The Mediterranean Diet Benefits

I’m Sorry, Your Name Is…?

Posted on 2012/06/202012/06/20 by Jason Hensel

I’ve taken improvisation lessons for more than two years now. While it has helped improve my listening skills, I still forget people’s names at times. And as someone who works in the meeting industry, forgetting names is often not a positive trait.

For the longest time, I thought it was my brain’s love of forgetfulness that it increasingly embraces every year. However, it’s not my mind’s mechanics that are at fault. It’s me. According to Richard Harris, a psychology professor at Kansas State University, your level of interest determines your brain’s ability to remember names.

“Some people, perhaps those who are more socially aware, are just more interested in people, more interested in relationships,” Harris said. “They would be more motivated to remember somebody’s name.”

Harris says that the more interest you show in a person, the more likely you’ll remember that person’s name. That’s common sense, but as with most common sense advice, it’s easily forgotten.

To help you remember names, try strategies such as mnemonic devices or saying the person’s name while you talk to the person. Or better yet, as Harris says, just show more interest in people.

(Image via Flickr: Emily Rose / Creative Commons)

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The Doors of Forgetting

Posted on 2011/11/03 by Jason Hensel

Imagine walking through a door and forgetting everything. It’s possible, and a new study in The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology explains how. Abstract, you have the floor.

Previous research using virtual environments has revealed a location-updating effect in which there is a decline in memory when people move from one location to another. Here we assess whether this effect reflects the influence of the experienced context, in terms of the degree of immersion of a person in an environment, as suggested by some work in spatial cognition, or by a shift in context. In Experiment 1, the degree of immersion was reduced by using smaller displays. In comparison, in Experiment 2 an actual, rather than a virtual, environment was used, to maximize immersion. Location-updating effects were observed under both of these conditions. In Experiment 3, the original encoding context was reinstated by having a person return to the original room in which objects were first encoded. However, inconsistent with an encoding specificity account, memory did not improve by reinstating this context. Finally, we did a further analysis of the results of this and previous experiments to assess the differential influence of foregrounding and retrieval interference. Overall, these data are interpreted in terms of the event horizon model of event cognition and memory.

Still with me? Basically, what the researchers found is that new memory episodes (event models) form in our brains whenever we enter a new environment. As you move from place to place, you’re stacking memories on top of memories, making them harder to retrieve.

I imagine this knowledge could affect how educators, event planners, or anyone involved in learning and group collaboration structure their operations. If you know that moving people from room to room causes them to forget, wouldn’t it be better to keep everyone in one room all day? If that’s not technically feasible, then what can you do design-wise to mitigate the forgetting?

(Photo via Flickr: Istvan / Creative Commons)

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Sleep Could Improve Your Memory

Posted on 2011/10/032011/10/02 by Jason Hensel

I’m a night owl. I’m one of those people who works better at night and feels like there is a lot to do while awake. Sleep can come later. And studies have shown that night owls have higher intelligence than those who wake up early. Yep, stay up late and become smarter. I knew I was doing something right.

Not so fast, opposing scientists say. In fact, sleep helps you learn and remember.

“We speculate that we may be investigating a separate form of memory, distinct from traditional memory systems,” said Kimberly Fenn, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Michigan. “There is substantial evidence that during sleep, your brain is processing information without your awareness and this ability may contribute to memory in a waking state.”

In a study appearing in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, findings suggest people derive vastly different effects from “sleep memory,” with some memories improving dramatically and others not at all. This ability is a new, previously undefined form of memory.

“You and I could go to bed at the same time and get the same amount of sleep,” Fenn said. “But while your memory may increase substantially, there may be no change in mine.”

She added that most people in the study showed improvement.

Fenn says she believes this potential separate memory ability is not being captured by traditional intelligence tests and aptitude tests such as the SAT and ACT.

“This is the first step to investigate whether or not this potential new memory construct is related to outcomes such as classroom learning,” she said.

It also reinforces the need for a good night’s sleep.

“Simply improving your sleep could potentially improve your performance in the classroom,” Fenn said.

My memory is not what it used to be, and I’ve chalked that up to getting older. Maybe, though, it’s my lack of sleep. Maybe I’m trading memory for intelligence, and I’m not sure that’s an exchange I want to make. Would you?

(Some story materials provided by the University of Michigan.)

(Photo credit: Austin King / Creative Commons)

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