Intentional memory

Psychologist Dr. Doping about focused on memory, memory techniques and conflict mnemonics.

If in the event we are not specifically trying to involuntary memory to remember and recall everything happens as if by itself, but naturally, in the case of intentional memory reverse position. Involuntary (involuntary, automatic) memory we lack, and we have to stop their activities, to step aside and begin to specifically take some action to or write, to fix some stuff, or that it is much more unpleasant subjectively, to get that stuff which itself seems lacking. Although it seems that voluntary memorization and recall is a usual phenomenon for us, it is quite a unique achievement of man. Nobody but a person, and only at a certain stage of cultural development, work with arbitrary memory can not. For example, if your dog will love the brand of a food, it will not be able to stand over the bag and repeat the beautiful foreign name, so you tell it to you, when you go to the store for the next portion - not because it can not chant and read, but because in her inner world there is no arbitrary process, and it is important to distinguish.

The goal to remember appears much earlier than the ability to memorize. And in this sense in a child's life is dramatic moments, when he is aware of his weakness, because he wants to please the adult, for example, or be effective in the game. He understands that it needs to remember his name, to remember any list of words, your home address and so on, but he can not do it. In order to be able to arbitrarily remember and recall (and we often forget about the task at random to forget, although it is an important skill), it is necessary to master the special techniques or tools. That is an arbitrary, deliberate, purposeful memory is always associated with the use of some technologies. Then, these technologies can be fatal effect on memory functioning.

What are the tricks to remember? They are well known, only three basic techniques. The first way - to designate, to name, say what you are trying to remember. For example, you are lucky in life, and you were suddenly at dawn on the beach and see the stunning sunrise your imagination - pink with crimson reflections. You really want to remember it for a lifetime. And what are you doing? You stared, mouth open, exclaimed: "Oh! A! ", Waving his arms. The sun rose, you came home and you realize that and remember and can tell nothing but "Oh! A!". In this case, the main reception - try to tell myself what happened. If you can do this, then the material is stored. Perhaps that is why our ancestors (I mean the more educated circles) had a habit of keeping a diary, and almost every day discussing with a notebook or piece of paper, what happened to them, and so they memorize important in its development, the path of life. Such a method, on the one hand, global, so it is very common, but, on the other hand, it is not suitable for all, and only the material that can be understood to place the system in existing knowledge. Intentional, tightly targeted often need to memorize when you have to memorize something that can not be understood. For example, it is impossible to understand the number of your passport, it is impossible to understand why this man's name is Anfisa Petrovna, not Mariya. It is beyond the comprehension, so we have to resort to the other two methods.

Improve brain and cognitive function you can buy Phenotropil, Noopept, Meldonium and Picamilon.

The second method is also known to all - admission is repetition, that is, the first thing the child masters in childhood. Repetition, cramming, something that causes a lot of rejection and hatred of all students - a huge anthropological invention: when a person has learned to cram, he was much smarter than all the other animals in the world. How does the repetition? Why, if I repeat something, then it is more likely to reproduce than if it were not repeated? It would seem obvious, but if we think about it and look at the results of research, it turns out that repetition only works when you have a goal to remember. If there is no purpose to remember, you can repeat a thousand times some material, but do not reproduce. Not so long ago was a commercial experiment, which was commissioned by the British psychologist Alan Baddeley by the Air Force. The company planned to change the broadcasting frequency in the air and tried to remember the audience, when the wave of change and where will the transition. They thought it would be effectively a lot of times to repeat and people will remember it, because they repeat with them. But when simulated this situation, it appears that after a thousand repetitions (think: a thousand repetitions, they were paid, the people specially repeated), only 15% of people could name the date of transition and that, at what frequency will move the company. That is unfocused repetition completely ineffective. But when it is targeted, we can "cheat" our psyche, namely, repetition we exploit and imitate the laws of involuntary memory. If any material is the goal of what I'm doing now, my memory will remember, copy. If there is something related to what I do, most likely, it is in my mind long enough until I do something. And to repeat, we're trying to simulate this situation: put the material into consciousness, he lay there, but specifically it is not needed now, because he is remembered for the future, and then the material running out of memory. Then again we catch material and put in place, and so on until the unfortunate memory does not agree, do not give up and do not assign, does not copy this material. Of course, repetition effectively, but it is not the most effective way of remembering.

Relying only on the repetition of mankind deemed insufficient, so to invent a special technology, which called mnemonics (μνῆμα - this 'memory'), ie memorization techniques. Basic two - is shaped and verbal mnemonics. In this and in another case, it is paradoxical things. For example, you want to remember the colors of the rainbow in the correct order. To do this, you are given a ready-made rule of thumb: "once Jacques-ringer head knocked the lantern." You learn this poem and now all my life know the proper color sequence. But in fact it turns out that in order to store small amounts of information - the colors in a certain order, you study more and more, and memorize over is easier than to memorize less. This is an amazing contradiction that runs between.

For some rules and common things is stable mnemonics. Now the young people it seems very strange, but even 20-30 years ago, the memory of any more or less educated person was filled with lots of different mnemonics in which medical students were taught the names of organs, various diseases, symptoms, nerves, historians, students memorized dates of historical events, philologists - different rules. If you tell it to today's students, they are very surprised and say: "Why is it all to learn, when you can just see on the Internet?" And then the question arises: Is the voluntary memorization and arbitrary memory of modern man what it was, say, 30, 50, 150 years ago? In fact, it is quite an important question, because, for example, the art of memory (mnemonics) started inventing even in ancient Greece, then this applied particularly active in the Middle Ages. This gradual adaptation of humanitarian technologies to peculiarities of the human psyche, which allows us to solve some important problems. Antique, he had to come out and say no piece of paper, and with inspiration, operated by many facts. Witty conversationalist, a teacher - people need to remember, to keep within the limits of the body and interact with the world of large amounts of material. And then the situation has changed: what is to keep everything inside yourself when you can easily take the outside? This ease of getting material, first, the novelty. While writing the book and was invented a long time ago, and then any other "gadgets" to remember, such as photography and video, they still require operating material. For example, I know that the library is a collection of the works of Aristotle, but to get to it, I have to go to the library, to register, order a book, bring it to me, then I should make a statement - long affair. And now there are mobile devices that are comparable with the rate request to the brain can not make a request to his brain, and to an external source.

There is a serious question whether it affects the memory of modern man, whether it is new technology changes, and if so, in what way - it is improving or getting worse? Or is it a general question correctly? Studies show that there are pluses and minuses, but overall transformation occurs, and very rapidly. Today's pupils and students, that is, people who grew up, formed in a mobile, highly available IT environment context, in other words the process of building a purposeful, voluntary memorization. They are trying to remember is not actually the content of what should be, for example, the very colors of the rainbow, or affixes, or the names of the planets and years of historical events - and where it can be found, that is, address and reference (query formulation and where to look) . It turns out that, on the one hand, this is a huge advantage if you know how to ask and information environment immediately respond, like and do not need to memorize. After all, the whole memory - the ability to use knowledge, and if I use them, I have a good memory. I'm not going to fantasize on the topic "What would happen if all the electricity is turned off", "what happens to the adaptability of consciousness, with the erudition of most modern people," but at the same time there is a huge number of new problems: if that knowledge is not my own, and hybrid how he can be trusted? And what will happen if there is a choice of options? If I have my memory, I do remember about some event, but I give my question several answers: which of these options is to my memory, and which - a stranger? Is it possible to confuse them? And what would happen if confused?

Now, perhaps, the fastest growing area in the study of memory - this is just a study of interaction, on the one hand, mutual enrichment and, on the other hand, inter-simplification of the human psyche, trying to remember some material recorded with the internal media on an external storage device (not only online, but also other systems). I think that if these studies are reasonable and intensively conducted in the future, we will find some harmonic output, or a variant of interaction, when we will be able to balance between internal and external and, therefore, not be totally dependent on an external memory in the same while taking advantage of its benefits.