Pictures have many advantages. They allow us to share our most precious (or embarrassing) memories with others, like the time you tried to cut your own hairThey allow us to convey a thousand words without slaving over a computer and most importantly, they allow us to rely on the cameras memory rather than on our own. We can review our photos after an event and reminisce, reminding us of good times and can then save our memory for important things like remembering all of the lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody.Although pictures can help us remember times from our past, the act of taking photos, on the other hand, might actually impair our memory according to a new study by Linda A. Henkel published in Psychological Science.In Henkels study (Experiment 2), 46 undergraduate students were led on museum tours in which they were each told to view 27 museum objects. These objects included a variety of things one would encounter at a museum: paintings, sculptures, jewelry, a penny-smashing-machine, etc. (okaynot the penny-smashing machine, although no good museum would neglect having one). The participants were told to view objects in three different ways (each person viewed 9 objects in each of 3 viewing conditions): view the object for 25 seconds (the looked at only condition) view the object for 25 seconds, then take photograph of entire object (the photographed-whole condition) view the object for 25 seconds, then take photograph of specific part of object (i.e., a zoomed in view of one aspect of the object) (the photographed-detail condition)Each participant visited the same 27 objects, but had differing instructions so that each object was viewed and/or photographed in different conditions for different people. This was done in case any particular object was simply more memorable than others were (we wouldnt want there to be an advantage to one condition just because it had a memorable three-headed monkey robot in its group!). Of additional importance, the tour was organized in such a way, that participants did not pass by the same objects more than once, as this would affect participants ability to remember items. Lastly, note that regardless of whether participants took a picture of an object or not, they still had 25 uninterrupted seconds to view the item.The day after the tour, participants were tested on their ability to recognize the items and details about the items from the tour. First, they were given a list of names of the museum objects. The list contained names of objects that were and were not included in the tour. In this simple recognition task, people had to say whether the item was seen in the tour or whether it was a new item.People were less able to remember the items that they took whole pictures of and were more able to remember items they took detailed pictures of and items that they only looked at. Similarly, when asked specific questions about the details of the objects (e.g., What was this statue holding?), people were better able to remember details about the objects that they took detailed pictures of (even when the details they took pictures of were not the ones they were asked about) and were better able to remember details about objects they only viewed. They were less able to remember details about the items they took whole pictures of.So, to recap, when given names of the items: memory of seeing objects photographed-whole < photographed-detail AND/OR looked at only memory of object details photographed-whole < photographed-detail AND/OR looked at onlyAfter those memory tests, participants were tested again, but this time the participants were presented with pictures of the objects instead of the objects names. Again, people were better at remembering that they had seen the objects that they took detailed pictures of and objects they simply viewed and were worse at remembering seeing objects they took whole pictures of. Lastly, while viewing pictures of the objects, participants had to identify where in the museum they had seen objects by picking one of four rooms from a map. When participants did this, they were worst at correctly identifying the source of the objects photographed in detail and best at identifying the location of objects they only viewed.So, to recap the second part, when given pictures of the items: memory of seeing objects photographed-whole < photographed-detail AND/OR looked at only memory of object locations photographed-detail < photographed-whole < looked at onlyOkay, okay. What does this all mean? Well, for starters, each object was viewed initially for 25 seconds. Then, the ones that were photographed were theoretically looked at longer (while people were taking the pictures). As such, one might assume that people would remember those better (since they were looked at longer overall). As we see here, however, they were actually remembered less (at least the items where people photographed them in entirety). Why is this?To answer this, the author pointed out another memory phenomenon that might explain it. In studies of directed forgetting, people are told to forget some items and to remember others and find that peoples memory follows these directions (i.e., they actually remember more of the things they were told to remember and remember fewer of the things they were told to forget when subsequently asked to remember everything). How does this relate? Well, the author reasons that taking a picture of something might serve as a cue that we need not bother remembering something, or a direction to forget. After all, we can always look at the pictures later. So, instead of storing these things in our memory, we can save that space for important things, like Tuesdays prime-time television lineup. This only seemed to occur for the objects photographed in their entirety.On the other hand, Henkel found that the objects that were photographed in detail were remembered just as well as the ones that were merely looked at. It is a little harder to explain this finding. The author says that this may be due to the extra cognition and focused activity that has to occur to zoom in on objects features while photographing them. Perhaps. I suppose this is an empirical question that future researchers could look at. Does it take more attention and cognition to take photos of parts of objects than it does to take pictures of whole objects? Possibly, especially if people are more experienced at taking holistic photos. If so, perhaps this counteracts or impedes directed forgetting.One could also reason that people remembered objects photographed in detail as well as objects merely looked at, due to the fact that when focusing on a part of an object, we must focus on what the object is. For example, if we are told to take a picture of a warrior statues hand, we might still be focusing on the fact that this is a warrior we are looking at. Here is his arm, okay, now there is his hand, which happens to be holding an axe. Focus, snap! If we are trying to get the entire warrior into the picture, on the other hand, all we have to do is look for edges. Do we have a whole object in the camera? Yes? Cool. Does it matter what it was? No. Okay. Focus, snap! Were done. This, of course, is merely my interpretation and is itself an empirical question someone could go research.Another interesting thing Henkel found was that peoples memory for the location of the objects was affected by what condition it was viewed in. Notably, people least remembered the locations of the objects that were photographed in detail. This might be because the participants focus was smaller than the whole object and smaller, certainly, than the room. When photographing the whole object, however, it is easier to see how ones attention might be tuned to the separation between the object and the space around it. Who knows- perhaps each of the four rooms was a different color? Taking a holistic picture might help one remember what separates the object from the background (say, the blue wall), whereas taking a zoomed in picture of a hand might not allow us to notice the place the object is in.Either way, it is clear that taking photos of objects can adversely affect our memory for them. This could be especially annoying if one were to lose ones camera or memory card before one was able to view the pictures! In the long run, however, taking a photo is probably more beneficial than not taking a picture and hoping to remember an event or scene, since we can view photos dozens of years later (assuming we can locate it), but a memory would fade with time, even if we were successful at remembering it the day after. So, adviceif youre going to take pictures of the things you want to remember, dont lose your camera :o)+}Let me tell you something utterly amazing about your brain. Better yet, let me show you something you can do to increase your brains ability to memorize information easilyand for the long-term. In short, take a moment with me here and Ill demonstrate a way you can consciously use your own brains hardware to make you feeland seem to otherstruly gifted.First, consider this challenge. Pretend that I were to ask you to go to the grocery store for me to buy a particular list of ten items. Furthermore, suppose that I was going to dictate these items to you and that I would not let you write them downyup, thats right. All you can do is listen to me and do your best to memorize them. After that, youd get in the car, drive to the store, and start shopping based on your memory of what Id said.How would you go about doing this? Would you make a mental acronym of the items? (POM, for example, might help you recall that youll need to get pizza, oranges, and mustard.) Would you make up a song about the items? Maybe youd try to make a mental map of the store and walk through it to get the items. All of these are clever approaches, to be sure. And yet none of those are the approach most people would take which is to merely repeat the items over and over and over again, one continuous loop of pizza, oranges, mustard pizza, oranges, mustard.Regardless of the technique used above, the average person people can successfully recall seven or eight of ten items posed in such a fashionand he can only do so in a scattershot fashion. He might recall that mustard was somewhere on the list, but he may not recall that it was the third item he was told to buy. The reason for this hit-or-miss memory is that, in most of the examples above, a relatively miniscule portion of the brain is being used to retain the informationthe hippocampus. This portion of the brain is not really adapted to storing information in a sequential or long-term way. So imagine the power and efficiency of your brains ability to retain information if you could use a whole lobe of it, say 20 percent of your brains matter, to help you outinstead of something about the size of a lima bean. You can.Ive written before about the visual portion of the brain. Well put it to the test today. Lets tap into the occipital lobe and, by doing a simple experiment, see if youre not able to dramatically increase your own memory. Well use that simple list of 10 random grocery items to judge its effectiveness. As silly as what I am about to ask you to do may seem, I promise you this: if you really try it, if you really suspend disbelief, and if you really follow my directions, you will be able to recall that list of 10 items perfectly. I dont mean that youll be able to eventually remember all the items; I mean you will have immediate recall of each item, in the order they were given, the very instant you want them, even if I were to ask you to list them for me out of order. (For example: "Tell me what the seventh item was, followed by the third and then the tenth.)It starts with this odd list at left. Keep it handy. Were going to use it a lot initially. Youll recognize it as the words from an old nursery rhyme (One two, buckle my shoe. Three four, shut the door. etc.). Heres what Id like you to do with this list.As I rattle off the 10 items (provided on the link youll find below), you are going to consult that nursery rhyme list and use it to create a picture in your mind. Youll do this by associating the item I ask you to get with one of the items given in that list. For example, if the FIRST item I ask you to recall is a bag of oranges, then youll make a mental picture of oranges somehow associated with a bun. You might imagine a bunch of oranges nestled in a hot dog bun. Or maybe youll picture a sliced orange sitting in between the top and bottom of a hamburger bun. Its entirely up to you, but I can tell you this: the odder the picture, the more details you create, the stronger that memory will be.When I ask you to recall the SECOND itemsay, a gallon of milkyou should make a mental picture that places milk and a shoe together. Youre drinking milk from the shoe, perhaps; or maybe youre kicking that gallon of milk down the hallway with your high-heeled shoe. Its up to you.Well continue in like fashion. I'll give the items in sequential order, you make the mental pictures. Initially, consult that nursery rhyme listits fine! We are using that list as a matrix to help you organize the data Im about to give you (the grocery list). Just DO NOT write down the list of items I ask you to buythatd be cheating. Go slowly so that you have enough time to really create each image. If I go too fast, just hit pause on the two-minute video you're about to watch. When we are done, Ill ask you to answer the questions in the paragraph below. Again, trust me on this: if you really try it, crazy as it seems, it will work. Ready? If so, then click this link (link is external) and get ready to hear the 10 items I want you to purchase. Go!Youre back! Great.Now, breathe deep, relax and answer these questions. Again, you may consult that memory matrix as you complete this questionnaire. (The answers are at the end of this article.) What was the third item I asked you to buy, the one you associated with the tree What was the eighth? In this order, what was item number 9, then 1, then 6? Which numbered item was the hamburger meat?So, are you amazed? You neednt be. You were successful because you actively sought to use a large portion of your brain to do something that it naturally wants to do all of the time. Think about it: do you recall a time when you studied for a test and recalled that the answer to the test question lay in your notebookit was on the right-hand pagein the upper right corner. Or do you recall precisely where you were when you heard of the attacks on 9/11? Of all the ways your brain tries to help you recall information, for most of us, it does so in a visual format. By virtue of the experiment above, youve just proven that harnessing that power of the brain can dramatically improve your own abilities.Now, its up to you to put that newfound talent and knowledge to everyday use.Answers (in order): oranges, chocolate syrup, 50 lbs. of dog food, broccoli, air freshener, ice cream, 1 lb. hamburger meat, loaf of bread, blank data CDs, and heavy whipping cream|WARNING UPFRONT:If you have not read my last article of this series, you'll likely be confused (and maybe even downright skeptical) as this particular article ticks along. I previsously wrote about the power of using the occipital lobe to aid memory. This lobe, located in the back of your head, is protected by your skull quite nicely. Reach around right now and locate it by feeling for a knot or a bump in the cranium several inches above your neck. (Ladies, sorry, yours will not be as pronounced as the men reading this. Thats one of those anatomical gender differences.) Just above that bumpyep, right thereis your occipital lobe.The occipital lobe is what gives us the power to visualize images in our minds. Yes, it is also the place where, for all intents and purposes, vision itself is processed once data comes streaming in from the optic nerve. But never mind the latter, its the power of visualization we will use again today to help harness our brains greater potential for recall of information.Many pointed out in the comments of the other article that the structure I demonstrated was called a peg system. Indeed, that is correct and that system is many many decades old. In that demonstration, we used a number-rhyming organization loosely based on a nursery rhyme to connect data (e.g. grocery list items) to a list of numbers, one through ten. The advantage of the peg system, as many of you confirmed for me, is that it allows for a direct and immediate recall of the relationship between the data and the number. Thus, you were able to note that #3 was dog food or, equally easily, that dog food was the third item on the list.Todays technique is a tad different in that it makes no use of these mnemonic pegs. The system well explore today is one that I learned many years ago as journeying although, again, others have noted that this is merely a form of a broader technique called the loci method. As that name implies, the loci technique seeks to make use of places or localities familiar to you already as a means of pinning information to memory. Before we get started on the explanation, I should note for you a few things. This technique is extremely powerful in that it potentially allows a larger amount of information to be coded without the use of those number-rhyme type pegs. Still In my own experience, it also takes a bit more practice to harness. (This should not be a deal-breaker but be aware that if you are comparing it to the peg system of the previous article, it will not be as immediately user-friendlyfor at least some of you, perhaps.) Unlike the previous number-rhyme peg system, this technique doesnt allow for that immediate recall of, say, number six on a list. Journeying requires you to trace the steps from one to five in order to name item number six. (Again to me, depending on what you are trying to recall, that should not be a deal breaker either.) Journeying, indeed the loci-method in general, is powerful because we are still utilizing and accessing massive amounts of our brains hardwarethat occipital lobeto create memorable images.Lets start by getting the data well seek to memorize. At the end of this article is a list of 25 items. In keeping with the theme of last article, Ive opted to make many of them grocery store items. Youll also note, however, that Ive added some typical errands that a person might have to do in the course of a day. If you are able to, you might wish to copy and paste that list into a document for consideration later onor, if not, you may simply scroll up and down to compare my description of the technique to this list Ive created.Now completely leaving aside that list (just for the moment), I want you to think of some sort of trip or traveling routine you perform every day of your life. Every morning, for example, I wake up, leave my bedroom, and hit the bathroom for a shower and a shave. Finished and dressed, I pass by my sons room and a guest bedroom as I head downstairs to the kitchen where I make coffee. I sit down in the dining room at my computer and chug the caffeine while I review my days plans. And then I go to the living room where I feed the cat. Finally, I head out the door for school, leaving by way of the side door that opens onto a screened porch where we have some wicker furniture and our mailbox hangs on the brick wall.You, dear reader, need not think of your own home. Perhaps the daily trip you thought of was your daily work commuteleaving your house, driving past the neighbors homes, that Starbucks one one corner (McDonalds on the other!), arriving at the train depot. Maybe, like me, youre a runner and you can quite easily picture all the twists and turns and landmarks of your daily four-mile route. Perhaps you drive a bus and thats the route in your life you know like the back of your hand. It doesnt matter.What does matterto make the journeying memory technique really workare those details youll recall. You know that neighbors funky house, that Starbucks on the corner that used to be an old bank, the paisley shower curtain, that coffee maker on the counter right next to the sink, the cat bowl next to the couch. In my experience, youll want at least 10 to 12 such distinct landmarks, and heres why: those details will effectively become the mnemonic pegs that link to your data. How, you ask?Crazy as this seems, what youll do is create detailed and exciting, bizarre, humorous, scary, titillating, you-name-it visual images that pair the data you want to recall with each of the landmarks on your journey. Then youll mentally trace this journey later on when you want to recall that data.Thus, if I were considering only the first ten or so items on the list Ive created for you, I would associate the first (plastic cups) with my morning shower (the first of my landmarks). I imagine innocently pulling the shower curtain aside to turn on the faucetand being utterly shocked awake that a plastic cup is bathing in the tub. Hes right there! Id imagine his thin arms holding my loofah (grr!), vigorously rubbing away at some lipstick left on his rim. He would even be complaining about it and yelling at me for some d@mn (link sends e-mail) privacy! Remember, the brain likes novelty, not ordinary. The crazier and more detailed that image is, the better.Id slam the curtain shutor maybe Id fill him with cold water from the tap just to get evenand then Id move on with my journey to the second item in the list and its associated landmark. Id note that, as I pass my sons room, there on his door where the usual Knock, please sign hangs is a pizza?! And its huge. The grease is dripping down the door and the pepperoni is on the floor. What a mess. Itll take forever to clean that up. (Maybe Ill make my son do it, heh heh.)Id continue in like fashion until all ten(ish) items were securely cemented via that visualization. WhenI I'm srure they're there, it's time fotAnd yet many of you have noted that there are 25 items on the list belowand I said you only need about a dozen landmarks. So what then? Its an easy fix: For lists that are longer, all you need do is combine your images in pairs. So, starting again, Id pull aside that shower curtain and there, revealed in all their glory, would be a pizza and plastic cup caught in the middle of a, uh,romantic interlude. (Whaaaa?!) The pizza is wrapping the cup in a full embraceI can hardly see the cup at all for cryin out loud! This time its the pizza that yells at me for privacyor maybe she doesnt (oooh).Again it's the mental investmetn that makes it count, pairing the items with my landmarks (Hey, why are the detergent box and Super Glue fighting over who gets to eat cat food first? Theres plenty to go around, guys!) until I arrive at the list of errands.When you get there, dont let the verbs bother youjust picture a noun that goes with each. For get birthday present I might picture the actual gift itself, sure. Or maybe Ill imagine the the wrapped box, bow and all (Wait, isnt it a tad large? It takes up the entire porch!). When I go to put the Netflix DVD in the mailyep, you guessed itit cries and begs me not to send it away (Ill never see you again, will I?). Sigh. Its hard, yes, but in you go as I head out the door.The wonderful and powerful thing about using the journeying technique is that you likely have many different routes or trips you can take. I have one that documents my morning routine. But I also have: that favorite four-mile running loop I enjoy so much; the route my family walks when we go to our favorite restaurant a mile away; and my own morning commute to work. Each journey and its associated landmarks can become a mnemonic device for you, each assigned to a different list of data.Ladies and gents, the key to this particular mnemonic device is practice. Try these journeys at night as you lay in bed before sleeping. Trace them with as much detail as you can. Cement those details in your mind. In this case, practice makes perfect.Next time, well consider ways to deal with more nonrepresentational concepts, such as the meanings of foreign words or abstract nouns. Stay tuned!Want more? Follow me on Twitter (link is external)for the latest!YOUR (DATA) LIST:- plastic cups- frozen pizza- grapes- deli meat (turkey)- shampoo- dog biscuits- detergent- nail polish- ice- garlic- cans of soup- celery- Super Glue- light bulbs- Hersheys bars- pepper- floor wax- batteries- gift card- eggs - deposit checks- get car inspected- do laundry- get present for friends birthday- put Netflix DVD in the mai}In the last couple of columns I have been explaining how stereotyping affects performance. For example if seniors buy into the stereotype that they are supposed to have failing memories they are more likely to have failing memories. How you identify yourself (young, old, male, female, and so on) is a key factor in how you will respond to advertising. Indeed, self-identity creates all kinds of bias, from the sports team you root for to the candidate you want to become President.Marketing research has established that most consumer decisions are memory based. You buy something because you remember a persuasive ad for it. Thus, advertisers seek to find ways to get consumers to remember their products and services. One obvious way is to repeat the ad over and over. But that costs a lot of money.One advertising strategy is to target consumers with promotions that capitalize on social identity. The idea is that you will prefer a product that is pitched to your identity. No doubt you have seen the TV ads on reverse mortgages, where a clearly older celebrity makes the pitch. You are supposed to be persuaded by the ad because you can identify with such a person. Hes a senior, youre a senior. Hes a star, and you can imagine how great it might feel if you were one. In other words, your personal identity is wrapped up in how responsive you are to a given ad. This same principle is at work in ads that use beautiful models to sell clothes and star athletes to sell athletic gear.Social identity can be threatened when the ad presents events, information, or choices in a way that is inconsistent or negative. A senior, for example, would not be persuaded to consider reverse mortgages if the salesman was a young and gorgeous female model. Recent studies show that these kinds of cognitive disconnect interfere with how consumers encode and remember advertising messages. Advertisers certainly dont want to create identity-threat ads because consumers will be automatically motivated to forget the ads.The process of motivated forgetting is being explored by Hong Kong University marketing professor, Amy Dalton and her colleague, Li Huang. When people see or hear an ad that presents identity threat, they are automatically motivated to forget it. Its a defense mechanism. Naturally, the effect is greatest in people who have the strongest in-group identities. Thats why advertisers have to be really careful in ads that involve such emotionally charges matters as gender, race, religion, or political belief.In their studies, they use identity linked promotions, such as Ladies get one drink free, or 10 percent discount for seniors, and the like. To enhance attention and encoding, they prime the experimental audience ahead of time to reinforce the intended identity. In one experiment, they primed a social identity, produced identity-linked promotions, introduced social identity-threat, and then tested for memory of the promotions.For example, experimental subjects were students. Students were primed about their student identity by telling them that the experiment was being performed also with students at other universities. Students then watched 20 print ads for three seconds each and told they would be quizzed on how much they remember of the ads. Identity-linked promotions were created for eight of the ads by stating that Additional 10 percent discount for Hong Kong University students. Then students read news reports about their university, either neutral reports or negative ones (in the identity-threat group).What they found was that identity strength enhanced memory for identity-linked promotions if the identity had been primed. When the primed identity was threatened, ad memory was impaired, reflecting the motivated forgetting effect.A related experiment tested the role of the news source for neutral and negative-identity conditions. Identity strength increased the resistance to read news from a source that presented an identity threat but not in control conditions. This may explain why some people steadfastly get their news from a single distinct identity source, such as NBC (more liberal viewers) or Fox News (more conservative viewers). Such loyalties minimize identity threat and make the news and opinion better remembered. Obviously, such loyalties contribute to political polarization. In U.S. politics, voters are not identified as people. They are identified as voting blocs (Blacks, Hispanics, seniors, females, millennials, poor, rich, and so on). Often these groups are pitted against each other (as in the rich exploit the poor, blacks are victims of white racism, and so on). What politicians exploit is social identity. While identity politics is old hat, consumer identity research is in early stages. But you can bet there will be more such research, as advertisers have their own motivations: spend less money through fewer ads, make their ads more memorable, and get you to spend more money.}Whoever said "what you don't know can't hurt you" needs to rethink the position. Knowing what you don't know keeps you from learning what you need to know or would benefit from if you did know it. Likewise, there is the foolish notion, "Ignorance is bliss." We teach these mindless ideas to our children and then wonder why so many don't like school.Anyway, what I really want to explore here is the notion of thinking about thinking. Scholars call this metacognition. But, it really is a simple idea that we all experience every day to various degrees. Suppose you look up a phone number in the phone book. You have to quiz yourself to see if you remember it well enough to dial it. That is, you have to think about what you know and if you know enough to complete the task.These things are often done consciously, and your conscious mind has to allocate enough effort and thinking resources to perform the task. In this particular case, we are talking about working memory. You test yourself to see if you still hold all the phone number digits in working memory long enough to dial them without error.The principle applies more generally to other and more complex tasks. Basically, humans use memory awareness to determine if they have enough relevant knowledge before they act. Obviously, such awareness improves the appropriateness and quality of the act. This reminds me to tell you about my new book coming out on April 8, Mental Biology,[1] (link is external) in which I explore how the brain creates awareness and what consciousness is and what it does. In my view, consciousness does many things, but this ability to realize what you know and don't know provides the enormous advantage of helping you know if you know enough and decide what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. Notably, there are many scientists now arguing that consciousness does not do anything. Everything we do, they claim, is driven by genes and unconscious programming. To them, consciousness is just the brain's TV screen to show you some of what it is doing. These people will hate my book.Metacognition even occurs in some higher animals, and there are some interesting animal experiments on metacognition. For example, one study[2] (link is external) showed that monkeys can track what they are holding in working memory. In the test, food was hidden in one of four opaque tubes. On half the trials monkeys watched the experimenter bait the tube, so that they had to know if they remembered which tube had the food. On the other half of trials, monkeys did not get to see where food was placed. After a short delay, the monkeys were given a chance to pick a tube to get a food reward, and on uninformed trials the monkeys peeked into the end of each tube to see which one had the food. That is, they knew they didn't know which tube was baited, so instead of guessing they looked into each tube before acting. When monkeys saw the baiting, they immediately went to the right tube without peeking. That is they knew where the food was and they knew that they knew.The food was a reward, and as we all know positive reinforcement typically motivates us and drives behavior. We do things if there is some benefit to doing it. This leads me to consider another study[3] (link is external) that explored the role of human consciousness in evaluating rewards and their degree of attainability. It is no surprise that high value rewards improve mental performance, and this works whether you assess the value consciously or unconsciously (as in conditioned reflexes, for example). How motivating high rewards are depends on what we know about their attainability. If we know we don't know enough to earn the reward, we may not make the effort needed. If we think the reward is unattainable, we won't even try.The study asked the question of whether this principle applies to unconscious processing. In other words, can unconscious mind integrate reward contingencies with attainability estimates? In the experiment, each trial included showing volunteers a picture of either a penny or a 50 cent coin which would serve as a reward if they performed a subsequent working memory task correctly. But sometimes subjects were informed before a trial that the reward would not be obtainable on that trial, even if they performed the memory recall correctly. In each trial the coin was shown either for 17 msecs, in which case its value could not be perceived consciously, or for 300 msecs, which was long enough to register consciously. So, across trials, the subjects had to integrate reward value with attainability and do so either under conscious or unconscious conditions.Results showed that efficient memory recall resulted when the trial showed the reward long enough for conscious registration and when the high reward was attainable. And of course, performance was better for the 50 cent piece. Amazingly, even in the unconscious condition, high rewards improved performance even when they were designated in advance as unattainable. In other words, unconscious mind could not integrate reward value and attainability. Thus, it seems that consciousness uniquely controls the allocation of neural resources needed to integrate these two kinds of information. Oh, and by the way, don't experiments like this establish that consciousness really does something, that it is more than the mind's TV screen?A third line of research has to do with psychotherapy. Here, the whole idea is to think about what you are thinking and feeling and substituting that with more mentally healthy thought. Being aware of memories is crucial to this process. Recalling bad memories causes a disturbing experience to fester, but also makes them accessible to revision. I have discussed in earlier columns some new approaches to treatment of PTSD based on the reconsolidation of memories that occurs when you recall a memory. The whole business about consolidation is explained in my recent book, Memory Power 101[4] (link is external).Here, I want to explore the value of being aware of the associations that are helpful and those that are not in terms of dealing such things as addictions, phobias, and even PTSD. For example, anybody in the throes of withdrawal from cigarette smoking knows how disturbing it can be to see or think about ashtrays or other reminders. A typical response is to try and inhibit the reminders of the former pleasure. But avoiding such reminders is often impractical.In my book, Blame Game, I explore the importance of being more aware of what you are thinking and doing so that when change is needed you can reprogram your brain effectively. It is difficult to change bad habits or behavior because they derive from well-entrenched memory. The remedy is to replace this memory with a better new habit or behavior. And the way to do that is to make the substitute memory much stronger than one you want to replace. You can make such new memories stronger, the way you would any memory.[5] (link is external) This is basically the idea of substituting a bad memory with a good one, wherein the good one has been made especially robust. My memory book shows multiple ways to strengthen any memory, and this approach can be especially helpful to make a good substitute memory that will substitute and displace a bad memory. In general, the approach is to:1. Think often about the substitute memory and use traditional memory enhancement techniques to strengthen it.2. Rehearse the substitute memory in different situations and places.3. Space rehearsal of the substitute memory out over time, both within a therapy session or new learning situation and self-test for recall of the substitute memory several separated times.So, hopefully the general point is made. Knowing what you know and don't know is really important. Such self-knowledge is necessary to make you more competenteven to make yourself a better person. And remember, self-knowledge resides in memory. As with all memory, it can be strong or weak, true or false, recalled or forgotten, useful or harmful. You decide.}|Living rooms, dens, kitchens, even bedrooms: Investigators followed students into the spaces where homework gets done. Pens poised over their study observation forms, the observers watched intently as the studentsin middle school, high school, and college, 263 in allopened their books and turned on their computers.For a quarter of an hour, the investigators from the lab of Larry Rosen, a psychology professor at California State UniversityDominguez Hills, marked down once a minute what the students were doing as they studied. A checklist on the form included: reading a book, writing on paper, typing on the computerand also using email, looking at Facebook, engaging in instant messaging, texting, talking on the phone, watching television, listening to music, surfing the Web. Sitting unobtrusively at the back of the room, the observers counted the number of windows open on the students screens and noted whether the students were wearing earbuds.Although the students had been told at the outset that they should study something important, including homework, an upcoming examination or project, or reading a book for a course, it wasnt long before their attention drifted: Students on-task behavior started declining around the two-minute mark as they began responding to arriving texts or checking their Facebook feeds. By the time the 15 minutes were up, they had spent only about 65 percent of the observation period actually doing their schoolwork.We were amazed at how frequently they multitasked, even though they knew someone was watching, Rosen says. It really seems that they could not go for 15 minutes without engaging their devices, adding, It was kind of scary, actually.Concern about young peoples use of technology is nothing new, of course. But Rosens study, published in the May issue of Computers in Human Behavior, is part of a growing body of research focused on a very particular use of technology: media multitasking while learning. Attending to multiple streams of information and entertainment while studying, doing homework, or even sitting in class has become common behavior among young peopleso common that many of them rarely write a paper or complete a problem set any other way.But evidence from psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience suggests that when students multitask while doing schoolwork, their learning is far spottier and shallower than if the work had their full attention. They understand and remember less, and they have greater difficulty transferring their learning to new contexts. So detrimental is this practice that some researchers are proposing that a new prerequisite for academic and even professional successthe new marshmallow test of self-disciplineis the ability to resist a blinking inbox or a buzzing phone.The media multitasking habit starts early. In Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds, a survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation and published in 2010, almost a third of those surveyed said that when they were doing homework, most of the time they were also watching TV, texting, listening to music, or using some other medium. The lead author of the study was Victoria Rideout, then a vice president at Kaiser and now an independent research and policy consultant. Although the study looked at all aspects of kids media use, Rideout told me she was particularly troubled by its findings regarding media multitasking while doing schoolwork.This is a concern we should have distinct from worrying about how much kids are online or how much kids are media multitasking overall. Its multitasking while learning that has the biggest potential downside, she says. I dont care if a kid wants to tweet while shes watching American Idol, or have music on while he plays a video game. But when students are doing serious work with their minds, they have to have focus.For older students, the media multitasking habit extends into the classroom. While most middle and high school students dont have the opportunity to text, email, and surf the Internet during class, studies show the practice is nearly universal among students in college and professional school. One large survey found that 80 percent of college students admit to texting during class; 15 percent say they send 11 or more texts in a single class period.During the first meeting of his courses, Rosen makes a practice of calling on a student who is busy with his phone. I ask him, What was on the slide I just showed to the class? The student always pulls a blank, Rosen reports. Young people have a wildly inflated idea of how many things they can attend to at once, and this demonstration helps drive the point home: If youre paying attention to your phone, youre not paying attention to whats going on in class. Other professors have taken a more surreptitious approach, installing electronic spyware or planting human observers to record whether students are taking notes on their laptops or using them for other, unauthorized purposes.Such steps may seem excessive, even paranoid: After all, isnt technology increasingly becoming an intentional part of classroom activities and homework assignments? Educators are using social media sites like Facebook and Twitter as well as social sites created just for schools, such as Edmodo, to communicate with students, take class polls, assign homework, and have students collaborate on projects. But researchers are concerned about the use of laptops, tablets, cellphones, and other technology for purposes quite apart from schoolwork. Now that these devices have been admitted into classrooms and study spaces, it has proven difficult to police the line between their approved and illicit uses by students.In the study involving spyware, for example, two professors of business administration at the University of Vermont found that students engage in substantial multitasking behavior with their laptops and have non-course-related software applications open and active about 42 percent of the time. The professors, James Kraushaar and David Novak, obtained students permission before installing the monitoring software on their computersso, as in Rosens study, the students were engaging in flagrant multitasking even though they knew their actions were being recorded.Another study, carried out at St. Johns University in New York, used human observers stationed at the back of the classroom to record the technological activities of law students. The spies reported that 58 percent of second- and third-year law students who had laptops in class were using them for non-class purposes more than half the time. (First-year students were far more likely to use their computers for taking notes, although an observer did note one first-year student texting just 17 minutes into her very first classthe beginning of her law school career.)Texting, emailing, and posting on Facebook and other social media sites are by far the most common digital activities students undertake while learning, according to Rosen. Thats a problem, because these operations are actually quite mentally complex, and they draw on the same mental resourcesusing language, parsing meaningdemanded by schoolwork.David Meyer, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan whos studied the effects of divided attention on learning, takes a firm line on the brains ability to multitask: Under most conditions, the brain simply cannot do two complex tasks at the same time. It can happen only when the two tasks are both very simple and when they dont compete with each other for the same mental resources. An example would be folding laundry and listening to the weather report on the radio. Thats fine. But listening to a lecture while texting, or doing homework and being on Facebookeach of these tasks is very demanding, and each of them uses the same area of the brain, the prefrontal cortex.Young people think they can perform two challenging tasks at once, Meyer acknowledges, but they are deluded, he declares. Its difficult for anyone to properly evaluate how well his or her own mental processes are operating, he points out, because most of these processes are unconscious. And, Meyer adds, theres nothing magical about the brains of so-called digital natives that keeps them from suffering the inefficiencies of multitasking. They may like to do it, they may even be addicted to it, but theres no getting around the fact that its far better to focus on one task from start to finish.Researchers have documented a cascade of negative outcomes that occurs when students multitask while doing schoolwork. First, the assignment takes longer to complete, because of the time spent on distracting activities and because, upon returning to the assignment, the student has to refamiliarize himself with the material.Second, the mental fatigue caused by repeatedly dropping and picking up a mental thread leads to more mistakes. The cognitive cost of such task-switching is especially high when students alternate between tasks that call for different sets of expressive rulesthe formal, precise language required for an English essay, for example, and the casual, friendly tone of an email to a friend.Third, students subsequent memory of what theyre working on will be impaired if their attention is divided. Although we often assume that our memories fail at the moment we cant recall a fact or concept, the failure may actually have occurred earlier, at the time we originally saved, or encoded, the memory. The moment of encoding is what matters most for retention, and dozens of laboratory studies have demonstrated that when our attention is divided during encoding, we remember that piece of information less wellor not at all. As the unlucky student spotlighted by Rosen can attest, we cant remember something that never really entered our consciousness in the first place. And a study last month showed that students who multitask on laptops in class distract not just themselves but also their peers who see what theyre doing.Fourth, some research has suggested that when were distracted, our brains actually process and store information in different, less useful ways. In a 2006 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Russell Poldrack of the University of TexasAustin and two colleagues asked participants to engage in a learning activity on a computer while also carrying out a second task, counting musical tones that sounded while they worked. Study subjects who did both tasks at once appeared to learn just as well as subjects who did the first task by itself. But upon further probing, the former group proved much less adept at extending and extrapolating their new knowledge to novel contextsa key capacity that psychologists call transfer.Brain scans taken during Poldracks experiment revealed that different regions of the brain were active under the two conditions, indicating that the brain engages in a different form of memory when forced to pay attention to two streams of information at once. The results suggest, the scientists wrote, that even if distraction does not decrease the overall level of learning, it can result in the acquisition of knowledge that can be applied less flexibly in new situations.Finally, researchers are beginning to demonstrate that media multitasking while learning is negatively associated with students grades. In Rosens study, students who used Facebook during the 15-minute observation period had lower grade-point averages than those who didnt go on the site. And two recent studies by Reynol Junco, a faculty associate at Harvards Berkman Center for Internet & Society, found that texting and using Facebookin class and while doing homeworkwere negatively correlated with college students GPAs. Engaging in Facebook use or texting while trying to complete schoolwork may tax students capacity for cognitive processing and preclude deeper learning, write Junco and a co-author. (Of course, its also plausible that the texting and Facebooking students are those with less willpower or motivation, and thus likely to have lower GPAs even aside from their use of technology.)Meyer, of the University of Michigan, worries that the problem goes beyond poor grades. Theres a definite possibility that we are raising a generation that is learning more shallowly than young people in the past, he says. The depth of their processing of information is considerably less, because of all the distractions available to them as they learn.Given that these distractions arent going away, academic and even professional achievement may depend on the ability to ignore digital temptations while learninga feat akin to the famous marshmallow test. In a series of experiments conducted more than 40 years ago, psychologist Walter Mischel tempted young children with a marshmallow, telling them they could have two of the treats if they put off eating one right away. Follow-up studies performed years later found that the kids who were better able to delay gratification not only achieved higher grades and test scores but were also more likely to succeed in school and their careers.Two years ago, Rosen and his colleagues conducted an information-age version of the marshmallow test. College students who participated in the study were asked to watch a 30-minute videotaped lecture, during which some were sent eight text messages while others were sent four or zero text messages. Those who were interrupted more often scored worse on a test of the lectures content; more interestingly, those who responded to the experimenters texts right away scored significantly worse than those participants who waited to reply until the lecture was over.This ability to resist the lure of technology can be consciously cultivated, Rosen maintains. He advises students to take tech breaks to satisfy their cravings for electronic communication: After theyve labored on their schoolwork uninterrupted for 15 minutes, they can allow themselves two minutes to text, check websites, and post to their hearts content. Then the devices get turned off for another 15 minutes of academics.Over time, Rosen says, students are able extend their working time to 20, 30, even 45 minutes, as long as they know that an opportunity to get online awaits. Young peoples technology use is really about quelling anxiety, he contends. They dont want to miss out. They dont want to be the last person to hear some news, or the ninth person to like someones post. Device-checking is a compulsive behavior that must be managed, he says, if young people are to learn and perform at their besOn a post-holiday visit to New York, I was walking in the winter darkness with a friend in search of a restaurant when I realized with some surprise that we had wandered into a neighborhood where I had lived years before. With each passing step, more memories materialized in the cold air, until it seemed as if nearly every streetlight illuminated another version of the young woman I had been all those years ago.Here was the intersection where, as I was crossing the street one Saturday morning, a tall, well-dressed man loomed up between the white lines of the crosswalk and commanded me in a hostile voice: Smile!There, behind a banner of holiday lights, was the neighborhood tavern where I agreed to meet a former boyfriend in the middle of a weekday afternoon. We were sitting at the bar catching up when an oddly familiar tune wafted out of the speakers overhead, and I felt compelled to share my knowledge. Thats the theme song of the June Taylor Dancers on the Jackie Gleason Show, I informed my startled companion. He was a bit of a highbrow; if he had set up our meeting with the intention of resurrecting our romance, this piece of trivia perhaps caused him to reconsider his plan.I lived in that neighborhood during the 1980 transit strike; while gamely trudging to work one morning, I saw in the window of a kitchen supply store a graceful ceramic bowl the precise color of the cloudless blue sky in summer. Heedless of the transportation challenges, I walked in and bought it, and I lugged my treasure all the way to work and back home again that night. It has been with me ever since, through countless moves, and when I see it on my shelf I am briefly propelled back to the happy morning I found it.In the midst of my pleasant reminiscing with my friend, however, I remembered too a sharp sorrow from those years. Ten blocks north of my old neighborhood was the street corner where, on a cool evening in early spring, I stepped off a bus after work to find a man who had broken my heart and disappeared without explanation standing on the sidewalk looking straight at me, as if he, finally, had something he wanted to say to me.Inexplicably, instead of walking the few steps north to meet him, I stared, panicked, turned in the opposite direction and crossed the street, heading south. If this had been a movie, he would have followed me. But alas, it was callous reality. When I came to my senses and turned around seconds later, I saw him walking quickly north, already too far away for me to catch up to him. As the wrenching magnitude of my error overwhelmed me, I set off in a different direction: I went straight to a liquor store, bought a bottle of whiskey, took it home to my apartment and had an anesthetizing glass or two over ice with my extremely sympathetic roommate.I moved to New York all those years ago because I wanted to be a writer; I thought the intoxicating magic of the cityand its presence in the personal histories of so many other writerswould help my craft. I lived there only three years, in three very different neighborhoods, but much of what I experienced then seems preserved in my memory with crystal clarity. All I need is a faint suggestiona visit to an old haunt, a bowl found on a shelf, the name of a friend from that timeand the scenes begin to flash by one after the other, as if I am watching in my mind reel after reel of the uncut footage of my youth.Memories of other eras in my life are strong, too; my family and friends are often surprised by what I remember of events in the pastdetails such as where someone was sitting at a party or what someone else once said to me. But the memories from my New York years stand out in especially sharp focus. Did the city itself imprint those years so decisively on my mind? Or was it simply that I was in my 20s when I lived there, dreamy-eyed about writing and about life, and nearly every encounter seemed weighted with significance, half real and half the stuff of fiction?My mother lived in New York in the late 1930s and early 1940s, a time I consider one of the citys golden eras. She was young then, too, but she never loved it; she saved her urban ardor for San Francisco, a city that she also inhabited as a young woman and that she adored forever after. When I announced my intention of moving to New York, my mothers commentafter she tried to talk me out of itwas a terse, New York is a tough town.Still, she played an unwitting part in my desire to live there. The few family visits we made to New York when I was a child exposed me to a destination that was intense, lively and so different in every way from our quiet suburban neighborhood that I was enthralled. On one enchanting family trip to Chinatown when I was small, my father, mother, brother and I strolled the crowded sidewalks at night, ducking in and out of small shops, caught up in the festive throng. On another family trip some years later, we had lunch at a midtown restaurant so sophisticated (to my pre-teen eyes, at least) that the entrance was three or four steps down from the sidewalk.Perhaps it was on this trip that my father negotiated the fierce Manhattan traffic to drive by a tall, imposing apartment complex near the United Nations so my mother could point through the car window and say to her two children, This is where your mother used to live. I wonder now if she also saw through the car window a younger version of herselfslim and beautiful, unmarried and childlesshurrying down the sidewalk in her stylish 1940s dress, hat, pumps and gloves, with her whole life ahead of her.After my evening in my old neighborhood, I said goodbye to my friend at Grand Central Terminal, traversed the two blocks west to Fifth Avenue among the genial Friday night crowds and then proceeded down Fifth Avenue to my hotel. There was a fine, cool mist in the air, and fog was swirling over the roofs of the elegant buildings across the street from Bryant Park and painting blurred halos around the streetlights.As I passed the New York Public Library, I realized with some relief that I had no youthful memories of this part of town. This left me free to stop and gaze at the misty towers of the buildings in wonder, imagining foggy nights like this in the 1920s, 30s and 40s, and half-expecting a young man in a fedora and an overcoat and a young woman in a stylish 1940s coat, hat, pumps and gloves to pass by me, arm in arm and deep in conversation.The dreams I had when I moved to New York as a young woman did not all come true. But I kept faith with the little girl who had been entranced by a night in Chinatown and the pre-teen who discovered that not all restaurant entrances are found at street level. I lived in New York for a time in my youth, and because of that my memories of the city will always swirl and mix with those of all of its other inhabitants, past and present, real and fictional. At peace now under the soft veil of the evening fog, I continued down the deserted city sidewalk and turned in at the door to my hotel.t.}People want to know how they can improve their memory. Computer-based brain-training? Doing crossword puzzles? Eating blueberries? The one method that has strong evidence-based support is simple: walking. Really, the answer is cardiovascular exercise, and walking fits the bill. So, if you are thinking of a New Years resolution, just lace up your walking shoes!When people hear walking can improve memory, and leads to volumetric changes in the brain, they are often surprised. If the brain is like a muscle, then shouldnt brain exercises help? How can walking lead to changes in the brain? The simple answer is blood flow. Cardiovascular exercise leads to greater blood flow to the brain, bringing oxygen and nutrients. A recent study (link is external) showed that older people who walked 40 minutes a day, 3 times a week, showed a 2% INCREASE in the volume of the hippocampus, one of the main brain structure involved in memory one year later. Typically, the hippocampus volume DECLINES by about 1% every year after the age of 50. So, an increase of 2% is a big deal, as it might suggest walking can reverse the typical age-related decline in brain volume.For most people, walking is easy to do, and you dont need to be an athlete. That is also one reason is attracts research interestyou can randomly assign people to a walking group (or a stretching group, which does not lead to the same benefits as walking), but perhaps not to an extreme biking, or marathon running, regiment! So, walking helps, as does any other cardiovascular form of exercise.Also, walking can have a social component, if you walk with a partner or group, or even a pet. Having someone to walk with can lead to greater motivation to walk, and talking while walking can lead to enhanced mental health, social support and friendship.There has been a lot of recent attention about how getting 10,000 steps (link is external) a day can have wonderful benefits, but you dont need to start with this large number of steps (which is about 5 miles). Barring any disability, there are relatively few barriers to walking, even bad weather. In fact, mall-walking is a popular early morning activity for many people who live in cold weather climates. There are lots of ways to get in a few more steps each day, and having a pet to walk might motivate you. Buy a pedometer, and measure and monitoring how many steps you take a day. Then, walk to work. Or walk at work, with help of the lastest in multi-tasking technology: a treadmill desk.Walking has many benefits beside brain function, as recent research (link is external) suggests just 2000 steps a day can ward off diabetes, and breast cancer in women. Even people who are at risk for diabetes can cut their risk for heart-related events like a heart attack (link is external) or stroke.So, how can you train your brain? Computer-based brain training can have some benefits, but leads to more screen time, and perhaps a more sedentary life. While there can be benefits to playing these brain games, it is often difficult to find that these benefits transfer, or improve, other functions, such as being able to remember where you put your keys, or the name of the doctor you just met. Just the opposite of computer-based brain training, walking gets you away from your computer (but perhaps not your smart phone!). The bottom line is that walking, one of the most primitive forms of movement and exercise, can improve your body and your mind, and may help you remember where you put your keys. So, the best way to find the fountain of youth may be walking there (take those 10,000 simple steps!), and that will help you stay both physically fit and mentally sharp. ]Many people love to solve puzzles, and often feel this can also lead to benefits in brain function. Many of us are familiar with the idea of training the brain to improve memory, attention, or problem solving abilities. Packaged as entertainment that is also good for you, brain training lures many of us with the promise of revamping mental function in a way that just feels like games. Whether to preserve the mental prowess of youth, treat chronic conditions without the risks of medication, or simply gain a competitive edge in school or at work, the allure of voluntarily improving brain function has driven a billion dollar industry that shows no sign of abating.Ultimately, we want to know if these products are worthy of our time and money. The nuanced answer, however, is less than satisfying: the evidence is conflicting (link is external), and the data are not strong enough yet. Recently, a large group of eminent scientists wrote and signed a letter (link is external) outlining what brain training has yet to deliver and were met with a counter-statement signed by a second group of scientists attempting to set the record straight (link is external). Regardless of this contentious debate, many of us particularly baby boomers, but also younger adults beginning to appreciate the fickle nature of cognitive health feel comforted, even inspired, when viewing ads for the latest brain training app or reading a new piece on the brains ability to change itself. But do these attitudes change based on critiques that dismiss brain training as bunk? (link is external)As it turns out, most of us are optimistic about the promise of brain training. A recent study (link is external) found that even the highly educated and critically minded people have relatively high expectations about the potential of brain exercises to improve cognitive functions such as memory, concentration, and performance in everyday activities. Whats more, these expectations do not necessarily decrease based on critical reports. Older adults may be especially prone to this, and report that their own intuitions are the primary factor driving their beliefs and attitudes towards brain training.What might be driving these expectations? Optimism surrounding brain training software may also stem from the technology effect, where people generally expect technology to generate success. A recent study (link is external) showed that people are more likely to invest in technology industries and implicitly associate technology particularly new technologies with success. The brain training industry fits well with this concept, drawing on the relative novelty of neuroscience and the idea that the brains structure and activity can change in response to lifestyle activities. These findings birthed the term neuroplasticity a favorite catchphrase of brain training companies and encouraged the development of interventions that showed initial success in certain populations (e.g., children and adults with ADHD, healthy seniors). Mostly, we may believe in the promise of brain training because we want to: Our study also suggested that people who were more familiar with the concept of brain training and who spent more time playing computer games (cognitive or otherwise) were more likely to have high expectations.The overwhelming enthusiasm for brain training may represent a victory of marketing campaigns, but should give us pause. Our minds, once made up, can prove difficult to change, even with strong evidence to the contrary. In brain training, the potential for misuse and creation of unjustified expectations is significant. On the one hand, maintaining a positive outlook can be beneficial in many circumstances, and may even boost the effects of therapy (link is external). Expectations motivate us, and may account for at least some of the benefits reported in the scientific literature not to mention the success of the commercial market. However, the extent and significance of such influences are ambiguous. Unrealistic expectations of success may drive people to buy into programs without considering other, potentially less costly and more appropriate, alternatives. If brain training cannot yield robust, tangible results, patients may lose faith in themselves or in their capacity to improve; the industry may be fated to the same disillusionment that has spawned mistrust in Big Pharma.The appeal of brain training programs is strong; the evidence for their effectiveness less so. Research must now determine how our expectations interact with a programs intended outcomes, and establish whether they are helping or hurting us. Meanwhile, the consumers job is to keep expectations consistent with what science has shown, rather than what the industry claims. Brain training may promote cognitive health or represent a drug-free alternative to medication. Optimism may turn out to be a powerful driver of positive brain training effects which clinicians can harness for the benefit of their patients. But we should not allow our hopes and expectations to color our ability to question claims. More screen time might have its own costs (perhaps especially for school age children (link is external)), while something as simple as walking (sometimes away from a computer) has known benefits for memory and overall health, esecially in older age. Before buying into computer-based brain training, we should be mindful of what we are actually gaining or losing. ]We are very good at remembering the things that we see. We can recognize familiar faces, we can talk about the things we have seen, we return to places we liked, and we avoid places we did not. If you see something many times, over and over again, you should stand a pretty good chance of remembering it, right?Perhaps not. Consider an object that many people handle on a daily basis, the U.S. penny[1]. Though it is a common object, most people find it hard to explicitly describe all of its features or to pick out the correct representation of it among cleverly drawn alternatives with the features changed or moved (try it out with this demo (link is external)).Perhaps we forget the features of pennies because they are so small. Would our memory improve with highly visible objects? A recent study at UCLA tested peoples memory for the location of fire extinguishers.[2] Fire extinguishers are bright red and placed in highly visible locations, yet people in the study were not very good at remembering where the nearest one was, even though they often remembered the fact that they had seen it (often many times, and for some people, for more than 25 years). The researchers determined that seeing is not always the same as noticing.Would we remember an object better if we physically interacted with it daily? Not necessarily. Even interacting with objects does not ensure noticing and remembering them. For instance, without looking can you describe the features and spatial layout of the keys that surround the T key on your computer keyboard? Many people have trouble doing this very well. According to researchers at Vanderbilt and Kobe universities, even skilled typists had trouble giving explicit descriptions of the QWERTY keyboard.[3]What might cause this poor memory of things that are highly available, very noticeable, or with which we frequently interact? Before going any further, try this short, fun demonstration (link is external)dont worry, it will take less than a minute, and you can test yourself.If you went to the site, you might have found yourself struggling to pick out the correct version of an incredibly common designthe Apple logo. Logos are specifically designed to be memorable and to convey certain qualities and values about a company. The Apple logo is among the most recognizable in the world. It has a simple set of features, following a minimalist design that evokes a stylish sense of ease. Though it is very simple and highly available, a very recent study at UCLA (link is external)shows that people are not very good at elaborating and recalling the specific features of the logo (by drawing it).[4] And people had trouble identifying the correct logo from a set of alternatives. We see the Apple logo all the time, but do we notice it? When we see things very often, we may reach what can be called attentional saturation. Through constantly seeing and attending to the same thing over and over again, our brains may learn that it is unimportant to remember specific details. This same principle can be applied to pennies, fire extinguishers, and keyboards. When we first encounter one of these things, we might have a very distinct representation of it in our memories. But with continued use, that distinct memory may blend with other experiences with the object to the point that we start to only really pay attention to the important characteristics: It helps me pay with exact change, my fingers need to do this to make this word, I need it to put out a fire, or it represents a popular brand (and not a counterfeit).Strangely, we are largely unaware of this everyday phenomenon. In the study involving the Apple logo, participants were asked prior to drawing the logo how well they would be able to draw it. There was a striking discrepancy between participants confidence prior to drawing the logo and how well they performed on the task. After the drawing task, there was a large drop in confidence, suggesting that the act of trying to retrieve the logo from memory was a good method of updating ideas of how available that memory was. This type of retrospective judgment of memory is widely-known in the literature to be superior to prospective judgments, and it applies to other types of memory as well.If you want to really know how well you know something, the best thing you can do is to actually try to use that information in a meaningful wayit will probably be a telling experience._When you remember first meeting the love of your life, do you also have a strong memory of where you both were and also where you were in relation to objects in the scene? When I first met my wife, Doris, it was at a party and she was at a piano surround by bird dog males, who I saw from an adjacent room. In my minds eye, I still see both rooms and where everybody was.Do you remember where you were on 9/11? I was in the waiting room of a hospital, looking over a series of lounge chairs at a large-screen TV program that was reporting the news.It seems that many people remember not only events but where they were at the time of the event. In the buccolic scene, for example, if you were there, you probably remember what was happening.But how does this happen? We do know that a new experience may be consolidated into a lasting memory, especially if it stirs emotion and you replay it in your mind. That is certainly the case when you meet the love of your life or see a terrible event.Back in the 1970s I was studying the part of the brain known as the hippocampus, and it was known at the time that this structure is crucial for consolidating memories. I and others were focused on an EEG rhythm (theta rhythm of 4-7 waves per second) that was especially prominent when an animal moves around in an enclosure EEG signals are summed over dozens of neurons, and therefore to get more precise data some investigators put microelectrodes into the hippocampus so they could monitor the nerve impulse activity of single neurons as the animal moved around.It was quickly discovered that some hippocampal neurons fired impulses selectively when an animal was in a special location within the enclosure. Collectively, these place neurons were actually mapping the enclosure space and tracking the animals position as it moved around in this space.New insight on an additional role for place neurons has come from a new research report on human epileptics with electrodes implanted in their hippocampus to locate the diseased tissue. These patients played a virtual-reality game in which their avatar drove through a virtual town and delivered items to stores. Their task was to memorize the layout and what was delivered at each store. Meanwhile, place cells in the hippocampus were monitored and their place coding was noted. Then when participants were asked to recall the memory of what went where, the place-responsive activity was reinstated even though the subjects were not actually playing the game but recalling it from memory. And the activity of place cells was similar to that during the learning stage.In other words, neural representations of the content of the experience had become linked with the spatial and temporal context. Such evidence provides strong evidence for the theory that memory formation and recall involve association of event with context, especially spatial and temporal context. This linkage creates a mutually reinforcing interaction of event and location. We tend to remember both or neither.Can we apply these findings to improving everyday learning and memory situations? Of course, we can. The key elements for making it easier to learn something new are to: Identify a context that stirs emotions, preferably positive emotions like meeting someone you are attracted to. Be especially aware of where you are at the time and where you are in relation to the location of various objects. The hippocampus uses these emotional and spatial cues to facilitate the consolidation of memory. We know that memory is promoted by making associations. Emotions and spatial cues are probably the most effective kinds of cues.Sources: Miller, J. F. et al. (2013) Neural activity in human hippocampal formation reveals the spatial context of retrieved memories. Science. 342, 1111-1114 +The good news is youre not losing your mind, youre just adapting to the Internet age. A study, called Google Effects on Memory, published last week in the journal Science proves what weve suspected for a long time: We dont remember as much as we should, but we sure remember how to Google for the answer. In the experiment, college students remembered less information when they knew they would have access to it later. Instead, they remember the pathway to find it again, like the computer folder in which it was saved.Its like when your boss asks you for a clients phone number and you say, I dont know it, but I have it in my e-mail. Its just one more example of how the Internet is changing our brains to be more reliant on our external hard drives the Web.The Internet has become a primary form of external or transactive memory, where information is stored collectively outside ourselves, the studys authors write.To some education theorists, this might read as a positive development. After all, if everything we know is stored online, and we all carry around smart phones to instantly aid with factual queries, and our brains are actually adjusting to these changes, then it appears that technology and biology have at last converged into one seamless, packet-fueled stream.In fact, it would seem as though theres no need to memorize a single byte of information ever again. Soon your ATM code could be the only morsel of data that ever need burden your 21st-century brain. However, that may not be such a good thing.Author Don Tapscott advocated the no-memorization agenda back in 2008, saying that rote learning should be phased out of schools because, teachers are no longer the fountains of knowledge; the Internet is. Instead, he and others argue that children should be taught to better parse the constant feed of information theyre bombarded with. (Hes somewhat late to the game, however, since the popularity of memorization has been declining in schools since the early 1980s nearly a decade before most kids would be getting on the Internet at home.)Scores of education theorists have also argued that high schools and colleges should focus more in outcome-based learning than the internalizing of mere facts.Of course, for every education reformer there is an equal and opposite education reformer. Recently, there have been some fairly convincing arguments coming from the other side that kids need more memorization training so that society can become more innately knowledgeable, not less.William Klemm, a neuroscience professor at Texas A&M University, has written several screeds decrying teaching methods that leave out a critical component of intelligence: memory.Creativity comes from a mind that knows, and remembers, a lot, he says, arguing that memorization both improves thinking and arms us with the facts to defend our arguments.Granted, Klemms rants seem slightly tinged with technophobia (he criticizes parents for raving about how smart kids are to multi-task with all their electronic gizmos.) But his overall argument has roots even at the highest echelons of the tech world.In a Wall Street Journal excerpt this week, Googles first brand manager Douglas Edwards recounted his job interview, in which Google head Sergey Brin asked Edwards to provide a detailed explanation of a topic from memory. (This from the guy whos supposedly responsible for our collective forgetfulness.)Countless academic studies have also reinforced the idea that a good memory improves academic performance. For me, the real kicker came with Joshua Foers recent book Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything.In it, Foer says that people squander forty days annually compensating for things theyve forgotten and embarks on a mission to become a national memory championHe also offers the best-yet argument as to why good memory shouldnt go the way of good handwriting and other relics of the pre-digital age, writing:To the extent that experience is the sum of our memories and wisdom the sum of experience, having a better memory would mean knowing not only more about the world, but also more about myself.Of course, you can also fake knowing about the world by digging through Wikipedia. But who will be there to edit it if nobody actually knows anything anymore? Reciting pi to 100 digits is more of a party trick than a marker of genius, but perhaps just Googling it isnt truly a replacement for just remembering.|When I was in veterinary medical school, I could often be found lounging in the fraternity living room listening to jazz records. My classmates were stunned that I was wasting so much time, when most of them had to study while I seemingly had nothing to do. O.K., so maybe I graduated fifth in my class rather than first, but I was not nearly as stressed as my classmates.My reason for sacrificing study time was that it bolstered my spirits. Veterinary medicine is a lot harder than most people think. Veterinarians learn the same anatomy, physiology, pharmacology, microbiology, and so on as physicians do. In some schools, human and veterinary medical students take many of the same basic science classes. Moreover, veterinary students have to learn about multiple species, learn more public health, and take a years worth of surgery.But back to the music issue: some people, especially students, think that listening to music helps the memory. Historically, supporters of this practice have referred to this as the Mozart effect. Most students, of course, listen to pop music rather than Mozart. Students are notorious for listening to music while studying. Why isnt music a distraction? I have written before about how extraneous stimuli can prevent memory consolidation, which in the case of studying, consumes cognitive resources and prevents the formation of memory that lasts long enough for the next examination.Because so many students listen to music while studying, formal experiments were recentlyreported on whether or not that is a good thing. These experiments, conducted in Finland, had a scientific rationale. Prior research had shown that listening to music that people considered pleasurable increased the release of dopamine in the brain, and dopamine is well known as a feel good neurotransmitter. Other research had also shown that dopamine promotes learning to approach rewards, while a deficiency of dopamine promotes learning of punishments.Seventy three subjects, mean age of 27.1 years, listened to a battery of 14 songs and identifiedthree that they really liked and three that were emotionally neutral. One of each was selected for use in the study, in which subjects were grouped in four different listening patterns involving a positive (P) or neutral (N) song during study and the opposite kind of song during testing. Thus, there were four groups, NN, NP, PP, PN. Each group was formed to have an approximately equal number of musicians and non-musicians.The learning involved memorizing 54 pairs of Japanese characters, in which one character was arbitrarily given a high reward value (a simple smiley face feedback display during training) and the other character a low reward value (frowning face feedback). In the test phase, pairs were shuffled and thus served as a measure of how well the original learning was generalized.Results indicated that people with more musical experience learned better with neutral music but tested better with pleasurable music. The opposite was true for people without music training. My explanation is that pleasurable music is a distraction for a musically trained person who could be expected to pay more attention and devote more cognitive resources to pleasurable musics inherent structure in the process of analyzing and realizing its pleasing quality. Neutral music is more easily ignored. A central tenet of learning is that any kind of distraction impairs formation of memory. The musically untrained people learned better with positive music, presumably because of the positive emotions it generated without the complication of analyzing it and thus interfering with memory formation. Clearly, the role of music listening in learning differs among individuals.I looked at their song list and found no jazzall of it was either concert-type music or pop songs. That is a serious oversight, in my view. What the researchers may have missed is the possible positive effect of the unique rhythms and syncopation of jazz. I am reminded of a study I reported in my book, Memory Power 101, showing that chewing gum helps learning.I am musically untrained, and maybe my listening to jazz improved my learning in vet school by creating positive emotions. A great deal of research has shown that positive emotions have an indirect enhancing effect on forming memories. Negative emotions impair memory. No solid neuroscience explanation exists, but it is no doubt highly relevant that the same brain structure, the hippocampus, mediates both emotions and memory formation. +n 1913, Ebbinghaus demonstrated that spacing learning out over time creates much more efficient learning than cramming a learning task into a single intense session. Now, a new discovery has been made for a specific spaced-learning strategy that so far is the best of all. In reviewing this new design, Kelley and Whatson (2013) point out experiments showing that this kind of spaced learning is optimal for information encoding and for activation of the genes needed to form long-term memory.And what is the design? The idea begins with the established notion that a given learning task should be chunked so that it can be studied in a short time, on the order say of 20 minutes. What is novel about the new design is that a given chunk is studied three times in a single session, with two intervening rest periods of 10 minutes in which there is little mental activity. During the rest periods, physical activity, like shooting hoops or cycling, seem to be ideal. The reason for these intervening rest periods is that thinking about new information or performing mental tasks creates interference with the memory-forming processes already under way.Of course, like most learning tasks, a single session, even with three repetitions within it, is not likely to be sufficient unless you are really adept at mnemonic techniques (Klemm, 2012). After a day or so, this strategy needs to be repeated one or more times.This is so simple to do and, if replicated in more studies, should become standard practice in schools. However, very few teachers know about this technique and school curricula are not designed to be taught this way. Changing the educational establishment is probably too much to hope for. But this strategy can be used by all students in homework study. Home schoolers and students taking Internet courses can easily use the technique on their own.If you try this approach, please add comments to this post to let us know how it works for you.+Forgetting important dates, names, facts, or things you need to do can be frustrating and potentially disastrous, depending on the seriousness of the situation. For example, its annoying to forget to bring your lunch to work, but it can be dangerous to forget to turn off the stove before leaving the house.Following are our top 5 memory mistakesand strategies you can use to overcome them. It may take a little effort, but the results can have an immediate payoff by improving your mental efficiency and preventing disaster for yourself and others.1. Committing unconscious transference.No, we're not talking about psychoanalysis now. The term unconscious transference pops up in research on false memory (link is external) effect. Unconscious transference in memory occurs when an eyewitness transfers to person Y and the actions carried out in Ys vicinity by person X. Imagine that you saw two people standing on a street corner. One takes out a can of spray paint and proceeds to deface the side of a building. If someone later asks you to identify the person responsible for the graffiti, the chances are good that youll lay the blame on person Y.Florida Atlantic University psychologist Alan Kersten and his research team, in a 2013 publication, recently demonstrated this effect by having participants state whether or not a second person committed the actions carried out by a first person. The unconscious transference effect showed up loud and clear, but was particularly pronounced in older adults. The familiarity of seeing the second person present at the event seems to be enough to bias our recollection of their respective roles, a tendency that may be greater in people who also show other memory errors.How does unconscious transference apply to you? Most likely, you wont witness many criminal activities in your life, or at least lets hope you dont. Instead, the common tendency to transfer recognition from one person to another is more likely to affect your emotional reactions to people as they perform everyday activities in ordinary situations (which was the