Neuroscience
It can take some bottle to share an anecdote, so it's somewhat harsh when your friend shoots you down with an impatient accusation that you've told them this story before. You'd think they'd be more understanding - most of us seem to be far better at remembering who's told us what compared with to whom we've told what. Psychologists characterise this as a distinction between "source memory" and "destination memory", and according to Nigel Gopie and Colin MacLeod, the latter form is surprisingly under-researched. They've just published a new study suggesting that we're poor at remembering to whom we said what because of the self-focus associated with disclosing information, rather than receiving it. This self-focus, they argue, disrupts the memory processes that would otherwise associate what was said and to whom. The good news is that their finding points to a remedy. Fed up with hearing "you told me that already!", then try focusing less on yourself and more on your listener the next time you share an anecdote.
Gopie and MacLeod's first experiment confirmed the vulnerability of destination memory. Sixty undergrads looked at pictures of famous faces - half of them received a single fact from each face, in written form; the other half told a fact to each face. Afterwards the students were tested on their memory for which facts were associated with which faces, and those who'd received facts performed significantly better than those who'd told facts. Memory for the facts themselves, by contrast, was no different between the two groups.
The second and third experiments tested the idea that destination memory is weak thanks to the self-focus associated with disclosing rather than receiving information. Students who told facts to famous faces using personal pronouns ("I" and "my") were even worse than usual at remembering to whom they'd told what. By contrast, destination memory was improved when students were trained to focus more on the famous face before sharing a fact with it. This attentional shift was achieved by instructing the participants to say each famous person's name before disclosing a fact to them.
"It is remarkable that source memory has received intense research attention, whereas destination memory has been almost entirely overlooked," the researchers said.
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Gopie N, & Macleod CM (2009). Destination Memory: Stop Me if I've Told You This Before. Psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society / APS PMID: 19891750
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
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Neuroscience
You told me that already! Why we're so poor at remembering to whom we told what
It can take some bottle to share an anecdote, so it's somewhat harsh when your friend shoots you down with an impatient accusation that you've told them this story before. You'd think they'd be more understanding - most of us seem to be far better at remembering who's told us what compared with to whom we've told what. Psychologists characterise this as a distinction between "source memory" and "destination memory", and according to Nigel Gopie and Colin MacLeod, the latter form is surprisingly under-researched. They've just published a new study suggesting that we're poor at remembering to whom we said what because of the self-focus associated with disclosing information, rather than receiving it. This self-focus, they argue, disrupts the memory processes that would otherwise associate what was said and to whom. The good news is that their finding points to a remedy. Fed up with hearing "you told me that already!", then try focusing less on yourself and more on your listener the next time you share an anecdote.Gopie and MacLeod's first experiment confirmed the vulnerability of destination memory. Sixty undergrads looked at pictures of famous faces - half of them received a single fact from each face, in written form; the other half told a fact to each face. Afterwards the students were tested on their memory for which facts were associated with which faces, and those who'd received facts performed significantly better than those who'd told facts. Memory for the facts themselves, by contrast, was no different between the two groups.
The second and third experiments tested the idea that destination memory is weak thanks to the self-focus associated with disclosing rather than receiving information. Students who told facts to famous faces using personal pronouns ("I" and "my") were even worse than usual at remembering to whom they'd told what. By contrast, destination memory was improved when students were trained to focus more on the famous face before sharing a fact with it. This attentional shift was achieved by instructing the participants to say each famous person's name before disclosing a fact to them.
"It is remarkable that source memory has received intense research attention, whereas destination memory has been almost entirely overlooked," the researchers said.
_________________________________
Gopie N, & Macleod CM (2009). Destination Memory: Stop Me if I've Told You This Before. Psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society / APS PMID: 19891750Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
- Saving Information To Computer Frees Your Mind To Learn New Material
Forgetting information that we save to computer could have its advantagesA few years ago, researchers demonstrated that people had poorer memory for information that they were told had been saved to a computer. Technophobes jumped on the finding. "Imagine...
- "placebo Sleep" Can Boost Your Mental Performance
Believing that you've had a good night's sleep can influence your mental performance, regardless of how much sleep you actually had. That's according to a new paper, by Christina Draganich and Kristi Erdal, who tricked students into thinking...
- Has The Internet Become An External Hard Drive For The Brain?
Last year's annual question posed by Edge was "How is the Internet changing the way you think?" Several psychologists answered that it was becoming an extension of their minds. "The Internet is a kind of collective memory,’ wrote Stephen Kosslyn...
- Women Have A Superior Memory For Faces
Women are better at remembering faces than men, probably because they're more interested in social aspects of the world than men are. That's according to Jenny Rehnman and Agneta Herlitz who presented 212 Swedish men and women with 60 faces to...
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Hypnosis stops being hypnotic when it’s described to participants as ‘relaxation’. This finding by Balaganesh Ghandi and David Oakley at UCL’s Hypnosis Unit complements earlier research showing the opposite effect: that relaxation labelled as...