Reflecting on our own learning

Metamemory refers to the understanding that we have of our own memory. How accurate are we at judging how well we have learned something? This is an important consideration — because if we can adequately judge how well (or poorly) we have learned material, we can apply this knowledge to inform our subsequent study plans, spending additional time on material that is less

well learned. What does the objective evidence indicate? If a judgement is made soon after studying material, it seems that we

are comparatively poor at predicting our later memory performance. On the other hand, when the judgement is made after a delay, it seems that we are relatively better at making this judgement. Some additional research suggests that, in some learning situations, people are more likely to schedule their study time with emphasis on areas that they know well or find particularly interesting – but neglecting areas that need work. This finding indicates that we need to discipline ourselves to structure our time systematically across the topics that we are required to assimilate if we are to learn effectively.

The man with a perfect memory

Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory. Albert Schweitzer

People often wish for a ‘perfect memory’. But the following story shows that being ‘able’ to forget has distinct advantages. Shereshevskii (or ‘S’), whose story is reported in Luria’s book The Mind of a Mnemonist, had a truly remarkable memory, which relied very heavily on imagery. He also seemed to manifest a particular phenomenon called synaesthesia, whereby certain stimuli provoke unusual sensory experiences. To a person with this condition, hearing a particular sound might evoke a specific smell, or seeing a certain number might evoke a particular colour.

‘S’ was first discovered when, as a journalist, his editor noticed that he was exceptionally good at remembering instructions that he was given before he investigated a story. Indeed, ‘S’ appeared to manifest close to perfect recall of even apparently meaningless information. However complex the briefing he received, it seemed that he never had to take notes, and he could repeat anything that was said to him almost word for word. ‘S’ took this ability for granted, but his editor persuaded him to see a psychologist, A. R. Luria, for tests. Luria set a series of increasingly complex memory tasks, including lists of more than 100 digits, long strings of

nonsense syllables, poetry in unknown languages, complex figures and elaborate scientific formulae. Not only could ‘S’ repeat this material back perfectly, but he could also perform tasks such as repeating the information back in reverse order. He could even recall the information several years later.

The secret of ‘S’s’ exceptional memory seems to be that he was able to create a wealth of evocative visual and other sensory associations without too much effort, probably related to his synaesthesia. This meant that even information that appeared dry and dull to other people created a vivid multimodal sensory experience for ‘S’ – not only in visual terms but also, for example, in terms of sound, touch, and smell. So ‘S’ could encode and store any piece of information in a very rich and elaborate way.

One may imagine that it would be wonderful to have an almost perfect memory – as ‘S’ did. But in fact, forgetting is generally quite adaptive, in that (as a general rule) we tend to remember those things that are important to us, while those things that are less important to us tend to fade. So, generally speaking, our memory tends to work like a sieve or filtering mechanism to ensure that we don’t remember absolutely everything. By contrast, ‘S’ tended to remember almost everything, and his life became quite miserable. The main problem for ‘S’ seemed to be that new information (such as idle talk from other people) set off an uncontrollable train of distracting memory associations for him. Eventually, ‘S’ could not even hold a conversation, let alone function as a journalist.

Final thoughts

Memory plays a critical role in many aspects of our daily existence. Indeed, without memory many other important capacities (such as language, the identification of familiar objects, or the maintenance of social relationships) would not be possible. It should be apparent after reading this book that memory represents a collection of abilities rather than a unitary capacity (as might be implied by an unfortunate tendency to refer to our memory in the singular in everyday speech). Moreover, memory is not a passive receptacle, nor is it necessarily a truthful recording of events in our lives. It is an active and selective process, with both strengths and weaknesses – which often represent the opposite sides of the same coin. Human memory is prone to a number of errors, many of which we have considered in this book. At the same time, our memory tends to record important events in our lives. So, we may propose the following seven defining features of memory:

1. Memory is important to people; it plays a role in comprehension, learning, social relationships, and in many other aspects of life.
2. Memory for a past event or information is indicated whenever a past event or information influences someone’s thoughts, feelings, or behaviour at some later time. (The person need not be aware of any memory for the past event, and might not even have been aware of the event when it occurred; the intention to remember is also unnecessary.)
3. Memory is observed through free recall, cued recall, recognition, familiarity, and other behavioural changes such as priming and our physical actions.
4. Memory seems to involve more than just one system or type of process, as there is evidence that different sorts of memories can be influenced differently by specific manipulations or variables.
5. Memory is difficult to study – in that it must be inferred from observable behaviour.
6. Memory is not a veridical copy of a past event — events are constructed by people as they occur; remembering involves the re-construction of the event or information.
7. Psychologists have improved our understanding of many variables that influence memory, but there is still much to learn. Nevertheless, we can each be wiser users of our own memory by using effective mnemonic strategies and directing our efforts appropriately to help us learn and remember information.