A thread on memory in Great Debates got me to thinking.
As a kid I loved geography and knew every capital of the world’s nations.
I don’t remember them all now.
For example. I know that I knew the capital of Upper Volta. I don’t now.
Why would memory be so inefficient as to retain “memory of a memory”, but not the actual memory?
Maybe this too belongs in Gret Debates.
Well that’s easy! There are two answers.
First from the informational point of view: “Knowing A” and “Knowing to know A” are two different informations. The brain looses knowledge randomly, so either of the two facts can be the first to vanish.
Second from the psychological point of view: We remember things, because they have an emotional value to us. So you probably don’t remember that you did brush your teeth yesterday. (Though you could deduce it, because you do it every day.) This whole action of brushing your teeth is so much part of your every days life, that you no longer attribute very much emotional value to it, hence you don’t remember. However, suppose last year you were about to go to a date, and just before leaving you wanted to brush your teeth (just in case). Now, as it happens you accidentally threw your tooth brush into the toilet. Now I bet, you will remember this “accident” for a long time, wouldn’t you?
So in your case, I assume as a kid you have been very proud of yourself, that you know all the capitals. This was a very strong feeling, much stronger than the feeling associated to the individual cities. Hence you remember that you knew all of them, but you do no longer remember the rarely asked capitals (your positive feeling about them did not get freshed up and as it was not that strong it faded away).
cu
Regarding Upper Volta, that country doesn’t exist any more; it was renamed - IIRC - Burkina Faso in the wave of changing names from the colonia era.
I think - but I’m not a psychologist - that the effect doesn’t actually have to do something with really forgetting things; the memory about the capitals is still there, your brain just can’t find it any more. It’s a bit like with computers, where deleting a file doesn’t necessarily mean the file itself is deleted, but the registry entry where the file is stored is. That’s why you can’t remember the capitals, but you still know you knew respectively know them; if somebody told you that the capital of Upper Volta/Burkina Faso was Ouagadougou (I had to look that up), you’d smack your forehead thinking “Oh yes, that was it!”.
Actually that was a bad choice on my part - I know UV->BF and still remembered Ouagadougou; just seemed like a good example.
Randomly losing memories seems odd to me in that I would think remembering a fact and knowing a fact should be somehow “bound”. For instance I can’t imagine bursting out a fact like “I know the capital of Sri Lanka is Colombo”, following it with “I didn’t know that I knew that.”
Maybe there’s a clue in there about how memories get “registered”.
Well, that may be, because most of the time it is of no importance, to know that you know something, you either do know it or you don’t. However, it may come just vice versa: For example you see an actor in a movie and you tell your friend: “I know this guy, I even know his name, but I cannot remember right now.” Finally, when the film ends you look at the cast and you realize: “Oh, I was wrong, I never heard this name before.”
Now, think again, is it so unlikely, that you go into another movie and you are impressed by an actor, you tell your friend: “I like this guy, he is great. I’d like to know his name.” Then when the film ends you look at the cast and you realize: “Oh it’s him! Geez, I did not recognize him, although I already watched numerous movies of him. I can’t believe that I did not remember his face.”
Remembering is not an exact thing, it is far from being like a computer or a photography. It is all about emotions and repitition.
cu
I am certainly no expert in memory, but the people who study and try to model our memory processes actually take this phenomenon into account sometimes. I don’t know the literature very well, but one book I have read that mentions this exact thing as a consideration in the model is “Sparse Distributed Memory”, by Pentti Kanerva (1988).
I don’t remember the exact detail of the model that relates to this affect…sorry. Anyway, this is probably more information than you’re looking for, but wanted to throw it out there just in case.
But in this case I have corroboration from others that I knew these facts. No emotion here. I knew all the capitals. Now I don’t. It’s like a memory has two facets: awareness of knowledge -> linked to the actual knowledge.
The second link can be lost but the first can remain. Can the 2nd link exist without the first to “fasten” it.
Yes. Did you ever learn to write with ten fingers on your keyboard? Well, when you started to learn, you were very well aware of which finger goes on which key. After you wrote with ten fingers for several years, you might forget which finger goes on which key, but you will still be able to write with ten fingers. When asked, which finger presses a specific key, I often watched people, that they imagined a keyboard, and put their hands above it and then (just in their minds) typed a word with this letter, and only after this excercise, they were able to tell which finger to use.
Do you speak a foreign language (FL)? Then you will often come across this situation: You want to tell something in the FL, but you do not find the correct word, so you describe it or use a similar word. Then a native speaker responds you and uses the correct word, and all of a sudden you too remember it. So the actual knowledge of the correct word was there, but you did not find the “link” to retrieve it. (I had this today in the thread about “1+1=2”, I used “follower” for “successor”, because I did not remember the correct term, but I certainly know the meaning of “successor”.)
Again, altough our memory works as an “associative memory”, the concept of a “link” that points from one specific fact to another is just a visualization, but is not how the brain works. It is more like a violin: If you pluck one string, then the other strings will also vibrate (even if not much). If you see or hear something, then this makes a “mental string” vibrate, and with it, thousands of other “mental strings” will also start to vibrate, each representing another memory. However, to your consciousness only those “mental strings” will get through, that are relevant at this very moment. There is no direction that goes from fact A to fact B, but only a cacophony of “mental strings”, from which your subconsciousness selects the “music” of your thoughts. (Please note: these strings, are still only a visualization, but it has been proven in quite a lot of experiments, that this visualization is closer to the workings of the brain, than the link metapher.)
Sorry, I have to tune out for today. Perhaps tomorroy more, if you want.
cu
Everyone else has contributed useful ideas. I come at the issue from a programmer’s perspective, as usual.
Is it possible that the meta-memory takes up ‘less storage space’ in the brain than the actual fact would have???
It is likely that what you are remembering is an application of having the information which you are now, in absence of that information, looking on as a hallmark of having had it. I remember knowing all kinds of capitals, because I remember passing a test about them, I remember studying for them, who the teacher was, coloring maps, and so on. Little of this has anything to do with the actual capitals, so it is not surprising that I might remember these facts while forgetting others.
No, but have you ever had a piece of information that you didn’t know where you got it from? “Actually, such-and such is how that behaves. Though now that I think about it, I have no idea how I know this/ where I learned it/ etc.”