Can you think of anything in your memory that runs longer than a minute?
If there were some way to play back a memory of an event and not leave out any details, can you think of one that would play longer than a minute?
The thing with memories of old commercials got me to wondering if they may be among the memories that last the longest.
If you’re anything like me, my memories are just fragments and snapshots and brief sound clips. If I try to think of stuff that happened within the recent past, I can’t force my attention to stay focused any longer than maybe a minute. I just don’t think my mind wants to keep a bunch of details and will strip them away almost as soon as they happen.
Excellent examples that stretch the concept a bit.
As for chess games, I have a few that I can remember all the moves from, but as for the actual duration of the game (with all the thinking time and maybe trips to the kitchen or bathroom) I believe mine are more like a memory of the notated game, the scoresheet.
And as for being able to recite things that would take more than a minute to do, that’s a real puzzle. I guess it might have to count. Good one.
Do people really remember extended sequences? Like seeing a movie in your head? 'Cause I’ve never been able to do that- my memories consist of snapshots, with associated concepts. I can remember a series of snapshots, but there’s no sense of continuity.
For example, I can clearly remember playing hide-and-seek as a kid. I also clearly remember hiding in the bushes at my friend’s house. I remember feeling a pressure on my knee as I knelt in the bushes. Then I remember reaching down and feeling the blood, wet on my jeans, since I’d knelt onto a piece of glass.
They’re not strung together, though- each one is a complete, self-enclosed memory which reminds me of the next and previous events… but as I said, each one is a momentary snapshot.
With a bit of concentration, I can string them together- but it’s a reconstruction, rather than a memory. I can make that reconstruction as long as I’d like, I think- but it’s just a reconstruction, rather than a memory. I’m clearly filling in the blanks.
Lightnin’, you have expanded on the OP in the same way I might have. Those little pieces of events that contain the “key moments” from a sequence are all that I retain, that I can think of.
I can remember killing time in church by holding my breath and watching my watch to see if I could get up to three minutes, which I may have done once or twice. I would be about to piss after two minutes. In any case, it’s not a continuous memory I could dredge up, but just the various sensations I may have had during that span of time.
It may tie in with the recent thread about being able to play back entire tunes or songs in one’s head. I suppose being able to sing an entire pop song might cover the same basic concept. What do you think?
The only thing that I can do it for are movies. But, yes, there are scenes from movies that I can remember clearly watching for the first time, word for word, line for line, annoying fidget to annoying fidget.
Now, I can also recall some movies more-or-less completely from beginning to end, complete with images and sound, but I don’t think that counts; that’s memorizing more than a specific memory.
I have quite a few minute-plus memories that I can replay. Most of them seem to fall into one (or more) of these categories:
Sex.
Music, particularly the first hearing of certain songs. This isn’t just replaying the song in my head, but all the details of the first time I heard a song–people driving by, the expressions on friends’ faces, and so forth. It doesn’t happen with every song, and seems to have little to do with whether or not I like the song.
Exciting (or painful) events that I was involved in. I believe there is research showing that high levels of adrenalin improve memory retention over short periods. For example, I tend to retain what I call “Daniel Jackson moments” from LARPing–like crouching on a mountain slope, in the dark, with a battle swirling around me, cracking a cipher by lantern light.
There is a rational explanation for this. Recent experiments suggest that memories aren’t so much “recorded” in the traditional sense, but “reconstructed” when you try to recall them. Only key pieces of the memory are retained in long-term storage, and your mind fills in the blanks.
