Thinking about the past week, did any of you forget where you put your phone? Did you have a word stuck on the tip of your tongue? You couldn't remember the name of the movie a friend recommended? What is going on here? Is your memory failing?
It's not. Despite memory's extraordinary, necessary and common presence in our lives, it is far from perfect. Our brains are not designed to remember people's names, to remember to do something later or to catalogue everything we experience. Even in the smartest heads, memory is likely to be wrong. So what determines what we remember and what we forget?
Your memory is not a video camera recording a constant stream of every sight and sound you're exposed to. You can only remember what you are concerned about. Accordingly, one major reason for forgetting what someone said or where you parked your car is lack of attention.
The other has something to do with stimulus(刺激物). For example the tip of the tongue is one of the most common experiences of memory failure. Why does this happen? The tip of the tongue can occur when there's only partial or weak activation(激活)of the nerve cells that connect to the word you're looking for.
So when you walk into a room and suddenly don't know why you're there, you're not going crazy or getting Alzheimer's disease, and your memory isn't terrible. Go back to the room you were in before you landed in this one and imagine the clues that were there.
A. One necessary factor is attention. B. It's doing exactly what it's supposed to do. C. These imperfections are simply the factory settings. D. Our brains tend to remember what is meaningful and forget what isn't. E. You're trying to come up with a word, but you cannot find it in your memory. F. It will instantly deliver what you were completely confused about a moment ago. G. Memory is amazing and is essential for the functioning of almost everything we do. |
