June 2008 newsletter

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T h e M e m o r y K e y
<http://www.memory-key.com>

Your resource for information about memory and memory improvement

June 2008

<http://www.memory-key.com/newsletters/issue_124.htm>

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THIS MONTH ON MEMORY-KEY.COM:

RECOGNITION, RECALL, & OTHER STATES OF REMEMBERING

BOOK REVIEWS

BLOG

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NEW: The original Memory Key is now available as an e-book!
Check it out at: http://www.memory-key.com/shop/memkey_ebook.htm.
Note that you can now use your credit cards on Paypal.

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Check out the e-book on "Effective notetaking" at:
http://www.memory-key.com/shop/notetaking_workbook.htm

and the e-book on "Remembering intentions" at:
http://www.memory-key.com/shop/intention_ebook.htm

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NEW: Sequel to Secrets available!
Find out about my YA novels at: http://www.fmmcpherson.com/

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RECOGNITION, RECALL, & OTHER STATES OF REMEMBERING

Remembering, as we all know, is not an either-or proposition. F or example, we can see a person and remember everything we know about them, or we can remember some details but not others (such as the names of their children), or we can remember details about them but not their name, or we can recognize them as someone we’ve met before but not remember who they are.

In terms of processes, the big divide is between recall and recognition. But we have other experiences, related to these and each other in ways we’re not yet fully certain of: familiarity, ‘feeling-of-knowing’ (FOK) — that sense we have that we know something and will be able to recall it later though we can’t recall it now, and tips-of-the-tongue (TOTs) — those experiences of not being quite able to retrieve a word or name.

On the face of it, FOKs, TOTs, recognition, and recall are all stages on a continuum, and familiarity is a feeling we get that reflects the degree or strength of that graded memory. But it’s not as simple as that.

Recognition is so much easier than recall, we all know that -- but why? That’s one of those questions that seem too obvious to ask, until you ask it and realize it’s not as easy to answer as you thought. There are three main theories:

(a) recall needs more information than recognition, and thus greater memory strength (in other words, recognition occurs when the relevant neurons activate to a lesser degree)

(b) remembering first requires a decision about how familiar the information seems, which is enough for recognition, but not for recall

(c) because successful retrieval depends on achieving a match between the information encoded at the time of learning and the information that is available at the time of retrieval (which is why context is so important), recall is more difficult than recognition because it requires more extensive reinstatement of the learning event.

This idea that familiarity is involved in remembering is an interesting and important one, and leads us inescapably to the question: what is familiarity? That's another question that seems too obvious to ask, but though we all know what it means for something to be familiar, it’s not at all obvious where that sense comes from. Is it, like recognition, simply an effect of the degree to which relevant neurons activate, and so a function of the strength of the memory code? Or is it something else?

It's been thought that our sense of how familiar something seems depends largely on what is termed fluency — the ease with which the item is mentally processed. But a number of studies have cast doubt on the idea that recognition is affected by fluency. Does that mean familiarity isn’t involved in recognition, or simply that we’re wrong in thinking familiarity is a function of fluency? Or is familiarity affected by fluency as well as something else? Or perhaps the problem lies with our incomplete understanding of fluency. Fluency can be affected by factors other than prior experience. Recent research suggests that things that arouse emotions in us, especially negative emotions, are processed more fluently than neutral items. This suggests that how familiar something appears to us depends not only on how genuinely familiar it is (i.e., how often we’ve experienced it before), but also on the strength and nature of the emotions it arouses in us.

Interestingly, there is a clinical condition (the Capgras delusion) whereby a person, while recognizing the people around them, believes they have been replaced by doubles (imposters, robots, aliens). This is simply because the normal accompanying feeling of familiarity is missing. In other words, what’s missing is not only the sense that you’ve ever seen this person before, but also the emotional element that tells you what you feel about this person. With people it’s particularly evident that familiarity is a product not only of repeated experience but also emotional response. Perhaps emotional response is to some degree involved in familiarity generally. Familiarity is important, after all, not only for recognition but also for recall — where it affects how strongly we believe in the accuracy of a memory.

It does seem likely that familiarity involves more than the simple amount-of-prior-experience that we tend to think of as responsible for the degree of familiarity we feel, and because familiarity affects our confidence in a memory, it’s important to realize that. It’s also worth realizing that different ‘states’ of familiarity are different, though related, processes, and are affected by different things.

For example, ‘feeling-of-knowing’ (FOK) has been shown to activate brain regions not involved in recall, showing it’s not simply a matter of graded activation (although that was evident too), and different factors affect the two processes: more repetition during learning improves both recall and recognition, but apparently not FOK; the meaning of words affects FOK in different ways for different people (depending on their cognitive style), but doesn’t affect recall or recognition.

TOTs also have been shown to involve the same brain region as FOKs, as well as others. But are TOTs affected by familiarity? TOTs really are an example of partial recall.

In my article on identity memory (http://www.memory-key.com/EverydayMemory/identity.htm ) I talk about the different codes that make up our memory for a person, and how this leads to our being able to recognize someone without being able to bring up their name. The same process is involved in tips-of-the-tongue — those experiences of not being quite able to retrieve a word. In the case of TOTs, the problem lies with words also having more than one code: a phonological code (the sound of the word) and a semantic one (the meaning of the word). As with the identity codes, recognition without complete recall comes about because the connections between the linked codes are, or have become, weak. In essence, this is because they haven’t been used often, or for a long while — familiarity is of course also affected by these factors of frequency and recency, so we could say TOTs are affected by familiarity but it’s probably more accurate to say both TOTs and familiarity are affected by the same factors. (My book The Memory Key has a detailed discussion of codes and their connections, but since that is the heart of learning and remembering, I’m afraid it’s too big a topic to go into here!).

Given that TOTs arise because the meaning of the word hasn’t connected to its linked sound code, it’s not surprising that an effective strategy is to be presented with a similar-sounding word. When you have the word ‘pop-up’ in your mind later, when you’ve given up trying to retrieve it, it’s not as spontaneous as it seems. What’s happened is that you’ve probably just heard or said a similar-sounding word. But there are rules about the similarity. The latest research indicates that sharing a first letter is no help — what you need is the first syllable (second or third syllables are no good either, it has to be the initial syllable). Moreover, it can’t be the same part of speech, e.g. a noun. In fact, this will hinder your retrieval of your target (you’ve undoubtedly experienced this when the wrong word has got stuck in your brain and seems to be blocking your recall of your target). What you need is a different part of speech with the same syllable — if it’s a noun (and it generally is), a verb would probably be the most helpful.

What does all this mean in a practical sense? Well, however the academic debate turns out, the degree of your recall (mere recognition, some details, all details) is undoubtedly affected by the strength of the connections between associated codes, and if you have an understanding of the different codes involved in different types of memories, you can better encode and retrieve them. It also seems that your confidence in the accuracy of your memories, as well as your feeling that you know something even though you can’t remember it right now, is affected by not only the strength of the connections between associated codes but also emotional responses as well as other automatic processes involved in familiarity.

One last caveat, on the subject of TOTs: it seems that seniors in their late 70s and older don’t benefit from same-sounding words, although adults in their early 70s do. In fact, it’s likely to make it worse — it seems to be that any alternates become more competitive for retrieval with age. (For more on TOTs, see my article at http://www.memory-key.com/EverydayMemory/TOT.htm — written some time ago, I’m afraid, so it doesn’t have this latest research.)

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BOOK REVIEWS

Scientific American Mind recently reviewed a book on this very subject of “feeling of knowing”—being certain of a fact despite having no (or even contrary) evidence. The book is in fact the author’s case for the argument that certainty “arises out of involuntary brain mechanisms that, like love or anger, function independently of reason.” The book is: On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not by Robert A. Burton. St. Martin Press, 2008. And you can read the review at http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=mind-reviews-april-2008

On a not entirely unrelated subject, Scientific American also recently chatted with Gary Marcus about his new book Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind, which argues (quite correctly in my opinion) that the mind is a cobbled together contraption that works, more or less, but has a lot of rough edges. That review is at
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=gary-marcus-interview and you can also read Nature’s review at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v452/n7190/full/452938a.html

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BLOG & NEW WEB PAGES

I've been very bad about updating my blog (www.memory-key.com/blogger.html ) for a long time, but long-time readers might recall that the idea of my blog is to cover things that are to do with the mind but not so specifically about memory. As part of my drive to start blogging regularly again, and do something about all the reports I've gathered while I haven't been blogging, I've put up some new pages that relate to my most recent posts. These pages contain all the relevant past blog entries as well as the reports that should have been blog entries but weren't!

So, new pages on creativity http://www.memory-key.com/Personality/creativity.htm ; on the effect of TV and video games on mind and behavior http://www.memory-key.com/MemFactors/video.htm ; on pain and the mind http://www.memory-key.com/Emotion/pain.htm (the placebo effect's a big subject in its own right, and will get its own page in due course).

Note that the blog is indexed chronologically at
http://www.memory-key.com/indices/blog_index.htm

And by subject, at http://www.memory-key.com/indices/blog_index2.htm

You can also access my blog with an RSS feed. The URL is
http://memory-key.com/www.memory-key.com/ftp.memory-key.com/atom.xml or just click the
Bloglines button on the sidebar of my blog.

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The Memory Key website is named after my book "The Memory Key", a
practical user-friendly handbook designed to help people achieve
genuine, long-lasting memory improvement.

http://www.memory-key.com/AboutTheSite/about_book.htm

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