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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
August 2008
<http://www.memory-key.com/newsletters/issue_127.htm>
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THIS MONTH ON MEMORY-KEY.COM:
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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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THINKING STRATEGIES
I have recently been reading one of Edward de Bono’s books (“Teach yourself to think”). De Bono is most famously the creator of the “Six Thinking Hats”, a deceptively simple strategy to help groups think and talk about problems. De Bono makes several good points about thinking:
- that the system of logical analysis handed down to us from the ancient Greeks, while a useful tool in many situations, is not always the right tool for thinking;
- that people often believe they’re better thinkers than they are;
- that thinking starts with perception (which is not as automatic and cognitive-free as we used to believe);
- that we get into mental ruts with the way we perceive and think about things;
- that simple strategies are very useful for effectively guiding attention in a way that helps us think clearly.
As I was reading de Bono’s book, I contemplated the especial relevancy of step-by-step thinking strategies for older adults. There are two principal reasons why. The first is of course that the more years we have lived, the more practiced we get at the tasks we do and the ways we have at looking at the world. Such practice builds expertise, and so we hardly want to discourage it, but the downside is that we do, inescapably, dig deeper and deeper ruts in the network of our mind.
This is why new activities that break you out of your established habits and patterns of thinking are so particularly helpful to older adults.
The second is that one of the major, perhaps the major, negative effect of aging on the mind is increasing difficulties with attention. In particular, with ignoring irrelevancies. We are more easily distracted with age.
This makes a programmed system, to help us keep on track, particularly useful.
De Bono has several attention-directing tools, that like the Thinking Hats sound absurdly simple and unnecessary, until you actually force yourself to go through the exercise and see the effect. There is PMI (Plus; Minus; Interesting); APC (Alternatives; Possibilities; Choices); CAF (Consider All Factors); C & S (Consequence and Sequel); FI-FO (inFormation In – inFormation Out); OPV (Other People’s Views). All these (and more) are strategies for formally directing your attention in a sequential manner. They’re easy to dismiss on the grounds that you “do that anyway”, but there is a significant difference in, say, ‘thinking about the pluses and minuses’ and actually setting down to search solely for the pluses, before going on to search solely for the minuses, etc.
De Bono is not of course the only person involved in thinking skills (although he is clearly the most prominent!), and you can find more information about different strategies on the web, as well as in De Bono’s many books. All I want to do is to point out the value of such strategies, particularly for older adults, and emphasize that their value is far from evident until you try them.
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OUTSOURCING MEMORY
A short time ago ago, as most of you know, the modern catastrophe hit me and my computer crashed, taking all my work with it (you never think it will happen to you, do you?). A very stressful event, because no, I hadn’t recently backed up (due to problems getting my disks to write). As the hours and days passed while I waited to hear the prognosis, realizations kept crashing down on me, of things I might have lost. Simple things like vital bookmarks and email addresses made me realize how much I rely on my computer to remember things for me. Which leads to a critical memory strategy that we all use, though not necessarily effectively: outsourcing memory.
We all outsource our memory, and we didn’t need to wait to get computers to do it. Traditionally men have tended to outsource personal memory to women (wives, mothers, secretaries). Children of course rely on adults to be their memory. We all use written texts (scribbled notes, books) to remember details.
But despite the prevalence of this strategy, we tend to disparage it. Personally, I have no trouble whatsoever with the idea of relying on aids outside my mind to remember things. The point is not whether you outsource memory (because we all do), but that you do it well.
A very long time ago, I wrote a master’s thesis on the evolution of intelligence. Intelligence is an interesting concept – one of those attributes we all understand and believe we can recognize, right up until we’re asked to define it. Scientists have been trying to pin down exactly what intelligence is for many years, and still haven’t managed (although I believe we’re a lot closer). My definition is that intelligence is the ability to select the information that is most useful in a given situation (this comes out of considering intelligence across species, not simply in human terms).
I thought of this when I was reflecting on the outsourcing of memory, and I decided that using outsourcing effectively is all about making good decisions about what information you outsource. There is so much information we need in the world today that the decision is not so much which bits should you outsource, but which bits you shouldn’t. That is, what information do you actually need to store in your memory?
There are two factors that this depends on. The first is the circumstances in which you’re going to need the information – information needed immediately, especially in a context that would make consulting a reference source embarrassing (such as recognizing people, or information that other people expect you to know), is best kept in your head.
The second relates to your understanding. There is only so far you can go in putting together information that is written down in front of you. Understanding any text, any topic, requires a vast store of knowledge, much of which is taken for granted (such as all the information in your head that enables you to read words). The more deeply you want to understand something, the more information you need actually in your head. Google is great for looking up the odd detail, but you cannot understand a subject until you have all the requisite knowledge integrated in your information network.
On the other hand, you don’t need all the details – you need the important information that is necessary for understanding (remember my definition of intelligence?), and you need a mental index. That is, you can have quite a lot of information stored externally, as long as your memory holds the knowledge that you have these specific bits of information, and where you have them stored.
So, my take-home message is this: accept that you need to outsource much of your memory and choose to remember for yourself only that which needs to be in your head. (But remember that to effectively outsource, you need to be organized!)
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BOOK REVIEWS
I read an enjoyable book about memory lately --
Martha Weinman Lear's
Where Did I Leave My Glasses?: The What, When, and Why of Normal Memory Loss
Another book I've added
a review on is at the other end of the continuum --
not a book you curl up and enjoy, but a reference-type,
straight-forward manual, short and to the point. But
it's done well, and though I didn't expect to be adding
it to my list of recommended books when I saw it, I am.
Jo Iddon & Huw Williams' Memory Boosters (Pyramid Paperbacks)
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BLOG
www.memory-key.com/blogger.html
Latest posts:
* call to participate in an autobiographical memory experiment
* smell and memory
* turmeric's benefits for diabetes
* imitation in budgies and empathy in children
* links to memory and brain book reviews
* why we favor anecdotal evidence over scientific
* brain activity during music improvisation
* role of oxytocin in social memory
* gender differences in happiness
* sleep gene identified
* taste perception
* music & young minds
* stress & illness
* preschool education
* imagination & perception
* maternal bonding
* golfers' perception
* developing expertise
* value of relaxation techniques
* chatting at work -- timing is everything
* happiness survey
* sleep and children & adolescents
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
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genuine, long-lasting memory improvement.
http://www.memory-key.com/AboutTheSite/about_book.htm
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Copyright © 2008 Capital Research Limited.
All Rights Reserved
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