Meanings for Memory – Guilty by Association
Guilty by Association
Are you getting a pattern here? We seem to remember things more when they have meaning. Association is another way that things gain meaning.
How many of you are terrible with names?
I am horrible with them. I am lucky that in a lot of my jobs people had to where names on their shirts. Made it a lot easier! Name tags are a saviour for people who forget names.
However, there are a couple of people’s names that I had no problem remembering. Even now.
I once met a girl when I was at TAFE. When she introduced herself she said, “My name is Sheryn…like the football”. Done, I remember her name. Even over 10 years later.
Another similar one was a girl who introduced herself to the class with, “My name is Carleen…Like what happens when a car goes around a corner too fast”. Again, over ten years later and I still remember her name.
I associated their names with something else which helped me to remember them.
How many of you are boat people? Or plane people?
Starboard and Port. These are port/plane for left and right. And each of them has an associated colour (green and red). Ever looked out of the plane window at night and noticed the lights on the end of the wing. The left one is red. The right one is green.
But how do you remember?
There is a simple phrase. “There is no red port left”. This is an example of using association to assist in remembering. Port = left = red.
But association doesn’t have to be conscious. How many times have you looked at something and realised, ‘that reminds me of…’.
This is usually due to a unconscious association. You have somehow paired two things in your mind.
Ever met a person had have an instant like or dislike for them and not know why. Only to realise later on that they reminded you of a good guy or bad guy from a movie and that’s the only reason. I once worked with a higher up that reminded me of “number 1” from one of the Star Trek Series’. I think that gave him more authority and respect in my eyes!
While association helps by giving meaning to things, it also helps by helping us to cross-reference our memories.
Remember how we spoke about long-term memory being like a file cabinet. Cross-referencing is like having the file in two folders. For example, Sheryn was filed under ‘people from TAFE’ and ‘types of football’, perhaps. Additionally, it created more pathway for me to remember her name. “What’s that girls name, sounds like a football brand. Puma. It’s not a Puma (In my best Arnie voice). Nike. No. Ah, Sheryn.”
How to use association to remember things?
That leads us into how you can use these associations to remember things.
When I can’t remember Sheryn’s name, I think about the paths that could take me there.
You can do this for other things that have seemingly slipped your mind.
Remember, long-term memory is unlimited. It is a matter of finding where you filed that memory. Like we have discussed, filing it in the right place helps a lot, but when you can’t find it in the place where you thought it was, association helps us to ‘search’ for it.
Say you want to remember a person you went to school with.
You could try and remember the classroom where you sat with them. You could try and remember other people in the class. You could try to remember the teacher’s name. You could try to remember what they looked like, what clothes they wore. One of these things might have formed an association with their name.
Research has found that this works for remembering names of high school classmates[1].
It has also been shown to help people to remember details of crimes they have witnessed. We all know how important memory is to us in everyday life. But accurate and detailed information from eyewitness is crucial to police investigating a crime. Some clever scientists looked how to enhance the memory of eyewitnesses to a crime[2].They used a technique called a cognitive interview. Sounds fancy, right? Well it is but it is also very simple. Essentially, instead of asking witnesses to focus on the particular bit of information you want them to remember, like the description of the getaway car, you ask them broader questions. Firstly you ask them to describe the general scene. The surrounding environment. Was the street crowded or empty. Were their tall buildings. The weather. Was it raining. Was it sunny. Was it windy. Nearby objects etc. Was their a food truck or a post van. For this to work, the interviewee must not hold back. Everything must be reported. Next the interview gets the eyewitness to do some time travel. Not literally but instead of just remembering the events in the order they happened, they could try and remember them in reverse. Or stating at the most memorable part and thinking backward and forward form that point. Lastly, the eyewitness is asked to recall the event from the perspective of others. By thinking of something that was seemingly irrelevant, they were able to remember something more relevant. It was found that people remembered up to 35 percent more using this approach when compared to standard police interviews.[3]
Conclusion
Association is another way that things gain meaning. Association doesn’t have to be conscious but can also be unconscious. While association helps by giving meaning to things, it also helps by helping us to cross-reference our memories. Thus, associations can be formed intentionally helping us to better encode our memories. They can also be used to recall information that has been filed and associated unconsciously.
[1] (Williams & Hollan, 1981)
[2] (Williams & Hollan, 1981)
[3] (Geiselman, et al., 1986)
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