Memory Plays Many Tricks in Our Lives

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 655, 6 May 1929, Page 10

Memory Plays Many Tricks in Our Lives

Reduplication is Simplest Form of Faculty ART OF FORGETTING WHAT do we mean when we say ' ’ that a man has a "good memory' ? | There are several kinds of memory, 1 and we may be referring to any one of them. The simplest kind of i memory is called "reduplicative. This 'is the faculty of reproducing experiences. It comes without being con- | sciously desired. It is merely photographic, and it has no connection with neutral capacities of a higher kind. Indeed, we suspect that animals have it as much as men. writes a contributor in “T.F.’s Weekly.' A boy of 14, almost an imbecile, had never learned to read a single word. He could recognise the letters | of the alphabet, but he could not comj bine them. Nevertheless, if he looked at a page of a book, he could photograph the whole; and. when the book | was shut, he could spell out alt the I words to the end. There have been great men who possessed this “reduplicative memory’ in a strong degree. M hen Samuel ! Johnson was a boy, his mother read him a poem of 18 stanzas, and after hearing it once he recited it through with scarcely a slip. John Stuart Mill was a prodigy of memory even in his childhood. And probably everyone has known incidents in which he found himself reproducing in detail some experience which he has never tried to remember. Some psychologists hold that in the deepest sense nothing is ever forgotten. There is the case of a woman who found herself able to repeat long passages from some strange foreign tongue. It was finally discovered to be Hebrew; in her childhood she had once overheard two Hebrew scholars reading a book. She understood nothing of it; but the sounds had persisted in her unconscious memory through all her life, and she had suddenly remembered them. There are thousands of such examples, and they all tend to prove that anything -we have experienced leaves an indelible mark upon us. But now , we come to a quite different kind of ! memory—recollection. Some of these j experiences we have quite clearly under our own control; others may be there, but if these recur, they come spontaneously. INTEREST AND MEMORY Why should we pick and choose among our experiences? Why should we be able to recollect some, but not. others? Well, say the phychologists, that depends on attention . and attention depends on interest. You remember what you have been interested in. You are interested only, consciously or unconsciously, in those things which seem to you to have a value and importance for your own future. All the rest slip back into the unconscious memory. How large a part is played by unconscious aims in the development of faculties can be illustratei by an actual example from school life. One bov in a form had always been v ery stupid at mathematics. His formmates and his master had always ridiculed him. and though he seemed to be trying hard, he had made no progress for two years. One day, however, the master himself had an absurd slip of memory while he was doing a sum on the blackboard. He could not remember how to finish it off. 1-Ie asked the class if one of the boys could finish it for him. To his own astonishment and everyone else's. our “stupid” boy found that he could do it, and went forward in fear and trembling. It was a simple enough : sum, and he succeeded in doing it cor-: rectly. From that day forward, his 1 Interest in mathematics revived, and he became the best mathematician of the class. Ridicule had made him feel that he could never succeed in mathematics. He had deliberately lost interest, and made himself stupid. When his discouragement was broken down, intelligence and memory both awoke, and he learned faster than any other boy. He had now a use for his memory, and he could let it work freely. EXHAUSTING WORK The surest way to cultivate the kind of memory that will serve you is to cultivate interest in your work; find out why you want to do it; and connect it up with your other interests in life. There is much hard grind given to trying to memorise things in which we have not the slightest interest; and this is a very exhausting and unnatural way of learning. The task of memory can be iriade infinitely easier by fixing our goal in life and taking an alert interest in everything which conduces to it. Of course, we shall “forget,” too. The faculty of "forgetting” is as valu- ! able as the faculty of "remembering.” It is mainly when we have distracted j aims, and do not know what we need | to remember and what we can usefully forget that we seem to have poor memories. Our minds are so busy remembering things for which we have no use that there is no attention left for things that really concern us. No one needs to bother if his memory is poor, so long as he can remember what he needs. There is no such ability as the ability to remember everything consciously and, if there were, it would be a doubtful blessing. The art of memory-training is chiefly the art of re-directing our interests, and wakening ourselves up to the fullness of life around us. If we settle our aims and learn what we want from our futures, that automatic “reduplicative memory” can be relied on to provide us with material when we call for it. If our work is such that we do not easily take an interest in it, we must learn to link it up with our real interest. W e must learn to associate it with other activities. Wc shall then remember with the least possible effort and the utmost efficiency.