Limits of Memory

I have referred often to the limits of human short-term memory, but on this occasion I wanted to delve a Little deeper to evidence exactly why we forget our commitments.

“The role of leadership is to create an alignment of strengths such as weaknesses become irrelevant”

-       Peter Drucker

Understanding the memory is essential to make, as Drucker says, its weaknesses irrelevant.

Memory… What memory?

The first thing that needs to be clarified is that the brain has different kinds of memory, to simplify we will divide them in two types: “Working Memory” and “Storage Memory”

Working Memory: is the part(s) of the brain that keeps things within reach of our reasoning, it is what we “have in mind”

Storage Memory: is the filing cabinet of our brain, where everything is stored so that we can recall in the long term. The thing is, we cannot function with the information in Storage Memory, it just doesn’t work that way. In order to co-relate or “use” different data, it has to be retrieved from storage and put in Working Memory.

Studies done by Timothy Brady have proven the massive capacity of our Storage Memory, in it is contained virtually all information you have come across in your life.

So… why do I forget things?

The is a wide range of factors, but the most important are:

1. Bad Encoding: Working memory captures the stimuli that we receive and evaluates which one is the focus of attention, then tries to figure out the reason why is should be stored so it can properly encode the information and pass it to Storage Memory. Think of it as a filing process where you add a couple of labels to a file, if you put the wrong labels its impossible to find the file.A good example of this is a study performed by Dr. Cowan, where he presented people with a series of coins and asked them to remember the denomination of the currency; a very large percentage of people remembered right when asked the pertinent information, but when asked, almost no one could recall the year that was minted on the front.In this case, the coins where coded as “denomination 5, Denomination 25… Etc.” and thus there is no information on storage of the minted year.
2. Interference: The process of memory recall is directly related to the code or stimulus that fired the process, if more calls come in at the same time, the mind can wander in search of different memories; this is known as interference and is one of the reasons for the “tip of the tongue” effect, where the memory was already recalled but has not yet been delivered.
3. Interception: Memories are stored all over the brain, and as such its hard for the human body not to react as if it was re-living the event all over again, if it was a traumatic moment the recall will be intercepted by the negative reaction of the body

Why do things slip away?

Have you ever had an important call to make, and after a very busy workday you get home only to remember with anguish that to forgot?

The reason for this is that Storage Memory doesn’t allow us to reason, think of it like a DVD filled with videos on the shelf of your house, its all there but cant actually do anything with it.

You can only “think” (deducting, correlating, task execution, problem solving, pattern recognition, logic, etc.) with the things you can hold in Working Memory, here is where the limitation comes in: according to Dr. Millier, and later corroborated by Dr. Cowan, the maximum capacity of your Working Memory is between 4 and 7 “chunks” of data.

People that seem to remember more are just very adept at encoding, or can memorize large sets of data into a single chunk, for example the digits 584246609978 are biologically impossible to maintain in working memory without losing focus or sending something else over to Storage. However, the phone number +(58) (country code for Venezuela), 424 (cell phone code), 660 (area) 9978 (number) are a lot easier to remember, because in reality its just 4 “chunks” of data.

Working memory maintains information for 10-15 seconds before sending it over to storage, so what you are doing most of the time is just juggling the different stimuli you receive throughout your workday.

So if I ask you to do 7 things, then during 15 seconds I ask you to memorize a 7 number string of digits, you no longer have the biological capacity to maintain your tasks in operation; they are now filed and stored away, and unless you happen to randomly come across the proper stimulus, then recall the proper encoding, you wont remember them.

To beat this limitation you have to do one of two things:

1. Spend years training in advanced mnemotecnic methods and coplex encoding exercises to maximize recall capacity or…
2. Write things down.

Do you have any encoding tricks? What stimuli do you use to recall? I’m eager to hear from you in the comments section or on my twitter @alexmrv.

Photo by  red ice