So yesterday, I’m reading a fake news article that is obviously an April Fool’s prank. I say “obviously” because the article included a quote from one “Templeton Peck.”
When I saw this, I said to myself, “Templeton Peck…that sounds familiar. Hey wait… You can’t fool me. That’s the full name of Dirk Benedict’s character on The A-Team.”
Don’t ask me how I remembered this, since I haven’t seen an episode of The A-Team since I was in grade school. But this got me thinking about how our brains retain memories. It occurred to me that if someone had asked me the question “What was the full name of Dirk Benedict’s character on The A-Team?” I wouldn’t have been able to recall the Templeton Peck name. Yet, when prompted by the name itself, I can recall that it was the full name of “The Faceman.”
What’s my General Question here? I guess I’m looking for an explanation of how our brains store information. I’d like to know why I can recall the association one way, but not the other. It occurred to me that somewhere, in the deep corners of my brain, there’s an association between “Templeton Peck” and “Dirk Benedict’s character on The A-Team.” Why, if I’m prompted with the first, can I recall the second, but not the other way around?
Yes, I know this is a strange question.
The simple answer, my friend, is Magic. Magic also accounts for how speakers work, as it turns out.
Isn’t this simply the difference between recognizing something and trying to wilfully remember something?
The issue at hand is recall. You have memorized the name of Templeton Peck, and can associate that name with the character from the “A-Team”. You simply lacked at that time the ability to recall that name without a specific prompt. Once you saw the name, that prompted your brain to retrieve the appropriate information.
Just in case you wanted to make yourself feel better, here are the words to the COMMERCIAL for A-Team action figures:
“We’re the A-Team, you know we’re soldiers of fortune
We’re the A-Team, helping people in need
Remember there’s Hannibal, Murdock, and Face
And Even B.A. Baracus, you know each one is an ace
Each is sold separately with rifle and gear
When there’s trouble to face you know the A-Team’s here!”
i guess you can better remember the face than the name? so given the name it is easier to remember the face than vice versa.
Thespos, your memory could be it “asymetrical” because the neural activation of Templeton Peck in your brain is moch lower that than of Face. Activating it hence requires much more effort/extra activation than that required for the omnipresent Face Man (even a Cylon does it for me).
From F tot TP is hard, because TP is hard (has a low activation), from TP to F is easy, because F is has a higher baseline activation.
oops
after hours of editing, the stupid “it” is still there.
Please remove mentally.
It could be that the association is not one-to-one. For instance, you might remember that the character’s name had a cetain rhythm to the syllables, and had the initials “T P”. Given that, when you see the name, you see that it matches the pattern you memorized, and conclude that that must be the right name. On the other hand, if you just remembered the rhythm and the initials, that wouldn’t be enough to give you the name.