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New Study Finds People Remember More Than They Think
An anonymous reader writes "A new study has shown that people subconsciously retain information about things they've seen even if they can't consciously remember. From the article: 'Luis Martinez of CSIC- Miguel Hernandez University in Spain and his team "read minds" with the Princess Card Trick, an act invented by magician Henry Hardin in 1905. Participants in the study mentally picked out a playing card from a group of six cards, which then disappeared. When a second group of cards appeared, the researchers had amazingly figured out which card a person had in mind and removed it. Very few people caught the trick: All of the cards in the second set were different, not just the card that people had chosen. This trick is well-known to confuse the masses, even via the Internet a magician's sleight of hand can make it seem as though he/she legitimately "read your mind" A few moments after viewing the two panels of cards, volunteers were asked which of two new cards was present in the first set of cards. None of the volunteers could actually recall which card was present. Despite claiming that they had no idea, when they were forced to choose, people got the right answer around 80 percent of the time. “People say they don’t know, but they do,” Martinez said. “The information is still there, and we can use it unconsciously if we are forced to.”'"
This doesn't surprise me at all. God chooses for us what we can and can't remember, and it is through His will that our memories come to us in the time we need them most. Yours in Christ, Jake
Brain operatdes at 10 Hz. My program operates at 14 Mhz or better.
They remember me when they need a ride to and from the airport, but they can't remember to pay me back the money they've borrowed.
from the new-study-finds-already-known-stuff dept.
or is this really news to anyone?
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
I think more than I remember...
He did, He evolved some of us into computer makers, administrators, and software writers. the rest that didn't evolve we call users, sucks to be them.
It's possible that you have much more stored in your brain than you realize. Could you imagine the chaos in your head if it were to provide you with all of your brain's knowledge and wisdom on-demand? The Hollywood version would be cool because you'd be like a genius, but the downfalls to that ability are described in the Star Trek: TNG episode Tin Man. That guy who was born "gifted" was miserable, barely functional, and unstable because his telepathic mind had a low signal-noise ratio.
Take into account your dreams. How many of your dreams feature the most mundane, forgettable events you experienced that day? Do you believe that your psyche would delve into chaos if every little ass-wiping thoughout your life were constantly percolating to the surface of your conscious mind?
I thought I forgot something but now I know I won't remember it.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
..what they are saying is that we remember more than we remember that we remember?
Or in other words, we have memories that we forgot we had?
Or is more like, we have the memories, but we forgot where we put them?
If my comment didn't sound as good in your head as it did in mine, then I guess we all know who's to blame
Pretty sure the Mythbusters did this years ago... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drVpJtdk-zo
This is not NEW news, ya'll. Did you just forget ?
They say the first thing to go is your memory and the second...well, dammit, I keep forgetting the second...
It's possible that you have much more stored in your brain than you realize. Could you imagine the chaos in your head if it were to provide you with all of your brain's knowledge and wisdom on-demand?
If you can't retrieve it, what exactly does "stored" mean?
I've actually noticed this myself before.
Are they really remembering?
Or are they just making the same choice twice?
It gets hashed and stored in a table. When there's a collision, a DejaVu exception is raised.
Basically, you're running a FAT12 file system in your heads. Easily corrupted, with no maintenance, no metadata, nothing. The files are still there, but you can't access them. What they are saying is, people should upgrade to a modern file system. Ext4, Reiser4, LTFS, or maybe HAMMER.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I'll bet that's more the reality, you think?
People do almost everything more than they think.
The Radiolab show on "Falling" had a bit on this. The "time stands still" experience you get from near death experiences is because later you can consciously remember far more than normal.
"Remember more than they think" implies that they think.
While the human brain has many advantages over computers (at least right now), memory is not one of them. The human brain is pathetic in that regard. Why doesn't the god of evolution make us evolve to fix this?
Perhaps it is in the not suddenly remembering everything connected at once, rating it in relevance/importance which prevents us being paralyzed constantly and allowed to make decisions as simple as turning left, right or going straight. Make choices on little to no information is likely an important asset.
When I was in college I thought I was doing poorly in a chemistry class and considered dropping it so I could focus on other classes. I gave chemistry one last chance, sat down and decided to write down everything I knew. Turned out I knew a lot more than I didn't know, so stayed in the class, finishing with top marks. We're pretty good at telling ourselves we can't do something or, like Barbie, some subject is hard and then being so stupid as to believe it.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Huh... I mean I think I've already read this before...
Some people do upgrade to a modern filesystem, what do you think gets people on death row?
I see that all the time at work. The problem is that unlike a computer our memory isn't a binary affair, we can half or quarter know things whereas a computer will either have a file or not. There will occasionally be semi-corrupted files, but those are basically junk. The human brain can make use of those half correct memories to reconstruct ones that are reasonable within some degree of accuracy.
Which isn't really surprising as we can't just assert whenever our memory doesn't agree with the memory of an associate or with the other two people who witnessed an event.
“The information is still there, and we can use it unconsciously if we are forced to.” -- Educated people should know the difference between unconscious and subconscious.
Just because they say they don't remember doesn't make it so. Maybe people don't like being wrong. Maybe they were merely unsure. Perhaps the participants were all politicians; they've got that whole "I have no recollection of that" thing down cold.
Anecdotal, sure, but I'm amazed by the recall of memories from decades ago, especially those of inconsequential events I little noticed when they happened.
I'd mod the parent up if they weren't already at +5. Anyway, posting anon for obvious reasons.
I have the problem described by the parent. Not the telepathy, mind you, but the constant recollection of events throughout my life all the time, on demand, with a tiny signal to noise ratio. I am considered *extremely* gifted, and I am in my mid 20's.
Usually, when something like that happens, you are afflicted with a mental illness, as in my case. You are extremely miserable. Extremely. I take a handful of pills every morning and every night, and that gets the thoughts to quiet down. The pills make you sleepy, unable to think, unable to speak well, they dampen your critical thinking skills, etc. I lost almost all of my extemporaneous speaking ability when I got sick.
I had a professor who said to me, "Perfect is the enemy of good enough." He was applying those words to the semiconductor lithography process–but really, they hold true for humans as well.
I'd rather be more "normal" (IQ in the 120-140 range) than have to deal with all the crap I have to deal with day in and day out. I don't really want an IQ of 160+ because all that comes with it makes me miserable.
(I'm just using the IQ an arbitrary test of intelligence, you could replace it with ability to read and play music or ability to make beautiful art. Most people on slashdot know what an IQ is, so I used it as my toy case.)
UC Berkeley has already demonstrated that they can read your mind and see what you see by hooking up electrodes to your brain.
If you read his message three times backwards. ALL YOUR BASES ARE BELONG TO HIM.
If my comment didn't sound as good in your head as it did in mine, then I guess we all know who's to blame
On the other hand, fat12 has /far/ better undelete capibilities than, say, EXT4. So it's not a total loss...
Don't we all have moments where we say 'Oh I know that but can't remember'. But some time later we recall that. What I'm interested in is some research on how we recall things and how it is related to stress/age/sex/sleep etc.
A percentage of a basic guessing game doesn't prove the subconcious remembers anything they can't conciously remember or learn.
Could you imagine the chaos in your head if it were to provide you with all of your brain's knowledge and wisdom on-demand? Do you believe that your psyche would delve into chaos if every little ass-wiping thoughout your life were constantly percolating to the surface of your conscious mind?
Interestingly enough I just read a book dealing with this very premise, except it concerned itself more with sensations than memories. Basically, someone's system of nerves was acutely enhanced, but the brain was quickly overwhelmed by the new information since the nervous system wasn't filtering it for him. The sensations involved in a drop of water on skin led to a headache; multiple drops would lead to a coma. The solution? Implanting extra processors to offload thinking, of course!
I have met the author but it's a self-published affair and he didn't ask me to promote it.
Sometimes we remember things that didn't happen.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Who did the peer review on this research?
Three recent examplea to the contrary come to mind. Perry fumbled with the third department he'd shut down, correct? I just want to make sure we are talking about the same thing before I say yes or no. Herman Cain had a memory lapse on Libya, and definitely didn't remember more than we thought. The third case, no that was a different one. Sorry, got all this stuff twirling in my head. What was TFA about again?
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/low_concept/2003/04/the_poetry_of_dh_rumsfeld.single.html
The Unknown
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.
—Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing
I read about this somewhere but I can't seem to remember where...
If my brain is only 80% sure that a remembered fact is accurate, I'm glad the result is "I don't know" when I try to remember it. People don't "remember more than they think", but the brain apparently stores a lot of junk that doesn't meet it's built-in (or trained) criteria for proper remembrance. Big surprise there...
What would be interesting is to see how the level of certainty needed to remember something changes over time and whether it is actually something that is taught or inherently built into the brain's structure.
Don't you think?
They remember me when they need a ride to and from the airport, but they can't remember to pay me back the money they've borrowed.
"Ante el vicio de pedir, la virtud de no dar."
My English try: "When asking becomes a vice, not giving becomes a virtue."
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Is it possible to remember more than you think? Put differently can you recall something you haven't previously thought about?
there are known knowns, unknown knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns.
if your life is such a big joke then why should I care?
Do you believe that your psyche would delve into chaos if every little ass-wiping thoughout your life were constantly percolating to the surface of your conscious mind?
Me? No.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
not suddenly remembering everything connected at once
Why remember everything at once rather than what you choose to remember?
rating it in relevance/importance
How does that work?
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
I found that sometimes when I have studied for a test, but still don't know the answer, a guess is often right. Maybe I actually remember it?
I remember reading about this in my last life...
FTFY>
I talked to a girl once who described her photographic memory to me, and some of the problems it had caused. Especially when she ever head to repeat something, like rereading a book. She'd remember the original reading, plus the new reading, plus layer upon layer of thinking about each reading, plus other times when she'd remembered the readings, or thought about remembering, or remembered thinking about it, etc. Said it gave her serious headaches for a while before she learned how to deal with it.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
I tried upgrading my brain to Reiser4, but then my wife disappeared.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
It can be retrieved, you just need the right input senquence.
Rethinking email
They say more than they remember...
Couldn't read the article, was the right answer none of them that 80% got right?
Most people do many other things more than they think. In fact, thinking is probably one of those activities people do least.
That is all.
I am a scientist (i.e., experimental psychologist) who studies human memory. What is described here is simply the difference between a recall task and a recognition task. Roughly: in a recall task, you have to produce information from memory given some cue; in a recognition task, you are given the information and you have to judge whether it was previously encountered. It is extremely well-know and well-documented in the scientific literature that recognition performance is almost always better than recall performance. In everyday terms, you may not be able to recall the name of a childhood friend, but you may be able to recognize that name among a list of alternatives. The difference between recall and recognition performance is just one kind of demonstration that the entirety of information stored in human memory is indeed much greater than what can be accessed at any given time.
I read a fascinating book on the topic, called "Sleights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals about Our Everyday Deceptions" - highly recommend it - the authors investigate what happens from a neurological perspective when magicians perform tricks, and also how we routinely deceive ourselves about the "reality" we think we perceive (deceptions which magicians routinely rely upon).
i used to do a trick where i would pick out the ace of spades and shuffle it into the deck until i didn't know where it was. then i would rifle through the deck and pick one out intuitively. i got the ace of spades on the first try about 3/4 of the time. the rest of the time i would get the other aces first. I guess my unconscious didn't know the difference.
This isn't science. Psychology is pure voodoo, plain and simple. The mind and brain cannot be explained by the scientific method.
Stick to rigid, respectable fields like physics.
Actually, this has already been studied. If you give an Alzheimer's patient a puzzle everyday, they will consistently get faster and faster at solving the puzzle despite not being able to recall ever seeing the puzzle in the first place, let alone multiple times.