Why is it you can remember the lyrics to a song you haven't heard in years, but forget someone's name seconds after you're introduced?
Why do certain memories stay vivid for decades, while others disappear almost immediately?
It can make memory seem mysterious, even unreliable.
But the truth is, memory isn't random.
Your brain follows some surprisingly clear rules about what it keeps, what it discards, and why.
And once you understand those rules, you can actually make your memory work a lot better.
That's why today's SYSK trending topic is how memory really works.
In my conversation with cognitive psychologist Megan Sumeraki, we explore how your brain forms memories, why forgetting is actually part of the process, and the simple strategies that can dramatically improve how well you remember things.
And we'll get to it right after this.
Ah, the Regency era.
You might know it as the time when Bridgerton takes place or as the time when Jane Austen wrote her books.
The Regency era was also an explosive time of social change, sex scandals and maybe the worst king in British history.
Vulgar History's new season is all about the Regency era, the balls, the gowns, and all the scandal.
Listen to Vulgar History, Regency era, wherever you get podcasts.
Over the last several years, it seems there's been a lot of new research coming out about how your memory works, which is always so interesting because more and more it seems that memory isn't what we think it is, and the more you understand how the memory does and doesn't work, the more you can use your memory to your advantage.
Here to explain all this is Megan Sumeraki.
She's an associate professor of psychology at Rhode Island College.
She's a cognitive psychologist, memory expert, and author of the book, The Psychology of Memory.
Hi, Megan.
Welcome to Something You Should Know.
Hi.
Thanks for having me.
So first, could you tell me what my memory is?
Because I know what it is, but I don't really know what it is.
Yeah, yeah, this is an interesting question, right?
Because we all think we know what it is.
But then trying to provide a formal definition often trips us up.
Memory is actually much more broad than most people think.
The definition that I like is using the past in service of the present or future.
And so this definition allows us to think about the memories that probably pop into our heads first, when we think about the concept of memory.
For me, it's my daughter's birth, getting married, some events from my childhood.
But it also allows us for memory to also include things like knowing what an elephant is, knowing how to ride a bike or type or any of those types of procedures, and even things like unconsciously but sort of still the past serving us in the present, being able to navigate an area that we haven't been to for a very long time.
And maybe we don't even remember having been there, but somehow we're able to navigate it better than if we had been dropped there and never had been before.
That's called implicit memory.
And that's one example of implicit memory.
So there's a lot of, a lot of different concepts that really encapsulate this larger umbrella of the term memory.
And so we have all those different, seemingly different types of memories.
But is it all working in the same place and working the same way?
Or are we using the term memory to talk about a lot of very different things that sort of fall under the umbrella of memory?
Oh, gosh, I think the answer is a little bit of both.
So our memories are not perfect, and that's true across the board, whether we're talking about... procedural memories like riding a bike or you know remembering concepts or events um our memories aren't are not perfect they um they also tend to be susceptible to suggestion but but that piece of it tends to work more for events than say concepts so um It would be hard for somebody to convince me that an elephant isn't what I think it is, but I can integrate new aspects or features of what an elephant is into my understanding of elephant.
We are much more susceptible to to being told or the suggestion that certain events happen differently.
And every time we retrieve events, we actually kind of change a little bit.
And so false memories are prevalent.
But so I think, when we're talking about long-term memory, we're talking about kind of one system that has a, so to speak.
But we also have our shorter term stores like Working Memory, which is the system that allows us to have this conversation, the system that allows me to have at least a rough idea of what the question was and what I've said already.
So you mentioned and I wanted to dive into this long term and short term memory.
We hear those terms a lot.
I don't know if those are actually two very different things or how it works.
But you know, there is that issue of you know, grandma can remember everything about her wedding day, but she can't remember what happened five minutes ago.
How is that possible?
What's going on there?
Oh, gosh, that's such an interesting question.
So five minutes ago is part of long-term memory.
We actually, when we talk about long versus short term memory, I think there's a misconception that short term means like basically everything today and long term is longer than that.
Short term memory or working memory is the more kind of modern cognitive concepts that we use.
It's really, really short.
It's what we're holding on to in the moment.
So the amount of things that you can sort of hold on to in your mind right now as I'm speaking, that's all part of this short term working memory concept.
What happened five minutes ago or even just a couple of minutes ago, once you let go of that out of your working memory.
So say I could quiz you on some of the things that were mentioned during the introduction.
It would be kind of a useless quiz, but we could ask people, oh, do you remember my name?
Do you remember that? details that were shared.
And if you could think back to a And so five minutes ago.
Really, is grandma forgetting something from long-term memory?
But of course, there's a big difference between five minutes ago and remembering components from our wedding or something that was many, many years ago, potentially decades ago.
We do forget over time, but it seems as though the memories that we create what cognitive psychologists would call the reminiscence bump.
It's this time frame from our sort of late teens into our early 20s, roughly speaking.
The memories, many memories from that time frame are remembered better than the things that are more recent.
So 10 years out from my wedding, I'll remember my wedding pretty well.
20 years out from my wedding.
I'll remember my wedding pretty well, but I won't remember something that was 10 years right.
So like the 10 years in between, it's hard without a piece of paper to draw things out.
But essentially just those things from our late teens, early 20s and kind of that timeframe tend to be, for whatever reason, better remembered.
And so it's pretty common for all of us to remember events from that timeframe.
But it also seems that remembering your wedding and remembering what happened five minutes ago, one of the big differences is probably nothing much happened five minutes ago and your wedding was such a big emotional deal.
Yeah, yeah, quite possibly.
And it seems like we favor memories that occur with great emotion, although we tend to think that we're more accurate than we are.
So that's one of the tricky things, too.
We think we remember our wedding, but there's probably some details that we're misremembering.
But how would we know that that's not correct?
So it's entirely possible that These vivid memories that we have from these emotional events aren't as accurate as we think.
But you're right.
Something that, you know, nothing really happened five minutes ago.
So, of course, I don't really remember it.
What I ate for breakfast.
Who cares?
But it's entirely possible that we're not perfectly accurate when we think about those, those really big and important events as well.
What about the difference in people that some people seem to have?
God Bob's got a great memory, but Susie doesn't remember much.
Are there individual differences, or are they just not using it correctly?
Or are they using it differently?
Or really is one person just better at memory than somebody else?
Yeah, so absolutely.
We can have individual differences in our memory abilities.
We can also have individual differences in our ability to monitor our own memory.
So Susie might think she has a horrible memory and Bob might think he's great.
And they could potentially have the same skills.
They might be different.
But there are some people that are confidently wrong and some people that are underconfident.
And that mixes in with the general abilities of individuals in terms of memory as well.
And so it becomes kind of tricky to know if someone says oh, I have a terrible memory.
Terrible memory is in some ways kind of what one would expect.
There are a lot of different things that we forget and ways to forget, and those are functional.
Forgetting is important.
And so sometimes we think we have a terrible memory, but really our memories are just working the way they're supposed to.
But there are definitely individual differences.
Not everybody's the same height, not everybody has the same eye color and not everybody has the same memory skills.
We're talking about human memory, how it works and how to make it work better.
My guest is Megan Sumeraki.
She is a cognitive psychologist and author of the book, The Psychology of Memory.
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So, Megan, you said a few minutes ago that forgetting is important.
Why is forgetting important?
Yeah.
So, you know, misplacing your keys, not knowing where you parked the car.
These things tend to lead us to say, oh, I can't remember anything or to be really frustrated.
And I think in general, we focus on the times we forget and not so much on the times we remember.
You're not going to remember.
And so it's frustrating, but at the same time, you don't need to or want to remember everywhere you've ever parked your car or everywhere you've ever put your keys.
And so it's frustrating, but at the same time, you don't need to or want to remember everywhere you've ever parked your car or everywhere you've ever put your keys.
We shouldn't and don't want to be able to hold on to every single detail.
And that's not the point of memory.
Memory is not designed to remember every single detail.
It's designed to serve us in the future.
And, of course, it would be good to remember where you put important things like your keys or the car.
But every once in a while, there is going to be an error.
You're going to make a mistake.
And that is just sort of the nature of our systems, and that we want to forget things so that we can make kind of room, so to speak, for newer things.
I remember hearing someone say and it sort of made sense to me and I want you to comment on it is one of the reasons that memories distort over time is that when you recall an event, you're not necessarily recalling the event.
You're recalling the last time you remembered the event.
And the more times you remember it, the more likely things are to go haywire in your memory about that event.
Yeah, that's correct.
So every time we retrieve information, whether it's something that we learned at some point or an event that occurred it's not benign.
It's not just an assessment of what is in our memory.
Rather, it is activating those memories and using retrieval cues to sort of activate the features related to the memory.
And when you do that, the memory can be strengthened but also modified.
This is great news for trying to learn new things in school or at one's job or whenever, because when you retrieve information, you strengthen it.
This is very good news.
But when it comes to trying to remember events exactly as they occurred, especially when there's no way to give yourself feedback and to correct misconceptions, or at least it doesn't make sense to do so
Every time you remember something about your wedding, you don't think oh, I better go watch the wedding video to make sure I got everything correct.
You don't give yourself feedback like that.
And maybe there isn't even a wedding video to watch, right?
So when you retrieve the information correctly, little little pieces can insert themselves and they become integrated into that memory.
And we have a difficult time distinguishing between the event that actually happened and the way it was maybe imagined later or something that was suggestive, that was, that was sort of integrated into the memory or altered the memory in some way.
And so over time, the more you retrieve it, the stronger it gets, but also the more distorted it can become.
We have, like these weird, random memories that aren't particularly special.
They weren't special moments in time necessarily, but they are just like.
I remember this thing when I was three and I had this coat and it had this thing, and it's kind of a flash.
Where does, where did that come?
Well, I know where it came from.
It probably happened, but why am I still remembering that?
So we do tend to remember things from late teens, early 20s, although it sounds like you're maybe talking about younger.
It's also entirely possible that there's a picture and you've seen the picture or you've been told the story.
Or it is just some weird thing that was special to you at the time and you thought about it and you recalled it.
Maybe you told the story a few times when you were younger, and retrieving it has has helped you remember.
So when you say that I have a memory of I had this windbreaker like a little jacket when I was maybe around four years old.
And I called it my firecracker jacket because it was from the late 80s, early 90s.
It was very colorful and all these different patches of color.
But also when I was about that age, I got hit with a bottle rocket.
And We were camping and some kids were doing bottle rockets out over the lake before the professional fireworks and they thought it would be fun.
They were probably like 12 or 13 to shoot the bottle rocket up over the crowd.
They slipped and they missed and it exploded in my face.
And I don't really remember that event, but it did singe a hole in that jacket.
And so I remember that jacket and I remember it, you know, calling it that firecracker jacket.
But I can imagine this event happening in my head, but I know I don't have a true memory for it.
I know the story and I remember the story and then I remember that jacket.
Does that make sense?
Yeah well, when you said what you said, when I was thinking about that memory I have, of that coat there was a picture.
There is a picture.
And that must be it.
But here's another weird thing about my memory.
I can remember every phone number I've ever had since I was five years old.
And I don't know why.
I have no idea.
But I could spot them all off to you if you wanted to hear them.
There's no point to it.
I never use it.
I don't know whose number it is now, but I know all my phone numbers from the time I was five.
Yeah.
I mean, we use those a lot and we used to give them out a lot.
I wonder if kids now would know.
Maybe, maybe not.
But I mean, I remember my childhood phone number as well.
And some of my friends from high school.
I remember their childhood phone numbers, but I couldn't tell you their cell phones now.
Right.
Because nobody uses them now.
One of the things that people always are concerned about is, as they get older, it does seem that memory can fail more often.
And is that just normal part of aging or is that a red flag that there's something wrong?
Yeah, so it's absolutely a normal part of aging, depending on what skill we're talking about, what cognitive skill?
Those memory skills can peak in your mid-20s.
Not all of them.
Vocabulary tends to actually increase over time.
So when you're in your older years you know 60s, 70s your vocabulary changes might actually be better than it was earlier on.
But speed of processing in particular and certain types of memory tend to decrease slowly but they do decrease after roughly the mid-20s.
And so you know having trouble accessing a word remembering where things were.
What you need to do absolutely will decline.
And it doesn't mean that there's something wrong with Dr Anneke Vandenbroek, But it is a real but slight decline.
And it really isn't something to worry about, unless it starts happening frequently enough that you become concerned.
It's never a bad idea to mention it to a health care provider.
So are there any proven ways either generally to keep your memory sharp or if there's something you specifically want to remember that we know really works?
Or is everybody too different for that to be the case?
No, we do have some strategies that tend to work very well.
When we retrieve information, we call this retrieval practice, it does strengthen our memories.
And so if there's something that we need to remember, retrieving it frequently, bringing it to mind, makes it so that we're going to remember it better.
And it also makes us more able to apply it.
So we become more flexible with that information.
And so retrieving works well. pretty well across the board.
And those effect sizes tend to be quite large.
I study that in the context of students in education, but it works in a lot of other domains, including with older adults who are trying to remember things as well.
And then spaced practice is another one that tends to work really well.
And the two go together.
So you don't necessarily want to retrieve something 10 times in a row, all right in a row.
But if you're trying to remember something and you can space out the times that you retrieve it.
So maybe I'm going to retrieve it again in a little bit, and then I'm going to try to retrieve it again tomorrow and the next day, and so on.
That is a way to really improve remembering, but also flexible use of information and being able to apply it in other situations.
This is weird.
I forgot what I was going to ask.
That happens all the time, too.
It's normal.
Well, I remember now, but how embarrassing that I forget what I was going to ask a memory expert.
We're out of time, but I'll save my question for next time.
I've been speaking with Megan Sumeraki.
She's an associate professor of psychology at Rhode Island College, a cognitive psychologist and memory expert, and author of the book The Psychology of Memory.
And there's a link to that book in the show notes.
And thank you, Megan, for coming on and being a guest.
Thanks so much, Mike.
It's been really fun talking with you.
