INTRODUCTION
A. Background
of the Study
The older you are the less you can
remember. People tend to remember less, not because they have trouble absorbing
new information but because the brain can’t forget old memories. As people grow
older, their brains have a harder time weakening the connections that form long
term memories, making it more difficult to form new long term memories. (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/22/science/older-brain-is-willing-but-too-full-for-new-memories.html?_r=0)
Memory is affected by sleep. The
ability to form new memories is greatly affected by sleep and sleep is where
those memories are strengthened, creating long-term memories. “When we first
form memories, they’re in a very raw and fragile form, sleep seems to be a
privileged time when the brain goes back through recent memories and decides
both what to keep and what not to keep,” says sleep expert Dr. Robert Stickgold
of Harvard Medical School. (http://newsinhealth.nih.gov/issue/apr2013/feature2)
Memories can be warped and changed
as time passes. The human memory is highly unreliable, and this is why
eyewitness testimonies are no longer used as evidence in court. Xu Liu of the RIKEN-MIT Center for Neural
Circuit Genetics explains how memories change like this; "In the English
language there are only 26 letters, but the combinations of letters make
unlimited words and sentences, this is also true for memories." Memory
changes every time people try to remember it, and every time they do, they
could also be making changes to it Dr. Liu further explains. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23447600)
Memory starts working at
a very young age. Developmental
psychologist, Carole Peterson conducted an experiment with her colleagues. Children
ages 4 to 13 were asked about their earliest memories, and then those children
were asked the same question two years later. The result; older children likely
recalled the same memories, but the younger ones gave completely new ones. This
means that memories can form in even very young children but the problem is in
retrieving those memory years after. (http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/11/
the-makings-of-our-earliest-memories/?_r=0)
A common misconception
about the brain is that it can forget long term memories. People think that because
they cannot recall a certain event, the brain already doesn’t have that
information. Because of this, people most commonly see memory like a wound that
disappears after some time. But research tends to find the opposite, that the
brain still does have these certain information but without frequent use, these
memories gets harder to access.
“Even though your brain still holds this information, you might not
always have access to it,” said neurobiologist Jeffrey Johnson of the
University of California, Irvine. (http://www.wired.
com /wiredscience /2009/09/forgottenmemories/)
Knowledge about memory
and learning about how it works may lead to a better memory. Clearing common
misconceptions about memory, can give the reader awareness and help in avoiding
pitfalls related to improving memory.
This research paper
focuses on common misconceptions and debunking it to provide the reader with
better information on how memory works.
B. Statement of the Problem
This
study aims to answer this question:
1.
What are the common misconceptions people make
about memory?
C. Significance of the Study
Teachers and
professors. This research would benefit teachers and professors because
they would be able to make use of this information to help their students
better remember their lessons and prepare lesson plans and other activities
that work better in terms of being able, for the students, to retain it.
Future researchers.
Future researchers would benefit in this study because of the information
given. It will give them a general idea of the workings of memory and be able
to expand the idea from there.
D. Scope and Delimitation
This study focuses on stating common misconceptions about
memory and finding the reason on why they are wrong. As well as restating these
common misconceptions to turn them into something that is truthful.
Because of time constraints, this study will only mention a
few of these most famous misconceptions about memory and will not be able to
provide them all. This study will also focus more on misconceptions leaning
towards the topic of long-term memories.
E. Materials and Methods
This research will be employing a descriptive method for its
purpose, since the aim of the study is to state and clear misconceptions about
memory through explanation and interpretation. Therefore this method is deemed
most appropriate.
Information found in this research was gathered from various
articles found on the web.
Chapter 2
DISCUSSION
What are the
common misconceptions people make about memory?
I.
Definition
and Types of Memory
Memory is the process
the brain use to acquire, store, retain and retrieve information. It is used in
everyday life, and without it people would remain as logical and as smart as a
newly born, maybe even less. (http://psychology.about.com/od/cognitivepsychology/a/memory.htm)
There are different
types of memories, one of which is the long term memory.
Long term
memories are information found by the brain to be important enough to be held
on the hippocampus then transferred to the areas in your cerebral cortex (the
part of your brain where long term memories are stored). In theory, the
capabilities of our long term memory are unlimited and the information stored
here lasts for a lifetime. The only consideration is its constraint of being
rather hard to access without frequent use. (http://www.simplypsychology.org/long-term-memory.html)
The other type of memory, albeit a bit weaker is the short term memory.
Short term memories are prone to overload, they are the information that we are
currently aware of. They are information perceived by the brain that cause only
temporary changes in the brain and disappears after a while because the brain
did not deemed it important enough to store for long term. It is important to
note that long term memories stored in the brain also started out as short
term. (http://www.preservearticles.com/201104165502/difference-between-short-term-memory-and-long-term-memory.html)
II.
Common
Misconceptions About Memory
A. Photographic Memory
Photographic
memory, or eidetic memory in proper terms, is when a person can recall events,
images and other objects with such accuracy; it's almost like seeing it in a
photograph. But why it
cannot be true is because of the following reasons;
Some scientists believe that the brain never forgets, and that what
really causes us to forget is not in the storing of the memory, but in
retrieving it. In Sarah McLeod's article "Forgetting" from Simple
Psychology, she talks about Retrieval Failure Theory or when...
“....the information is in long term memory, but cannot be
accessed. Such information is said to be
available (i.e. it is still stored) but not accessible (i.e. it cannot be
retrieved). It cannot be accessed because the retrieval cues are not
present." (http://www.simplypsychology.org/forgetting.html)
Retrieval cues. Retrieval cues are hints that can help retrieve a
particular memory. When we store a memory we also store a retrieval cue that
can help remember that memory when encountering that same situation. But, photographic
memory works without cues and is said to work on thin air, without any cues
whatsoever, nothing physically present in the present that can help remember
and therefore requires more effort in uncovering that specific memory.
Another thing
is to retrieve a past event, what people without photographic memory do is to
piece together the various sensory information that was stored (sight, sound,
touch) to create one giant picture. Now because of this particular process why people
are very good at only remembering a very general concept of an event, but not
so much in its details. And it is also because of this process why memory is
subjected to so much change. (http://www.human-memory.net/processes_recall.html)
Furthermore
there is only one person who was documented to have this ability. According to
Joshua Foer from the Slate in his article Kaavya Syndrome there is one person
that supposedly has this skill, and she was born in the 1970's. Her name is
Elizabeth.
"In 1970, a Harvard vision scientist
named Charles Stromeyer III published a landmark paper in Nature about a
Harvard student named Elizabeth, who could perform an astonishing feat.
Stromeyer showed Elizabeth's right eye a pattern of 10,000 random dots, and a
day later, he showed her left eye another dot pattern. She mentally fused the
two images to form a random-dot stereogram and then saw a three-dimensional
image floating above the surface." (http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2006/04/kaavya_syndrome.html)
Elizabeth,
supposedly can recall random dot patterns with such accuracy that she can even
make a 3D image out of them. However the methods and documentary of this skill
is somewhat cloudy. First of all Charles Stromeyer, the man who administered
the test, turned out to be her future-husband, and secondly the fact that the
test has never been repeated.
B.
“Memory Works
Like a Video Camera”
The myth that
memory works like a video camera. It suggests that the brain records everything
it sees, hear, touch, feel, and taste as it happened. It's not, because if the
brain pays attention to everything it ever sensed, it would be overloaded with
information.
According to
Evan Lerner, from Penn News, in his article ‘Penn Researchers Show that
Suppressing the Brain’s “Filter” Can Improve Performance in Creative Tasks’
“When we use objects in daily life, our
cognitive control helps us focus on what the object is typically used for and
‘filters out’ irrelevant properties,” said Evangelia Chrysikou an assistant
professor at the University of Kansas. (http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/news/penn-researchers-show-suppressing-brain-s-filter-can-improve-performance-creative-tasks)
This
means that even though the brain gathers all the information we perceive, (via
sight, sound, and taste) at the same time, it largely filters those information
as well. And the brain does this with ‘filters.’
According
to Jennifer Welsh, from Live Science, in her article ‘Clearing the
Mind: How the Brain Cuts the Clutter.’
"The brain doesn't have enough
capacity to process all the information that is coming into your senses,"
said study researcher Julio Martinez-Trujillo, of McGill University in
Montreal. "We found that there are some cells, some neurons in the
prefrontal cortex, which have the ability to suppress the information that you
aren't interested in. They are like filters." (http://www.livescience.com/13690-brain-clutter-filtering-brain-cells-110413.html)
Meaning, that
through some neurons in the prefrontal cortex, which have the ability to
suppress the information that they aren't interested in, the brain effectively
filters out information by letting them act as filters, that lets in only the
most important signals our bodies perceives.
A
well-known demonstration can show how effective this filter works. In Jeremy
Dean’s article ‘Absent-Mindedness: A Blessing in Disguise? ’ from Psyblog, he
talks about the ‘door study'.
“Here unwitting students are asked by an experimenter
for directions. While they are talking, two men carrying a door walk between
the experimenter and the student. Also hiding behind the door is another person
who swaps places with the original experimenter and carries on the conversation
with the student.” (http://www.spring.org.uk/2008/01/absent-mindedness-blessing-in-disguise.php)
In this
demonstration people are talking to an experimenter. While talking, another
person swaps places with the original experimenter usually through a passing
door and carries on the conversation with the person. Only about half noticed
that they were talking to another person.
The
brain filters information as a way to let itself process quicker, by
discounting all the useless information not needed to survive.
III.
Why
Memory Misconceptions Keep on Spreading
After stating some of the common misconceptions people make
about memory,
One
more thing to ask is why are these misconceptions so prevalent? The researcher hypothesized
that movies, advertisements and other forms of media are to blame.
Daniel J. Simons and Christopher F.
Chabris has this to say, from their research article "What People Believe
about How Memory Works: A Representative Survey of the U.S. Population"
found on Plos One;
"The
prevalence of mistaken beliefs in the general public implies that similar
misunderstandings likely are common among jurors and could well lead to flawed
analyses of testimony that involves memory. At least for these basic properties
of memory, commonsense intuitions are more likely to be wrong than right.
" (http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0022757)
The researcher uses the common misconception
of the existence of a photographic memory as an example. Through Medias like
movies and television series, this particular misconception has been reiterated
hundreds of times in the minds of the viewers.
These media have been showing these kinds
of movies, not only very recently but also in the past decades. An example of a
famous movie that does this is “Good Will Hunting.” A movie aired in 1997 wherein
the protagonist is a genius janitor that possess a photographic memory. An even
older and more famous example is the “X-men,” a comic that started in the
1960’s which features a mutant, named ’Professor X’ that also possess a
photographic memory.
More recent examples of media
reiterating the existence of a photographic memory includes; Dr. Sheldon Cooper
from the Big Bang Theory, Dr. Douglas "Doogie" Howser from Doogie
Howser, M.D. and Jimmy Neutron from The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius
which is a kids show that used to air in Nickelodeon.
Aside from movies and comics that keep
on reiterating this urban legend, this particular myth became famous because of
psychics. People that claim to be able to bend spoons with their minds, have
ESP, along with photographic memories and other psychic abilities.
Chapter
3
SUMMARY,
CONCLUSIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS
I.
Summary
This paper attempted
to clear common misconceptions people know about memory. The paper used a
descriptive method to state and clear misconceptions about memory through the
use of various gathered information from articles. The research findings are
the following:
1.
Some well-known statements about memory are
actually true. Like getting older does result in poorer memory, or that memory
is affected by sleep.
2.
There are still misconceptions people use about
memory. Like the existence of a photographic memory.
3.
A photographic memory does not exist
4.
Memory does not work like a video camera.
II.
Conclusions
Based
on the findings of this study, the following conclusions are drawn:
1.
Some common misconceptions about memory include
the existence of a photographic memory and that memory works like a video
camera.
III.
Recommendations
After
drawing the conclusions of the study, the researchers hereby make the following
suggestions/ recommendations:
1.
Research should be done for the readers, to gain
further insights on the statements made about memory. This is to avoid
misconceptions and false statements about memory
2.
Future Researchers should further add to the
list of the common misconceptions about memory and make research to start to
debunk these misconceptions.
References
A. Electronic Media
“Older
brains is willing but too full for new memories” Retrieved August 2013
(http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/22/science/older-brain-is-willing-but-too-full-for-new-memories.html?_r=0)
“Sleep
On It” Retrieved August 2013
(http://newsinhealth.nih.gov/issue/apr2013/feature2)
“Scientists
can implant false memories into mice” Retrieved August 2013
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23447600)
“the
making of our earliest memories” Retrieved August 2013
(http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/11/the-makings-of-our-earliestmemories/?_r=0)
“Brain is built to forget, research
says / MRIs in Stanford study show active suppression of memories” Retrieved August
2013
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Brain-is-built-to-forget-research-says-MRIs-in-2831647.php
“Forgotten Memories Are Still in Your
Brain” Retrieved August 2013
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/forgottenmemories/
“Absent mindedness, a blessing in
disguise” Retrieved August 2013
(http://www.spring.org.uk/2008/01/absent-mindedness-blessing-in-disguise.php)
“Definition of memory” Retrieved
August 2013
(http://psychology.about.com/b/2008/12/15/memory-psychology-definition-of-the-week.htm)
“long
term memory” Retrieved August 2013
(http://www.simplypsychology.org/long-term-memory.html)
“Difference
between short term memory and long term memory” Retrieved August 2013
(http://www.preservearticles.com/201104165502/difference-between-short-term-memory-and-long-term-memory.html)
“kaavya_syndrome
“ Retrieved August 2013
(http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2006/04/kaavya_syndrome.html)
“penn-researchers-show-suppressing-brain-s-filter-can-improve-performance-creative-tasks”
Retrieved August 2013
(http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/news/penn-researchers-show-suppressing-brain-s-filter-can-improve-performance-creative-tasks)
“brain-clutter-filtering-brain-cells”
Retrieved August 2013
(http://www.livescience.com/13690-brain-clutter-filtering-brain-cells-110413.html)
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