We approach and in the moments in which
we are immersed in semi-sleep, a brilliant idea to solve a problem we have been working on
for days. Or are we running around in the park and suddenly we have a
lighting. No matter the context or the time of day it happens, we are
convinced that the idea is so brilliant that we will not forget it. However, after
just a few hours, we forgot it completely and we won't remember it anymore,
regardless of how much effort we will make to bring it back to memory.
Surely it will have happened to you at least once.
This is the tendency we have to overestimate the ability to remember and we pay for this lack of objectivity
Dear; the price is forgetfulness. In 2005 some psychologists of the
universities of Haifa and California studied this phenomenon. Yes
they recruited 24 students and were given a list containing 60 pairs of
words. In this list, 20 word combinations had none
relationship with each other, 20 other couples had a weak relationship and the rest
they were synonyms with the same meaning or names of the same object, therefore
words closely related to each other. The researchers hoped that when ai
students were shown one of the words, it would have been easier for them
remember the pair of words that had a close relationship between them. So it was that to the study participants
they were told they had to study the 60 word combinations. Immediately
after the words disappeared from the screen, the student had to point up
of a scale how easy this combination of words was to remember. As the researchers had imagined, i
young people were convinced that they would more easily remember the combinations
of words in which the words had a relationship between them and theirs
memory would have a hard time with words that weren't related. But… what really happened? Later, the researchers showed ai
participants some of the words and asked them to remember the couple to the
which was associated. Thus it was found that the memory of the words
closely related to each other was not as good as the students
they had expected. For example, the “lamp-light” combination often came
mistaken for "lamp" and "bulb" or "lamp" and "shadow". Most of the young people claimed that
he could remember approximately 50% of word combinations
related to each other, but in reality they only remembered 20%. Why does this happen? Researchers claim that everything is
due to the fact that we know very little about the operation of ours
memory. This lack of meta cognitive knowledge is what would make us overestimate
our ability to remember. Either way, I believe this explanation
is just one of the many factors that affect forgetfulness. Indeed,
we may more easily forget a great idea or a few words in
relationship between them because we don't strain our memory enough. For example, let's imagine we are running in the park,
we meet a friend and he gives us his phone number. If we don't have
nothing to write it down what will we do? We will probably repeat this several times up to
fix it in memory and, as soon as we get home, we will transcribe it. That is, there
we try to remember and use different techniques to not lose information.
However, when we are sure that the information is important and impossible to
forget, we will not try too hard to remember it and, thus, we will take risks
easily to lose it. The solution is very simple: the
next time you have a brilliant idea, think of it as a number
phone and use all the techniques you know to remember it.
