of image memory originally obtained from all report tests has been greatly increased 。

   

7. Characteristics of short-term memory
   

   • Short term memory can store about seven items. For example, when we dial a new phone number, we use short term memory. Because of limited capacity, once the space of short-term memory is filled, old information will be replaced by new information

   • Proximate effect The subjects recalled a word list consisting of 10, 20 or 30 words. If the subjects recall the words immediately after they have just seen them, their memory of the last part of the word list will be much clearer than that of the middle part of the word list. This phenomenon is called recency effect

   • Speech short-term memory mainly stores information in the form of voice or speech

     Conrad and Hull proved that after being presented to the subjects in visual form, it is more difficult to accurately recall the letter sequences with similar sounds (such as P, D, B, V, C, T) than the letter sequences with different sounds (such as W, K, L, Y, R, Z).

8. Characteristics of long-term memory
   

   • Keep paying attention to some information, think about it repeatedly or recite it in the brain, and then these information can be transformed into long-term memory
   • Short term memory Voice storage information However, scholars believe that long-term memory is mainly based on information significance To implement stored
   • Top down Meaning of artificial addition It often leads to distortion and deviation of memory

9. Challenges to Atkinson and Schifflin's Memory Model
   

   1. Does information have to be entered into short-term memory first, and then into long-term memory?
      

      The short-term memory ability of some patients with brain injury shows serious damage, that is, according to Atkinson and Schiffling's model, their short-term memory storage links have been severely damaged. However, these patients do not seem to have trouble with long-term memory

   2. Practicing to repeat the information in short-term memory can not only save the information in short-term memory, but also make it more likely to be transformed into long-term memory
      

      In some studies, subjects spent more time reciting words at the end of the word list, but their long-term memory of these contents did not show any improvement. In some cases, researchers have found that exposure to the same information on multiple occasions (which means more repeated exercises according to reasonable assumptions) is not enough to make people remember the information. As we said in the first chapter, people touch coins every day, but when they recall the details of the heads on coins, their performance is not good.

   3. Semantic encoding（ That is, semantic based information processing is relative to voice ）It will also appear in short-term memory when appropriate, which indicates that Speech coding is not the only form of information expression in short-term memory 。

---

working memory

1. Similarities and differences between working memory and short-term memory

   1. Short term memory was previously viewed more or less as a passive process, but now we know that people Short term memory is more than just storing some information nothing more. If we save a sentence in short-term memory, we can usually recite the sentence backwards or the first letter of each word in the sentence. work The term memory emphasizes the active and active feature of short-term memory Because the information left there has also undergone some processing or operation of thinking.
   2. The terms "working memory" and "short-term memory" are also often used as synonyms for "consciousness"

2. span (span) This term is usually used to refer to the capacity of a person to store information in short-term memory.
   

   • In the 1950s, George Miller defined the typical capacity of short-term memory as 7 ± 2 units, which is for healthy young people
   • Some experts believe that the breadth of short-term memory Voice speed For example, the faster a person can say a word, letter or number in one breath, the wider his short-term memory will be.

3. In 1974, Badley and Graham Hitch proposed The model of working memory , short-term memory is divided into three basic components: Central execution system 、 Voice loop and visuo-spatial sketchpad

4. Badley's Working Memory Model
   

   1. These components are formalized in the working memory model by Central execution system And two ancillary subsystems - Voice loop and visuo-spatial sketchpad (visuospatial sketchpad) and later added Scenario Buffer constitute
   2. By the central execution system Control attention , and Coordinate ancillary subsystems
   3. The voice loop includes voice storage and pronunciation control process, which also enables internal speech
   4. Responsible for the visual board Create and process mental images
   5. The scene buffer (not marked in the figure) is used for integer Combining materials in working memory

5. Voice loop It plays an important role in children's language development and adults' understanding of complex language materials [this should be an internal language function]

6. One-man Memory span (that is, the number of words that he can repeat correctly after listening) is reflected by the time it takes him to say these words, so The time (not memory items) capacity of the voice loop is limited

   • In the short-term memory test, short word lists such as "cold", "cat", "France", "Kansas", "iron" are better than "emphysema", "rhinoceros", "Mozambique", "Connecticut" A long word list such as magnesium "is much easier to remember, although the two lists have the same number of words and are selected from the same semantic category (respectively: disease, animal, country name, American state name and metal name) - this is Word length effect
   • It takes different time to count from 1 to 10 in different languages: for people who use different languages, The breadth of their number memory is closely related to the speed at which they can read numbers with their own language pronunciation [This is why I think it is difficult to listen to English numbers, which may be that the speed of reading English numbers is much slower than that of Chinese, while the time capacity of people's voice circuits is limited, and they cannot remember English numbers in a short time]

7. visuo-spatial sketchpad What is provided is a medium for temporarily storing and processing images. In terms of short-term memory capacity, parallel visual and spatial memory tasks will interfere with each other. From this phenomenon, we can infer the existence of the visuospatial sketchpad [here, parallel vision and spatial memory tasks probably mean to see different things at the same time, similar to Zhou Botong's left and right hand interaction]

8. Central execution system It is the attention and operation strategy needed to coordinate working memory

   research method Bardelli and his colleagues used the dual task method: the first task the subjects did was to keep their central executive system busy, while the researchers measured the implementation of the second task to determine whether the central executive system also participated in the second task. If the completion of the second task becomes worse because it is carried out at the same time as the first task, it can be inferred that the central execution system also participates in the second task. In order to keep the central executive system of subjects busy, researchers have designed a variety of tasks, and "generating random letter sequences" is one of them. Subjects were asked to write many letter sequences, but need to avoid meaningful letter sequences in real life, such as "C-A-T", "A-B-C" or "S-U-V". The subjects kept an eye on the selection of letters while writing the letter sequence, which kept the central execution system busy

9. Scenario Buffer The information extracted from long-term memory usually needs to be connected with Current demand These requirements are realized by working memory.
   

   Badley gave an example: we can imagine an elephant playing ice hockey. He suggested that we have the ability to go beyond the information about elephants and ice hockey provided to us by long-term memory, to further imagine that the elephant is pink, to imagine how the elephant holds the bat, and even to imagine where it might play on the court. Therefore, Situational buffers allow us to go beyond the existing information stored in long-term memory ， Combine information in new ways to create new situations and take future actions based on these new situations 。

---

Semantic, situational and procedural memory

10. Episodic memory It can be defined as your memory of the events you experienced, such as "what did you do last weekend", Semantic memory It is the memory of facts and concepts, such as "which city is the capital of France". [You first learned that Mount Everest is the highest peak in the world under a specific situation, and then gradually, you repeatedly contacted this information several times. After a period of time, this information turned into a semantic information.], Program memory For example, remember a series of necessary body operation steps for cycling

11. Explicit memory It refers to being able to clearly realize what the information, experience or situation you recall is when you recall. There are many analogies between explicit memory and episodic memory. Implicit memory It means that the previous experience has affected the subsequent behavior, feelings or thoughts, but we do not consciously recall those previous experiences. For example, one morning you passed a Chinese restaurant on your way to work, and later that day you might want to go out for a lunch, but you didn't realize that this intention was affected by your morning experience.

12. The fundamental difference between explicit memory and implicit memory in terms of functional structure is that Whether it involves conscious recollection of previous events 。

13. Recognition Consciously recall learned information, Unconscious memory This is a test of perceptual recognition tasks, such as recognizing words that have flashed quickly before

14. Commercial advertisements may achieve their goals mainly by influencing implicit memory. Experiments show that people will find advertisements they have seen more attractive than advertisements they have never seen before. This phenomenon is called“ Exposure effect ”。

15. Concept driven memory task People need to think about meanings and concepts. If you look at a group of words carefully and are asked to remember them, you will definitely recall the words themselves. Material driven memory task People are required to focus on the memory material itself. If your task is to complete the incomplete words (such as e_e_h_n_n) and you cannot view the words you have seen before, then the impact of the previous learning process may be more implicit than explicit. When you fill in words, you mainly rely on the visual arrangement of letters, and use less (or even no) meaning of words, which is a task driven by materials.

16. remember It was defined as that the subjects had such a phenomenon experience that they did see those specific words in the previous memory test. On the contrary, someone may just know A word in the previous word list does not recall that word specifically.

    Research shows that semantic processing (which emphasizes the meaning of words more) will cause more "remember" reactions than voice processing (which focuses on the pronunciation of words). However, as far as the "know" response is concerned, the results of semantic processing and voice processing are not much different.

17. Levels of memory processing ：“ surface ”Hierarchy only deals with the physical properties of memory materials“ Deeper ”The level of is related to the phonetic characteristics of memory materials, and A deeper level It involves semantic coding of the meaning of materials. As far as the memory performance in the test is concerned, "deep level" information encoding processing is better than "surface level" processing. More in-depth semantic processing involves further development based on the meaning of words, which reflects deeper processing and usually brings more profound memories (for example, for dogs, we may think of different kinds of dogs, their origins, what functions they initially assumed, and the characteristics of specific breeds of dogs, etc.).

---

Chapter 3: Surprise

1. Coding specificity principle : What we can extract depends largely on the context in which the information was first encoded and classified, and to what extent the extraction environment matches this context

   Many of us have met friends or acquaintances in unusual circumstances, but we didn't recognize them at once, which made us feel embarrassed. If we are used to seeing acquaintances in workplaces or schools wearing specific clothes, we may not recognize them at once when we see them wearing very different clothes at weddings or in high-end restaurants.

2. memory (recall) Information refers to recalling the information in the mind. There are usually some Clue Triggering or facilitating memories. The clues are very general and do not provide much information. Memories based on such ambiguous prompts are generally called Free Memory , provided more information and tried to obtain some specific information. When the cue is more directional, the corresponding recall process is called Clue recall 。 Clue recall is easier for subjects than free recall

3. Recognition (recognition): When information is presented again, our ability to recognize past events or information is called recognition. Regard it as different Extraction type The simplest of the two, because the memory materials that need to be extracted have actually been partially presented, you, as a respondent, only need to make judgments. Clue recall is usually easier than free recall, and recognition is generally easier than free recall and clue recall

   • Forced selection and recognition It means presenting two options in front of you, such as two things, of which only one you have seen before, and then being asked to tell you which one you have seen before. This is a forced choice. You must choose between the two
   • Yes/No Recognition For example, I show you some items, one at a time, and ask you: "Have you seen this before?" In this case, you only need to simply answer "Yes" or "No" for each item.

   Two independent processes conducive to recognition

   1. Situation extraction Context extraction depends on "explicit memory" of time and place. For example, you recognize a person who you saw on the bus you took home from work last Friday. In this type of recognition experience, you need to remember the time and place of your previous experience.

   2. be familiar with : You may feel that someone is familiar. You know that you have met before, but you can't remember when and where you met: you are familiar with this person (familiarity)

      One of the basic principles of successful advertising is that it makes certain products more familiar to the public, and people prefer familiar things to unfamiliar things

---

Many of us have also experienced a strange phenomenon, which is mainly due to a misplaced sense of familiarity: We feel that a certain situation is "familiar" 。 People feel that a certain situation is something they have experienced before, but they cannot recall the previous events accurately, nor can they find any evidence to prove that this event has actually happened. In the case of "deja vu", the familiarization mechanism may be operating incorrectly, so new things or scenes also trigger a sense of familiarity. In addition, some researchers suggest that hypnosis can also lead to the feeling of deja vu. Then, the brain mechanism that triggers the sense of deja vu may be different from the operating mechanism when we are fully awake.

★ When I read this paragraph, I felt awe inspiring. I had a deep experience of this feeling long ago. It turned out to be a dislocation of brain mechanism.

The Influence of Context on Memory and Recognition

1. memory Relatively vulnerable to environmental impact, but Recognition Usually less vulnerable
   

   In two famous experiments, Gordon and Badley asked divers to remember some information on the shore or underwater. Subsequently, divers were tested in the same environment and in different environments. The results show that in terms of divers' memories, Whether the environment of information coding and memory testing is the same will greatly affect the results 。 If divers remember information and are tested underwater or on land, they can remember more information. However, if the environment in which they remember information is different from that in which they are tested - the former is underwater, the latter is on land, or the former is on land, and the latter is underwater - the memory performance of divers will decline significantly.

   This rule is only obvious for memory, but not for recognition. It can be seen that providing a context similar to that of the original learning when testing memory is very helpful for effective memory, but has little impact on recognition.

2. Memory performance is also affected by individual physical and mental state. Alcohol, drugs and drugs can affect people's mental state, so they will also affect people's memory performance. The dependence of memory on state seems to occur in many different situations, but researchers have consistently found through systematic experiments that, Only when the memory is tested in the way of free recall can it reflect the dependence of memory on state 。 If the experiment tests cue recall or recognition, the effects of state and situation changes are not consistent.

3. If we have been exposed to some information before, when we are exposed to the same information again, even if there is no obvious memory sign, our performance will be different due to previous exposure. such Unconscious memory effect There may be some problems. I'm afraid that this kind of unconscious influence on memory is behind many behavioral intervention means, such as political propaganda.

4. We can regard the different manifestations of memory as a continuum: free recall... cue recall... recognition... familiarity... unconscious influence on behavior. This thought suggests that the difference between these different forms of memory is due to The intensity of memory is different In other words, the availability of information is different.

   This idea also has its potential problems. For example, being able to recall information does not necessarily mean being able to recognize information correctly. Moreover, some factors will have opposite effects on recognition and memory performance, such as word frequency. High frequency words like "table" are easier to recall than low frequency words like "anchor", but low frequency words are easier to recognize 。 In addition, deliberately acquired information is usually easier to recall than accidentally acquired information, but unintentionally acquired information is sometimes easier to recognize. The key is that when the memory encoding process is directly affected, the memory results obtained under specific memory parameters will become different, sometimes even unexpected.

5. Two important aspects of coding specificity
   

   1. In the original information, only those The parts that have been specially emphasized in the learning process can be coded 。

   2. In order to successfully recall information, the prompts given in the test need to be consistent with some characteristics of the encoded information. In other words, The recall effect depends on the matching degree between the code and the clue 。

6. To achieve the best recall effect, the type of information processing involved in the test needs to be properly matched with the type of processing when obtaining information.

Chapter 4: Memory Bias

1. Two Traditional Views on the Existence of Forgetting

   1. Memory just fades or dissipates, just like in the physical environment, objects fade, wear and lose luster after a period of time. This view regards forgetting and memory as Relative passivity Process of
   2. Forgetting occurs when memory traces become confused, blurred or overlapping. In other words, forgetting happens interfere Consequences.

   A more unified view : Both of these processes occur, but it is often difficult to distinguish them, because the effect of time (that is, the fading and dissipation of memory) and the interference of other information usually coexist. However, there is evidence that, Interference may be a more critical mechanism for forgetting

2. The peak of memory occurs in the second half of people's lives when they recall their past experiences. under these circumstances, The memory of different stages of life is uneven. People remember most things that happened between adolescence and early adulthood 。 The peak of memory is due to many events that happened in early life, which are especially important: many of them often With a lot of emotion

3. In the information acquisition stage, organizing information according to meaning can sometimes improve the performance of memory tests. However, some ways of organizing information acquisition may also distort the subsequent memory results.

4. Fundamental mode （schemata）； It refers to the meaning structure obtained by organizing the past experience. These templates help us understand familiar situations, guide our expectations, and provide a framework for processing new information

5. Memory capacity interacts with existing knowledge (and perhaps interest and motivation), thus determining which information can be effectively remembered.

6. People have their own expectations about the common activities in life (seeing a doctor, attending lectures, going to restaurants, etc.), and these expectations can provide a model that can promote or mislead our memory. People tend to remember information that is consistent with their mental schema and filter out information that is inconsistent.

7. Reality monitoring It refers to distinguishing which memories are related to real events and which are from dreams or other imaginary sources

   External memory It has the following attributes: 1) It has stronger sensory properties; 2) More specific and complex; 3) It occurs in a specific and credible time and place situation.

   Internally generated memory It contains more traces of reasoning and imagination, which are left in the process of generating internal memory.

8. eyewitness testimony
   

   ● Although highly excited emotions may promote memory (as we have seen before), when someone is under extreme pressure, their attention may be quite limited (for example, they only pay attention to dangerous weapons), and their perception is often biased.

   ● Related to the above point, people in violent events usually have poor memory ability, because self-protection is the key point at this time (for example, people will call certain cognitive resources to find a way to escape, or find tools for self-defense, instead of focusing on remembering the appearance and identity of criminals).

   ● Similarly, weapons at the crime scene can distract eyewitnesses from criminals.

   ● Although we are better at recognizing faces than recalling information, clothing is often an important reason for memory bias. People who happen to wear similar clothes to criminals may be wrongly identified.

   ● People who are different from their own race or nationality are often not good at recognizing their appearance 。 This is true even if we have considerable contact with people of other races (however, this phenomenon does not seem to be related to the degree of racial discrimination).

   Another powerful factor that can cause memory distortion is leading question 。 "Did you see This man Raped that woman? " This is a leading problem. Compared to "Did you see One Man Raped that woman? ", The former question is more likely to allow witnesses to identify related crimes. Therefore, suppose you witnessed an accident at a traffic hub, and then the police asked you whether the car was parked in front of or behind a tree. When asked such a question, you are likely to "add" the tree to the memory scene, even if there is no tree at all. Once the tree is added, it will become part of the memory. It is difficult to distinguish between the real memory and the memory added later.

9. I am very interested in the above concept, which is“ leading question ”I have never thought about this problem before, and I don't know how others manipulate it. Then I see a brief introduction to this issue on Wikipedia, and I will find time to focus on it in the future

10. Change blindness It refers to the psychological phenomenon that some changes in the visual scene are not noticed by the observer. The reasons for this phenomenon include obstacles in the scene, eye movements, changes in location, or lack of attention.

    Here is a demonstration video of TED, which I think is very interesting Change Blindness

11. misinformation effect : After intervention, misleading questioning or providing wrong information, the subject's memory will be distorted. Even if misleading information appears indirectly, such problems will still arise.

    Loftus and his colleagues showed the subjects a set of slides about road traffic accidents. After that, the researcher asked the subjects about that event. When half of the subjects were asked questions, the researcher modified one of the questions: the "avoid" traffic sign was replaced by the "stop" sign. Subjects who received misleading information were more likely to confirm the wrong information in the subsequent memory test. These subjects tended to choose the guideposts mentioned in the misleading questions rather than the ones they saw with their own eyes.

12. Memory should not be regarded as a passive process. Memory is a "top-down" system, which is affected by our Psychological stereotyping (mental set) prejudice 、 Stereotype 、 faith 、 attitude and thought Left and right; Memory is also a "bottom-up" system, which is affected by Sensory input Impact. In other words, memory is not only driven by sensory information from our physical environment. People passively receive this information and store it in memory; On the contrary, based on the influence of our past knowledge and prejudice, we impose meaning on the information we receive, thus rewriting our memory and making it more consistent with our view of the world.

13. False memory

    You can "remember" a word semantically related to a previously presented word that has not previously appeared by stimulating

    People may remember seeing the word "night" when they saw a series of words related to the meaning of "night", such as "dark", "moon", "black", "still", "day"

    By using suggestive or misleading information, we can create memories of "some events", so that people strongly believe that these events have occurred in the past, but in fact these memories are false

    Loftus and Palmer asked some students to watch a series of films, each showing a traffic accident. These students then need to answer questions about these accidents. One of the questions is: "How fast do two cars drive when they are ____ each other?" Among the questions that each group of students sees, the words in the blank space are different, and may be any of the following words: "crash", "crash", "crash", "collision" or "collision". Researchers found that, Students' estimation of vehicle speed will be affected by the verbs selected in the question 。 Loftus and Palmer concluded that, The students' memories of the accident were rewritten by the information implied in the question.

    Loftus and Palmer continue to study this problem. They ask students to watch a film about multiple traffic accidents. The students were asked about the speed again, and one group of students used“ Smash ”(implies faster speed), another set of questions uses "collision". The third group of students was not asked this question. A week later, the students were asked to answer more questions, one of which was: "Did you see any broken glass at the scene of the accident?" Loftus and Palmer found that the verbs in the questions not only affected the students' judgments about the speed of the car, but also affected their answers to the questions about glass a week later. Those students who estimate higher speed are more likely to remember seeing broken glass at the scene of the accident, although there is no broken glass in the film 。 Among the students who had not been asked about the speed before, when they were asked about the glass a week later, few of them answered that they had seen broken glass.

Conclusion: The subsequent misleading information can rewrite the memory of events

---

Chapter 5: Memory impairment

1. Cerebral cortex It can be regarded as a "library" Hippocampus The important long-term memory ("book") "printed" is permanently stored in the cerebral cortex. (Red position, bilateral hippocampus)

2. Anterograde amnesia It means that the forgetting of information memory occurs after the brain damage that leads to memory loss (unable to remember the later events), and Retrograde amnesia It means that information forgetting occurs before the damage (can't remember the previous events)

3. Declarative memory It refers to the memory of facts, events and arguments, which people can recall and consciously express. It is related to Explicit memory There is a large overlap between

4. Squire model (divides long-term memory into declarative (or explicit) memory and procedural (or implicit) memory. Only declarative memory is damaged in patients with amnesia syndrome)

5. Amnesia
   

   • Patients with amnesia cannot learn new information in a long time span, but they can usually recite the information within their working memory;
   • Patients with amnesia may retain childhood memories well, but usually they can hardly obtain new memories, such as the name of the person they just met;
   • Patients with amnesia may know how to look at time, but they can't remember the month, day or week, and they can't remember the layout of their new home;
   • Patients with amnesia may learn such new skills as typing, but even if they have achieved this in behavior, the next time they sit down to type, they will still deny that they have ever used the keyboard!

6. Psychogenic Amnesia Forty five percent of patients usually have memory impairment, but there is no neurological damage to the brain. Multiple personality disorder The patient will have a variety of different personalities and control different aspects of their past life
   

   In the late 1970s, the notorious Los Angeles "mountainside strangler" Kenneth Bianchi was accused of raping and murdering several women. However, in the face of strong evidence identifying him, he still insists on denying his crimes, claiming that he knows nothing about these crimes. However, under hypnosis, another personality called "Steve" appeared. "Steve" is very different from "Kenneth". He claimed that he was responsible for these murders. When Kenneth Bianchi was awakened from his hypnotic state, he had no memory of the dialogue between Steve and the hypnotist. If there are two or more personalities in the same individual, it will obviously create serious judicial problems. Who should be convicted! However, in this case, the court found Bianchi guilty, because the court refused to accept the conclusion that he did have two different personalities.

Chapter 6: Seven Acts of Life

1. The development of memory can be defined as the process of gradually developing more complex memory coding and retrieval strategies (in the process of memory development, The storage capacity of memory is basically stable ）。 This process becomes more significant when semantic knowledge and language ability are more abundant 。 The improvement of various cognitive abilities has a positive impact on memory capacity.
2. The basic mechanism of children's and adults' memory process is the same: information will be gradually forgotten, and can be recovered through prompt, and new information overlapping with previous information will modify memory. However, as children grow up, they can extract information more quickly through various types of retrieval clues after a longer time interval.
3. Research on implicit memory (or unconscious memory) shows that, At the age of three, implicit memory has been fully developed For example, they can already carry out perceptual learning and have a language priming effect. It is worth noting that during the growth of children, this part of memory did not show a jump growth, which may be because the brain region responsible for this part of memory function was fixed earlier in evolution. In fact, implicit memory hardly develops after childhood 。
4. Some recent research results show that, Exercise and healthy diet (Especially the diet with less saturated fatty acids and more antioxidants) is not only conducive to the health of the body, but also helps the elderly to maintain the normal operation of the brain. Brain Training (For example, crossword puzzles, playing chess, or learning new knowledge, such as information technology) can also help maintain neurological and psychological functions. Research shows that the brain maintains a certain degree of growth and repair ability throughout the life of a person, which can be stimulated through mental activities and training.
5. The hippocampus is the part of the brain that mainly participates in memory integration. It is particularly important for the integration of situational memory. The hippocampus is particularly sensitive to brain training Neuron regeneration and connectivity enhancement are more likely to occur after mental stimulation and exercise 。

Chapter 7: Enhancing Memory

1. At present, there is no reliable method to systematically improve the nervous system supporting memory function. However, it is relatively easy to damage the nervous system, Brain injury, alcohol, and various other physiological injuries or drug abuse are enough to do this 。

2. Ebbinghaus concluded that learning time is proportional to the amount of information remembered. Other things being equal, if you spend twice as much time, you can remember twice as much information. This is called Total time hypothesis (This is bullshit. Everyone on earth knows it.)

   • Decentralized practice effect Tell us that it is better to spread the learning time over a period of time rather than concentrate on surprise attack at a certain time. The main principle is to "eat less and eat more". Therefore, the temporary surprise before the exam cannot replace the steady and lasting review at ordinary times.
   • Error free learning It is also a flexible learning strategy, that is, after learning new information, test at intervals. When this information is effectively learned, the interval can be gradually extended. The main purpose here is to give each learning goal as long as possible on the premise that information can be effectively learned. As a learning skill, error free learning is very effective. Another side benefit of error free learning is that it can keep learners' enthusiasm, because the probability of memory errors remains at a low level.
   • Concentrated attention is an effective way to learn 。
   • Encoding information using sound and vision (For example, creating visual images for language content), or creating "mind maps", are very effective learning skills. （ Tony Buzan He has created several books and other works on "mind mapping"
   • The way we process information is also very important. For information that needs to be remembered, people will naturally seek the meaning contained in it. If the information itself lacks meaning, people will give some meaning to the data. According to this phenomenon, a general principle is that within the available time, Try to link the new information with yourself and your environment in detail and concretely 。 Try to understand the information you have learned, rather than passively learning it, which usually improves memory.
   • There is a complex and mutually reinforcing relationship among attention, interest, motivation, proficiency and memory 。 The more knowledge you have in a certain field, the more interested you will be in that field, so your knowledge and interest will promote each other and help you better remember the information related to that field. For example, some memory researchers found that when it is easier for him to obtain and retain new achievements in this field, he will become more professional! The same principle applies to other industries. For example, sales managers can absorb knowledge about new products more quickly based on their decades of product knowledge.

3. be relative to maintenance rehearsal (It is similar to the little monk chanting scriptures), Fine retelling It can better improve long-term memory (this is also a method of Feynman learning, try to teach others what you have learned).

4. No matter what kind of retelling method we use, we can help memory through retrieval exercises with a certain time interval, that is, try to extract information after a certain time interval. This method is also often called Extended retelling or interval extraction

5. Ebbinghaus also observed the benefits of interval learning in his research. He found that if the learning process of meaningless syllables is extended to three days, recall these meaningless syllable groups The time spent can be halved 。 in fact, Divide the data into two separate links for learning, and the memory effect will be doubled compared with the two centralized non separated learning links 。

6. Track memory method

   This technique requires memorizing a series of familiar but different places or locations - students can use the buildings around the school or university to remember. The first item to be memorized is conceived as the first position (i.e. forming an inner image), the second item is conceived as the second position, and so on. Subsequent information recall is to recall these places in the mind and experience the inner image created before. Research shows that this technique is very effective, but its use has limitations: there are often no suitable places and materials for people to create inner images.

   [This is the first time I heard of this memory method, and I haven't done any experiments. But what is described in the article should be the combination of the things to be remembered with the images. Is it a spatial memory method? I'm going to try this method in the future study.]

7. Key word memory method
   

   The track memory method continues to develop into a more flexible keyword memory system, which is constructed through homophony. For example: "1 is aunt, 2 is son, 3 is birth, 4 is silk, 5 is me, 6 is road, 7 is wife, 8 is worship, 9 is wine, 10 is stone." Suppose you need to remember a shopping list, the first item is "birthday card", then you can use keyword memory to link it with images related to "1" and "aunt". You may imagine your aunt receiving a birthday card. If the second item on the list is "orange juice", you can imagine the neighbor's son pouring orange juice into his shoes. Usually, the more peculiar the scene you imagine in your brain, the more effective this memory technique will be. [Is this a bit absurd? Is it really so? I feel a bit suspicious]

   Keywords provide easy to retrieve memory prompts, and the use of images can establish a solid visual spatial connection between memory prompts and memory content.

8. Verbal memory method [This method is similar to the way that we recite "copper, mercury, silver and platinum" when learning chemistry and say "a total of 100 jin", but at that time I still think this method of composing limericks is poor]

9. Metamemory It refers to our understanding of our own memory. Some other studies also show that in some learning situations, when people plan and allocate their learning time, Will be more inclined to focus on the areas they are familiar with or interested in, while ignoring those areas that need more efforts 。 This shows that if we want to learn more effectively, we need to be self disciplined and systematically plan and allocate time to the learning content that needs to be digested and absorbed. (This seems to be the case with me. I always reflect on my previous learning process. It may not be because I can't stick to it, but because I am familiar with those parts at the beginning and can get a sense of achievement. Once I go deep, when I need to work hard, this is beyond my comfort zone, and I feel afraid. In addition, I keep asking how long it will take to end, and finally I scare myself , let myself give up)

---

proposal

• Choose a work environment without too much interference, so that you can focus on the target information instead of the surrounding distractions. Familiar music is more helpful than new music, because unfamiliar music is more likely to cause distraction. In addition, try to actively code information. For example, when reading textbooks, imagine that you are asking the author about the content. Try to connect new information with existing knowledge.
• Think about the internal relationship between various concepts, facts and principles in the field you are studying
• Think extensively about what you have learned and try to apply it to your daily life, such as whether it can help you solve problems you have personally encountered.
• Active learning, not passive learning. It is often said that the best way to learn a subject is to teach it
• The role of information sorting is reflected in two aspects: by sorting out the learned knowledge, when you recall some of the information, you can awaken the memory of the whole knowledge; At the same time, new materials become easier to understand because of the connection between new knowledge and existing knowledge.
• Make good use of the fragmented time in life
• Consider using visual images or mnemonics to enhance your memory.

---

Link to purchase Oxford General Reader