“White Crane Spreads Its Wings.” “Repulsing the Monkey.” “Grasping the Bird’s Tale.”
These phrases, in isolation, might give you a laugh, but if you’re familiar with Tai Chi, you’ll recognize these names right off as they refer to particular forms or moments that can be part of several different Tai Chi routines. The words help construct an image of the movement that is not only descriptive but that helps you to memorize the parts of the form for practice.
In a multi-form routine, these word images help my poor brain remember what it’s supposed to do, and after a while, since this memory involves movement it can be incorporated into what’s called “non-declarative memory,” which requires no conscious awareness.
And thus, we have moving meditation 🙂
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So, I’m back to studying about how our brains work and this time I’m reading about short-term memory. Memory is kind of important for without it we might have died off as a species.
We learned that fire was great for preventing us from freezing to death and wonderful for cooking our food, but not so great if directly applied to our bodies. We learned which berries were and weren’t poisonous, and how to hunt bison and mammoths without getting killed – probably by watching someone else die. But then we remembered, passed the information on, and managed to propagate the species.
Although we might wonder a bit about the new wave of “flat-earthers.”
And I know the scientific community goes a little overboard with dissecting and labeling everything but here goes.
It seems we have two types of short-term memory, declarative, like being able to regurgitate specific facts like “sharks swim in the ocean,” and non-declarative, which is like the motor skills we use to ride a bike. Declarative memory involves “effortful processing” or a lot of repetition. Non-declarative memory does not require conscious awareness and is sort of automatic. If we were asked, we probably wouldn’t list out every detailed step that goes along with riding a bike. We just go through those motions once the brain locks on and our feet are on the pedals, and we use a simple phrase to embody all of those movements.
There are four steps involved in short term memory. Encoding, storage, retrieval, and forgetting. Encoding is defined as the conversion of external sources of energy into electrical patterns the brain can understand. There are three types of encoding:
Semantic encoding – definitions,
Phonemic encoding – comparison of sounds – rhyming, and
Structural encoding – visual inspection of shapes.
The myriad of signals we receive from different sensory sources are registered in separate brain areas. It’s a fragmented experience, called the “blender effect.” There is no central storage or hard drive. Parts of a single event are scattered and stored all over the cerebral cortex. And a memory trace will lead you to the same parts of the brain where we originally processed the information.
The total number of brain changes to record an event or information is called an engram, and then comes the “binding problem” – how do we bring all of that sensory data back together from the various spots on the cerebral cortex where they were stashed to compose a complete memory?
While it’s counter-intuitive, it turns out, the more elaborately we encode, the more details and complexity surrounding the event, the better our retrieval of that memory.
Retrieval is also enhanced if we replicate the conditions where we experienced the event or came upon the data. So, if I learned that sharks swim in the ocean while I’m swimming in the ocean, I will remember this bit of information best when I’m back swimming in the ocean. How convenient.
It also seems that regardless of the setting where we encounter information, the majority of our forgetting will occur within the fist couple of hours that follows. People usually forget 90% of what they’ve learned within 30 days of the learning experience. Apparently, we discard what we don’t use quite quickly.
I know, I’ve forgotten much more over the years than I know right now 🙂
Spaced learning is more effective than massed learning and the more repetition cycles we have, the greater chance we’ll convert something to long-term memory. Tai Chi again provides a great example because we are taught each form separately and then add that to the entire routine, which we then repeat and continually refine.
And something I mentioned before in the post Boring, teaching is more effective if it includes meaningful examples and experiences and emotion. Real world situations familiar to the learner. The more personal the example, the better the encoding because we are adapted to “pattern matching” the new information with what we’ve learned before.
So why am I writing about this today? Because of the fascinating way we’re able to communicate and tell stories, of course. When I tell a story I want to transmit my memory to you, the reader. I use as many descriptive terms as I can think of to relay an experience – what I saw and heard, how something smelled, felt and tasted. How objects sat in space in relation to where I stood or traveled.
We’re able to communicate because of that pattern matching principle. I relate an experience to you and hope you’ve had enough similar experiences and gathered enough sensory data to “get it.”
Such is the challenge and art of writing. If we can paint an image that others can see, detail the scent of a flower that the reader can smell, have someone salivating over a recipe or bracing for an explosive sound, or transmit the feel of the smooth, silky skin of another as we describe caressing their face, then we’ve succeeded.
A lofty goal.
And hopefully the experiences we relate will be as memorable to our readers as they were to us.
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Photo: This is one of my daughter’s dogs, Harper. He was over for a visit when I snapped this pic. I etched out the bare patterns with the photo editor creating what I call the “Ghost Dog.” Its an image descriptive of short-term memories. We can hold onto basic concepts and sensations, but over time they may fade into the less distinct and more nebulous 🙂
Source: I used the book Brain Rules by John Medina as my source for this post. Other posts of mine discussing the workings of our brains include:
and,
