All right, welcome back. more talk on memory. And I'm going to start a theme in this lecture that really will continue throughout all of the week. And, and that theme is the notion that although we often kind of think of memory as a really kind of static thing in fact, what memory is, is a set of processes that the brain uses to store and change itself, really. every experience we have leads to some sort of change in our memory. and that makes memory very dynamic. very, well. Like I like to say, more like a verb than a noun. it's an active kind of thing. and so I want to try and demonstrate that to you today and get you thinking about it. through a demonstration that relates to something that often we all kind of ask. Which is, could I actually make my memory better? Could I somehow enhance my memory? So within the context of that question, I think you'll get a sense of this dynamic memory system that I'll be highlighting. Okay, so let's go at it. Alright, so week five lecture two now I've highlighted the, the noun part. Memory is not a singular noun. so I said last time, you know, we sometimes think of it like bed bed being a singular thing. So I wanted to tell you there are multiple memories, but not only are there multiple memories, but yeah, memory is more like karate. You know? If you think of the word karate. It's a, it's word about an activity and that's sort of what memory is. It's a word that represents an activity of the brain. so when people talk about memory. one of the first things they'll say is okay, memory is not a video camera. And, and that's a really important concept to get through. It is not the case that we simply look at things in the world or listen and somehow form a permanent record. Flawless, completely accurate in our mind that reflects that event. And then later we're able to replay that. It sometimes feels like that, but that is not how human memory works. Instead it involves multiple stages, all of which are flawed. All of which contain or, or work with assumptions all of which deal with partial information. And the fact that we can sort of replay a memory, and it feels like an accurate replay of a past event. That's more illusory than fact. There are parts that are accurate, but there's a lot that's not. and so that's a big story, and we're going to unpack that story across a few lectures. And I want to begin by just highlighting a distinction a lot of memory researchers draw about certain components or, or steps in the process of memory that are, that are really, that are very important. so first of all is the encoding step. when you experience some event, remember that, that experiment I showed you where people were talking to somebody and then we actually, with a, with a sheet of plywood or something, changed the person they were talking to. And often they didn't even realize that the person was changed. Well what that says is that any time we're in the world, and we're experiencing the world, we're not experiencing the entire world. We are selecting various bits that we're paying attention to and thinking about, and there's a whole lot about the world that we're not actually attending to, not forming a very strong representation of at any given time. We're actually only getting little bits and pieces. And so, you know, and this is even just a visual thing, imagine this individual with a visual world laid out. They can only attend to some of it at a time, and for anything to get into memory, it first of all has to be encoded. You have to have paid attention to it. so if you have any flaws at the very first step of memory then you're going to see poor memory. If you don't get the information into your mind well then you're going to not be able to get it out. It won't ever be there to get out. so that step's encoding. Now, that step is very much tied to the next step. And really, this, these two together will kind of be the story of the day. But it's not just a question of paying attention to it. But it's also a question of what you mentally do with the information. Remember that working memory thing? How you kind of think about the information, and if you think about it the right way, specifically if you form associations to existing information, and if you use imagery, or other sensory modalities to represent that information. You can, in fact, remember it better. So, it's, it's really important how you put the information into memory. You have to attend. And you have to kind of store it right. You have to do some work on the front end. and then of course, there's retrieval. We've all had the experience of trying to remember something that we know we know. The tip of the tongue phenomenon. Oh, what was the name of that actor in the movie? And you know you know that person's name. you know that you did these things, you paid attention to it at some point. You had it in your, in your memory, in fact you may have even retrieved it in the past. But right now, you can not retrieve it and what that shows is that this is a very important step too. To fish that information out of your memory is obviously critical. If you can't do that, you're not going to remember the information, even though you stored it well. We're going to spend a lot more time on retrieval in subsequent lectures, but for this one, I want to focus on these two steps. And I want to really try to make this part crystal clear to you. because often, if somebody wants to improve their memory, or if you look at some mnemonic strategy, that's what they're called, strategies that teach you how to improve your memory, it's this part they work on, because the claim is, that if you put the information in memory, in a smart, structured way, then it will be easy to get it out. So let me try to make that argument. Now this is something, I'm going to do something with you guys that I've never done without having a live audience. It's kind of a live audience demo. But I'm going to try to do it, and I found a way to do it. So let me first of all explain to you what I have here. I'm going to try to show you the importance of association, and the importance of what we're going to call retrieval cues. So, what I have here, is a set of items that represent my morning ritual, if you will. We all have a, you know, a, a ritual, especially on a week day that where we tend to repeat the same thing every day. And for me, I wake up in bed. I go downstairs and have breakfast. I take my dogs for a walk. I feed my dogs. I have a shower. I get dressed. I hop in my car. I, I go past a school along the way. I then go past a church. I then go past a mosque. I get to my university, and I go to my office. So, these. Bed, breakfast, dog walk, feed dogs, shower, dress, car, school, church, mosque, university, office. These are words that I can, you know without looking, I can now pull out quite fast. So, you know, I'll just, I'll look up here, but bed. Breakfast walk dogs, feed dogs, shower, dress, get in the car, pass my old school, church mosque university, and class. Yeah, got em all. So, those are already there. Now, the good news is, because that that's already in my head and because all I really have to do to bring those back is relive my mornings, which are almost always the same, these become really good kind of anchors to stick new information on. This is already in my memory in a preorganized way. So, if I want to take some new information and memorize it, I can use something like this. some structured thing that;s already in my information and if I associate each new bit of information with one of these, and especially if I use imagery while I'm doing it, then I can use these as my fishing lines, to pull this new random information, as you'll see, out of my memory. That's what I want to demonstrate today. Let's see if it'll work. Okay, so what I would normally do now, with a live audience, is I would ask the audience to give me words. So that I don't know them ahead of time, they know I haven't memorized them. I can't do that with you. I'm going to flip through this really quick. It seems to want, oh come on. Of course, okay. so, no I don't want to do that. I, somewhere here. Okay, well I'll do it this way. I, I give you the link for this. It's called a random word generator. So let's pop that up. There we go. this is just some web site. And it's just going to produce random words and I'm going to use that. Sometimes technology fights with you. Okay, here's my Powerpoint slide. I'm going to use this word generator to add words to the Power Point slide. So all I'm going to do is I'm going to refresh. Here's a word: chicken. Alright. So I'm going to stick that word here. I'm going to do that again. Color. And again, now you know I wanted to do this ahead of time. Propriety? Propriety? Wow, that's going to be a hard one. I can, I can feel that already. I wanted to do this ahead of time. Oh, I'm sorry, proprietary, proprietary. but the whole point is to convince you, something like that, that I'm, that I'm doing this on the fly. That I haven't pre-memorized these words. So it takes a little bit of time and in MOOC world I'm supposed to do each of these videos. I'm supposed to be shooting to do them between ten and 15 minutes. It's not easy for a profit, it's awful hard getting him to shut up after just such a small period time of talking. I'm used to talking for an hour at a time. alright. But again, this demo will only impress you, and I hope it'll impress you, I hope I won't screw up. It'll only impress you if you believe I'm doing this on the fly, in front of you. so I hope you are convinced that that's exactly what I'm doing. Three more. Charter, and I'll just do the last two and then I'll type 'em in. So be acoustic and handle, okay. So, all right. There we go. Okay, here we go. now what do we have here? 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 words. 12 random words you know, just pulled out of nowhere. And what I'm going to try to show you is that using these anchors over here, I can memorize these words in order. Okay? Which is, you know, a pretty difficult thing to do normally. Right? To get them in order. But here's how we do it. We just go through each thing and we try to create some sort of crazy image, if we can, that will link this new bit of information to this nice, structured set of cues. So I wake up in the morning, there's a chicken in my bed. It goes crazy rawk, rawk, rawk, and flies away. Okay, woah, that was weird. That's a weird way to wake up. That's fine. I go down and I have breakfast. But my breakfast is a really weird color. It's just not right. I normally have cereal but this cereal's like purple with orange spots. And so the color of my cereal, the color of my breakfast is wrong. And that, that makes me go wow, this is turning out to be a weird day. now on my dog walk. Proprietary. Proprietary, that's like proprietary software or something. On my dog, dog walk, there's a path I want to take, but somebody has claimed that path. They have said, this is my property. It's a prop, proprietary, this is going to kill me. path, so I'm not allowed on that, and I find that kind of annoying. But, okay, that's fine. now when I feed the dogs, a weird thing happens. every time I start pouring the cereal in the bowl. The cereal, the dog food in the bowl, I hear this audio sound. Audio music starts, so I want to think audio, not music. But this audio sound begins, but it stops as soon as I lift the bag. And if I pour it, it starts and if I do it, it stops. That imagery is important. It helps you. Okay audio, dog food, got it. Shower, honoring. well it turns out, that, that my shower's taut, temperamental and often it won't work right unless I properly honor it first. So before I get in the shower in the morning I, I bow to it and, and I say some kind words of how much I appreciate what it does for me to honor my shower. And then I go in and take a shower. And this is something I have to do every day. Okay dress, proliferate, proliferation. I, I want to put on a pair of jeans, but I go into my closet to get a pair of jeans and it turns out there's a bunch of jeans everywhere. There's way more jeans than I ever had in my life. My closet is full of jeans. It's somehow as if they've proliferated. And there's a ton of them. Okay cool, I'll try that. I hope this works, man. I get into my car and it's really nice because it was horrible outside. Rainy and yucky, but inside my car it's nice and cozy. In fact, for a second there, I have trouble even going anywhere because I feel so cozy in my car. Okay that's really cool. I drive by the school and I, I notice this weird thing, and the more I approach the school there's this hum coming from the school. [SOUND]. Really kind of bizarre, but when I drive away, it gets quieter again, so it's definitely associated with the schools, huh. Not sure what that's all about, but so be it. Okay. now I go to the, the church. I drive by the church and it's like, everybody is running out of the church. They're like rats abandoning a ship. so I'm imagining all these parishioners going running out of the church as though something's going to happen to the church. I don't know what that's about, but okay, cool, that's fine. I then get to the mosque and there's a charter. Charter, charter. okay the mosque somehow has a, has a has a boat skiff off of it. Which is odd, because it's not really on water. But let's say it is. And not only is there a boat skiff, but they're chartering tours. They have a, a charter tour to go sailing on this water that doesn't exist. around the mosque. Okay let's make it, let's make it one of those moats. They have a moat around the mosque. with a little charter boat that you can charter and go with your, your friends, and go around the mosque. Okay? Cool? I get to the university. And as I arrive at the university, there's a, a band outside. playing acoustic music, so an acoustic, no let's, let's make it, it's Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan is outside the University playing his acoustic guitar and I think wow, that's kind of cool, Bob Dylan, cool man, neat. and then when I get to my office, well I try to open the door, but it turns out there's no handle on the door. So somebody has stolen the handle off the door, and so I'm like, how am I suppose to get in? Alright, cool. Now, here's the test I should of put a blank slide here I, I didn't put a blank slide here, so how am I going to convince you I'm not looking at the slide? I think I have, I'm going to have to do this. Now, let, let me say first of all, I didn't put a lot of time into this, right? So I'm going to actually move on right now. I'm going to, I'm going to minimize this so that you don't see it. And I'm going to minimize this just to get ugly stuff out of the way. Okay, so now we have a blank screen. And let me give this one a go. go through my daily ritual. Wake up in bed, chicken. There's a chicken in the bed. Okay, I go down and I have my breakfast and breakfast was an odd color, kind of weird color stuff. I walk my dogs and I come on that proprietary path. Proprietary is there. Come back and feed the dogs and there's audio. Every time I pour the dog food, there's this audio sound. Kay, that's cool I, I go up to have a shower, and I can see the rich, I'm honoring the shower. Honor honor's the, the shower one. I get out of the shower and I get dressed but my jeans are proliferated. So it was proliferation, I think was the word there. okay I'm dressed. I now go down to, and notice I'm mentally kind of imagining myself going through this path, now I go down to my car. It was horrible outside and, and so the car is nice and cozy. I remember the cozy of the car. I'm now driving to work. I go by the school and there was that hum around the school. So hum is that next word. I go a little further. Church, everybody was abandoning the church so that was abandoned. Get to the mosque and I now have the moat with the charter boats, so charter was the word for mosque. I get to the University, I have a feeling I missed something, but I don't know. I get to the University, Bob Dylan playing the acoustic, very cool. Get to my office, there's no handle. when I do this in class and I get it right, everyone goes [NOISE]. I don't know. Hopefully you're doing that at home, hopefully. but maybe I missed something. Even if I missed something, hopefully I made the point. Let's see. I think I got 'em all. Okay. so, that's an example. You know, able to remember these 12 words, just, just try giving somebody, by the way, if you want, as a test, write these 12 words down, give them to somebody and say, try to memorize those in order. and, and you don't have very long to look at them. because I didn't look at these very long, right? I didn't think of them very long, only long enough to form these associations. But tell them then to retrieve them in order, and see how well they can do. My bet is, if you don't show them this whole trick of associating it with items that's, are already in memory, informing the imagery, then they won't be able to do nearly as well as I did. And those are the points I really want to highlight from this demonstration. These things become what's are called retrieval cues. They're easy things to pull out of memory, because they're already in there. And they're in, in a very structured way, so I can just go through this routine and get them. And so, by taking these things that are already easy to pull out of memory, but then associating each one with the new information, and especially using something like imagery to really strengthen that association, to glue it. that is a way I can now learn a whole bunch of these random things, okay? And this points to the importance of how you put the information in. If you put it into memory in a very structured way, then it's relatively easy to get out. Now I want to relate this all to, as a final point, to something that we all experience. And that is just about everybody. I know, when I give a memory talk, complain about their ability to remember people's names. They'll say, I just met somebody and they just told me their name, and five minutes later, I can't remember their name. And it's very embarrassing. Why can I not remember their name? Take everything you've just heard. Think about how much work I had to do to do the associations and the imagery, and mentally how effortful that was. You can do that with names, too. If you meet this gentleman, and, and this gentleman says, oh hi. by the way my name is Jamal. and you're like, oh, hi Jamal. You might even say his name, Jamal. Well if you wanted, at that point in time, you could say Jamal? what, what can I think of, you know, what sort of association can I put to, to associate with Jamal? well maybe I, I can think of a mall that's in the shape of a J, and so that's a J mall. A Jmall, okay, I've got that. Now, you could do that, and if you did that, especially if you could somehow associate it with him. Like, if you could say, oh, in fact, I don't know, this part of his chin kind of looks like a J. So, I'm going to look at that, and I'm going to think, J. So when I see that j, jamal, j mal, j mal, jamal. so if you do all that, then probably every time you see this guy, you're going to remember his name. But here's the problem. you have to be nice to this guy. You have to be social, you're meeting him, you're being friendly. If you shake a hand and he says, hi, I'm Jamal, and you go, Jamal, Jamal. Lemme think. Jamal. Jamal. Shaped as a J. Lemme look at you. Oh. Okay. Yeah. Your chin looks like a J. And if you're doing all this mentally, what's Jamal going to think of you? This person's freakin' weird, man. They're odd. Y'know, socially, we have this need to be polite, to be friendly, to be social when we meet somebody. And that means our mind has to be there you know, on the external world, on what's going on. We can't suddenly revert into our working memory and do all this mental arithmetic. And that's why we tend to lose the memory. We don't encode the name very well, because we don't really have the opportunity to in a social situation. We can't do the work that's necessary. and that's why that's so, that's so often is a difficult thing for us. Okay, so, probably a little longer lecture than I wanted. But I, I don't see a way around it with that demonstration. I hope it was useful for you. Check out some of these things now. Now these are other well, okay let me, let me kind of go slow. Over here somewhere, I have a link to a book called Moonwalking with Einstein. by, by Foer. This is the author of the book. so you see a link to the book. Now this book is attacking the question, can anybody improve their memory? Or is just certain people that have a very good memory? And it turns out there is an Olympics of a sort, for memory. It's called the a memor, me, Memoriad, the Memoriad. There's an international one, there's a U.S one. So, what Joshua Foer decides to do in this book, is to train himself for this Memoriad. and to learn about memory in the process. So a lot of these are kind of related to that idea. So this is a, a news story on the Memoriad, so you can kind of get a sense of what, what these sort of, memory geeks are doing. And how the competition looks, what it's about. This is for himself talking about this is a Ted talk, talking about memory and how to get information in. And he will talk a lot about the notion of memory palaces. What I did with you is sort of like a memory palace, but I used my routine, my daily routine. Rather than using a place to provide my cues. But it's the same concept. So you can check that out, learn a bit about memory palaces. This is a much more specific thing about top ten ways to improve your memory. And hey, if you want to do that little memory thing yourself, give it a try. Here's the random word generator. so click on that link and it'll take you to that page. Okay. [SOUND] Well, well, as a, as a last thing, let me, let me just do this to you, to show you that this wasn't any kind of weird trick. chicken, color, proprietary, audio, honor, honor or honoring, I'm not sure now but it was the shower. Proliferation, cozy, hum, abandon, charter, acoustic, handle. They're still there. I wish I could show you a day later that they'll still be there. I'll still be able to do it, but hopefully that makes the point. Allrighty, have a great day. Until next time. Later, man. [BLANK_AUDIO]
