Blog #1

Both Schacter and James devote a great deal of time to examining the importance of placing oneself in a memory in order for it to be fully and accurately recalled.

The more we associate all those random things we’re supposed to remember with facts or places that are important to us, the more likely we are to remember them. As Bourtchouladze points out, the ancient Greeks and Romans, out of necessity, had these tactics down to a science. Chapter two in Schacter’s book focuses on this idea. He discusses different techniques for remembering everything from strings of numbers or lists of words to events from our daily lives. Over and over, the theme of associating the new information with things that we already know and remember comes up. His explanation of the Museum Test particularly resonated with me and it was so fascinating to see what people with different connections to art and art history remembered about the painting.

I share Neisser’s frustration with the extent to which psychology has ignored the more practical and natural questions of memory. Why is it that I can remember all the lyrics to full length musicals but had a terrible time remembering what quotation came from which book during my high school English exam? On the other hand, these topics, upon further reflection, seem so multi-faceted and complex that one would hardly know where to begin investigating them. Perhaps exploration of the neuroscience of memory systems is a good way to get a handle on these difficult questions. If we know how a memory is stored, then we can begin to ask why it is remembered and how it is forgotten. Having said this, the amount of information and the accuracy of the information in James’ article, written in 1890, suggests that modern research has done little more than confirm and elaborate on what has been known for a while. We know more about the anatomy of the brain now than we did in 1890 but it does seem that modern psychologists have done little to significantly advance our understanding of how memory works.

I would disagree that computers will ever be able to think or interpret to the depth the humans are able to. Computers may have a larger memory capacity but I feel like personality and emotion have a great deal to do with what we remember and why we remember certain things. There’s no code for emotion and computers can’t always interpret context, to figure out what’s important and what’s not. AI can do a lot but I don’t believe that it will ever be able to associate emotion with all the information it is capable of “remembering”. I would cite Schacter’s museum test as an example. Yes, a computer that had “seen” the painting would be able to recall what it looked like far more accurately than most humans, but would it be able to describe any emotions that the painting evoked? Would a computer be able to interpret the painting like subject #3 did?

Some questions. How do we go about exploring the more basic questions of memory? Are the capacities to feel emotion and interpret context necessary for understanding memories?