Explain these two phenomena about memory and why they might be suprising to an average person not taking this course: A) Memory is more efficient because it is fuzzy vs. precise. Thisleads to memory construction (making stuff up), and we all do this. B) The types of things you are better and worse at remembering are, in part, a function of your culture.
Memory is more efficient because it is fuzzy versus precise. This leads to memory construction, and we all do this.
According to the Fuzzy-Trace Theory (FTT), memory is processed in a dual way. There is verbatim memory and gist memory, and both are different processes. When people retrieve memories, (recollected retrieval), they reinstate a past event and essentially repeat it in their brains within the context in which the event occurred. Gist representations do not reinstate surface details of a memory, but the semantic features of a memory.
This being said, the nature of human memory is not to bring back an event from the past exactly as it happened. A lot of processes take place collaterally and parallel in the process of encoding memories and committing information to memory. What actually happens is that the processing of memory retrieval depends on a lot of reconstruction. In the process of reconstructing an event, there will be a combination of correlations, connections, emotions, and feelings that will make the process prone to error and misrepresentation. Some of these misrepresentations, or distortions, depend on the way that each individual’s brain functions work. Therefore, people who have cognitive dissonance or deficits will never be able to put together a memory with enough accuracy and context. Like the question says, none of us really can.
As events occur, we are busy living our lives and many not be fully aware of details that are going on during an event. Hence, when we are put on the spot and are asked about it, we can only be able to provide what we can contextually and semantically build up again from the little information we were able to retain.
What may surprise someone not taking this course is the fact that we rely on memories to identify criminal, recreate life stories, write our own memories, and get our education. Who could say that we do not actually just make up proxies of reality all day long and this is how we, as humans, have learned to define the idea of “truth.” Scary!
B) The types of things you are better and worse at remembering are, in part, a function of your culture.
Culture is not just a profile of the region that we are from, or the foods we eat, or the unique music that makes us dance. It is a composite of ideals, idiosyncrasies, tenets, ethos, philosophies and much more. The way we are raised and brought up defines us as adults. This is because these are the times to set up goals, and bestow expectations upon us that go hand in hand with the ideals that our families believe in.
Therefore, the things that produce positive memories likely have to do with all the positive reinforcements that were used to curb and foster our behaviors. For example, the smell of specific foods eaten during special celebrations are memories that we always hold dear. So are the memories about music, TV show jingles, and even the voices of our favorite teachers. All of those memory markers shaped us into who we are. Since they were positive reinforcements, they shaped our behaviors and characters in an equally positive way. The exact opposite happens with negative reinforcements. Things that were done to shape our cultural persona in a negative way will be removed from memory altogether or will exist as bad memories for the rest of our lives.
What may surprise people not taking this course is that they will never truly realize how every single thing counts in the process of memory making and memory extinction, and thus all actions are equally influential.