Memory relates to the process of storing and retrieving information. Merriam Webster's Dictionary defines memory as: (a) "the power or process of reproducing or recalling what has been learned and retained especially through associative mechanisms, " and (b) "the store of things learned and retained from an organism's activity or experience as evidenced by modification of structure or behavior or by recall and recognition." Thus, memory is is the foundation of learning and pattern recognition.
Fundamentally, memory can be thought of as the degree to which the information that we receive through our senses becomes coded within our nervous systems. According to the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle:
[A]ll animals...possess a congenital discriminative capacity which is called sense-perception. But though sense-perception is innate in all animals, in some the sense-impression comes to persist, in others it does not. So animals in which this persistence does not come to be have either no knowledge at all outside the act of perceiving, or no knowledge of objects of which no impression persists; animals in which it does come into being have perception and can continue to retain the sense-impression in the soul: and when such persistence is frequently repeated a further distinction at once arises between those which out of the persistence of such sense-impressions develop a power of systematizing them and those which do not.So out of sense-perception comes to be what we call memory, and out of frequently repeated memories of the same thing develops experience; for a number of memories constitutes a single experience. From experience again . . . originate the skill of the craftsman, and the knowledge of the man of science.
What Aristotle is saying is that memory is essentially the persistence of sensory impressions. This persistence allows us to recognize the repetition of certain impressions, or "patterns," which for the basis for our experience. Learning a skill is the further systematization of those patterns of experience.
In the past, memory was often regarded as a single mental "faculty." Today, however, human memory is considered as a whole range of processes, including those allowing the brief storage of sensory information during perception, those underlying the retention of knowledge or language, and those supporting the recollection of personal experiences and events.
Contemporary research into the process of memory has lead to the division of memory into various parts or types. A short-term memory of limited capacity, which is primarily verbal and whose content is forgotten rapidly, has been distinguished from a long-term memory that shows little evidence of any limitations at all. Short-term memory is the system used to remember information "in use," such as a telephone number while one is dialing it. Once the number has been dialed, however, the number is not retained. Short term memory also appears to be constrained by the limits of consciousness. Most people can repeat a 7- or 8-digit telephone number, but not 10 or 11 digits.
Long term memory tends to have more to do with the 'meaning', rather than the details of an experience. From an NLP perspective, long term memory would be more associated with the "deep structure" of experience than its "surface structure." Deep structure is related to the form of experience more so than its content. Aristotle, for instance, implied that long term memory had something to do with organizing and "systematizing" information. Research into long term memory has revealed that when an individual learns a list of words that happens to contain a number of animal names, he or she will tend to recall the animal names in a cluster, even though the names were originally scattered throughout the list. This suggests that the learner actively attempts to place some form of organization on the material he or she learns. Even with lists of unrelated words, on successive learning trials, people tend to produce clusters of words in the same order--again suggesting that they are organizing words in some consistent manner. Instructing an experimental subject to sort words into categories of his or her own choosing leads to better retention of the words, even if the subject had not expected to be tested, implying that organization leads to longer term memory. The better the organization system for items of information in memory, the more accessible the information is likely to be.
The association or "anchoring" of information or experiences to other experiences, then, appears to help in both storage and retrieval; promoting longer term memory, and easier accessibility. Mnemonics, for example, is a memory technique in which additional cues are supplied in order to help retrieve the appropriate information. For example, a mnemonic for remembering the order of the colors of the spectrum_red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet_might use the sentence "Rain on your garden brings incredible vegetables." The color names are first reduced to their initial letter, and these are then elaborated into a meaningful sentence, providing a sequential organization not present in the order of the color names themselves. (See also Memory Strategies.)
Memory has also been shown to be "state dependent" to a large degree. That is, it is typically easier for people to remember aspects of an event when they are in an internal state that is similar to the one they were in at the time that the event initially occurred. The state serves as an additional type of cue or memory trace which acts a "red thread" connecting experiences to one another (what is known as a "transderivational search" in NLP). Some states are also more conducive to remembering than others. People who are able to perform exceptional memory tasks often describe placing themselves into a special state for learning or remembering the material to be learned.
Both long term and short term memory can be contrasted with forgetting. Forgetting is the process through which information in memory becomes inaccessible, either because the information is no longer stored or because it is stored but is not at that time retrievable. Forgetting seems to occur when memory traces spontaneously decay, or are disrupted by interference from the traces produced by competing information. Forgetting, for instance, may be increased by interference from other material either learned beforehand (proactive inhibition) or subsequently (retroactive inhibition). In both cases, the amount of forgetting increases with the amount of interfering material and with its similarity to the material being remembered. For example, if a cook is trying to remember a soup recipe, recall will be worse if it is one of six soup recipes just read. Reading a comparable amount of information on a different topic such as car maintenance would not inhibit the recall of the soup recipe as much.
From the NLP perspective, forgetting is a function of the fact that memory is another type of "model building." As such, it undergoes the same processes influencing the formation of all models: deletion, distortion and generalization. In remembering stories or events, for instance, there is a tendency for distortions to occur. People tend to remember what they regard as most important; they typically operate by attempting to reconstruct the incident using their existing knowledge, with the result that they may recall what would have been expected rather than what actually occurred. (This often the source of so-called "false memories.")
Remembering and forgetting are also both influenced by a person's motivation to remember or to forget. Sometimes a person actively "wants to forget" some experience or information. Sigmund Freud, for example, proposed that people forget or "repress" incidents associated with pain, trauma or anxiety.
Amnesia is a form of forgetting that results from a disruption of an entire part of a person's memory system. Some forms of amnesia are a result of trauma; others are a function of the purposeful, though not necessarily conscious, process of breaking or disrupting memory traces, or inhibiting their connection to the larger web of associated experiences. Hypnotic suggestion, for instance, can be used to either create or overcome states of amnesia.
According to NLP, a person's memory abilities are also related to the development of their representational systems. A more "visually" developed person will remember visually based information more easily. A person who is more "auditorily" oriented will have an easier time recalling what they have heard. People who are more kinesthetically adept will be more able to recollect movements and feelings (as dancers might remember the "feel" of a particular dance step). These perceptual filters influence not only how people remember, but what they remember and how they store it.
Some memory researchers have postulated that there are special kinds of memory for visual material. Others have proposed a type of episodic memory for personal experiences, as distinct from semantic memory, which is essentially one's store of knowledge.
In the area of artificial intelligence, there have been a number of attempts to model these various memory structures with computer programs. The SOAR system, for example, uses four distinct types of long term memory. In addition to declarative knowledge (facts about the world, including facts about actions that can be performed), procedural knowledge (how to perform actions), and episodic knowledge (which actions were done when), the SOAR system stores control knowledge (which actions to perform when) in the form of information about action preferences.
Research with humans suggests that similar structures may also be operating with respect to human memory. Studies with patients who have suffered brain injuries, for instance, demonstrate that sometimes one type of memory can be damaged, while others remain intact. For example, a patient may lose episodic memory, but not procedural memory. When such a patient is repeatedly presented with a puzzle to solve, he or she will claim to have never seen or worked with the puzzle before. The time that it takes the person to solve the puzzle however, decreases according to a typical learning curve. Eventually, the patient is able to rapidly solve the puzzle (by procedural memory) even though the patient claims adamantly that he or she has never seen it before (by episodic memory).
In the model of NLP, these various types of memory can be associated with different Logical Levels of processing:
Environment Where and When: Episodic memory
Behaviors, actions, facts What : Declarative memory
Capabilities and strategies How: Procedural memory
Beliefs and values (rules) Why: Control memory
Physiologically, memory is believed to form as a result of the growth of nerve connections in the brain, and also as a function of chemical changes influencing the response characteristics of existing neural connections (synapses). Early researchers who studied the physiology of long-term memory sought to locate individual memories in localized groups of cells. The view now emerging is that the process is more dynamic; that the brain not only somehow codes memories into "programs" to be acted upon through a network of interconnected cells, but actually alters the structure of its interconnections to accommodate new memories. Computer scientists have joined with neurophysiologists in developing computer models of small sections of the brain (see Neural Networks).
Neuroscientist Karl Pribram has proposed that the neurological process of memory functions similarly to a hologram, and that memories are stored to some degree in every part of the brain. Pribram's holonomic model of memory (1974, 1976) suggests that the neurons in the human brain can create interference patterns similar in some respects to those created by the light waves used to make optical holograms. Pribram likens the interference patterns created by interactions between neurons to the interference patterns formed by overlapping light waves that are involved in the creation of an optical hologram.
According to NLP, the neural connections and patterns of interaction associated with memory can be reactivated through special physical mechanisms known as "accessing cues." Accessing cues are micro-behavioral patterns (such as lateral eye movements and breathing shifts) which stimulate or open neural pathways supporting both storage and retrieval or sensory information. For example, the NLP Spelling Strategy uses accessing cues associated with visual memory (eyes up and to the left) to facilitate the storage and recall of the image of a printed word.
Micro-behavioral cues also combine to influence a person's internal state. Thus, by adjusting groups of these cues, people can learn to optimize their physiological state for both input and retrieval of information.
Memory strategies are one of the seven basic classes of strategies identified by NLP. The others include: Learning, Creativity, Decision Making, Motivation, Reality and Belief (or Convincer). Memory strategies are a function of the sequence of cognitive steps and operations that people go through in order to store and recall information received from their environment or constructed through internal processes.
From the NLP perspective, people's memory abilities are primarily related to the development of their representational systems. A more "visually" developed person will tend remember visually based information more easily. A person who is more "auditorily" oriented will have an easier time recalling what he or she has heard. People who are more kinesthetically adept will be more able to recollect movements and feelings (as dancers might remember the "feel" of a particular dance step). These perceptual filters influence not only how people remember, but what they remember and how they store it.
In the model of NLP, the difference between "long term" and "short term" memory is a function of the strategy that a person uses to encode and recall the information. A person with a good short term memory for a particular type of information will tend to have an internal strategy that matches the representational system used to present that information. For instance, a person who excels in a short term visual task (such as remembering a group of shapes) will exhibit visual accessing cues and a completely visual strategy. A poor visual performer will often attempt auditory or kinesthetic accessing cues and strategies. An exceptional performer at an auditory task (remembering sequences of tones or music) may show exclusively auditory accessing and representation while a poor performer will show a mix of other accessing cues and representational systems. Similarly, a person who excels in short term kinesthetic memory (recognizing a series of objects by touch) will go with the feeling of the kinesthetic pattern, while a poor kinesthetic scorer (who may perform well for memory in a different representational system) may use an exclusively auditory or visual approach and become confused.
Longer term memory, on the other hand, is better facilitated by strategies that overlap or connect the information from one sense to other representational systems. One simple principle of long term memory is that 'the more of your neurology you mobilize to encode something, the easier it is going to be to remember it'. When you involve all of your senses, you "leave a little bit of everything everywhere." Long term memory is more a function of chunking and overlapping information to other senses than simply matching the representational system to the input channel. Mozart, for instance, had a phenomenal memory for music. He claimed that he could feel, see and even taste music. It seems obvious that it would be a little more difficult to forget something if you had it that fully represented.
The use of physiological patterns such as the various NLP accessing cues can greatly facilitate the input, storage and retrieval of sensory information, by stimulating the necessary sensory mechanisms and focusing attention on particular areas of sensory experience.
Chunking is a common strategy for streamlining the storage and retrieval of information because it reduces the complexity of the task. As an example, telephone numbers have seven to ten digits in them. If you remembered each digit as a separate piece of information_ i.e., the 8 and then the 0 and then the next 0, as all separate units of information_then about all you could remember is seven numbers. If you take all of those numbers, as most people do, and collect them into two or three 'chunks' of information (an area code, a local prefix, and a personal access number), it becomes a much smaller amount to remember. If you live in an area where everyone has the same area code or prefix, for instance, it is not necessary to remember those as separate pieces of information each time you learn a neighbor's telephone number. You are able to remember them as a single 'chunk'_such as "area code" or "local prefix"
As another example, if you had a phone number that had "1964" in it, instead of having to remember four individual numbers, you could "chunk" it into a particular date ("the year that the Beatles were on the Ed Sullivan Show," for instance), and condense four pieces of information into one.
Mnemonics is another strategy for improving long term memory. It involves adding other words or images to the information to be remembered in order to produce a pattern or meaning on another level. For example, a mnemonic technique for spelling 'arithmetic' might involve a sentence made up of words starting with each letter in "arithmetic," such as, "A Red Indian Thought He Might Eat Turkey In Church," or "A Rat In Tommy's House Might Eat Tommy's Ice Cream."
The goal of mnemonics is to add something that helps to create order or meaning. It is important to keep in mind, however, that 'input', 'storage' and 'retrieval' are three distinct parts of memory. While "mnemonics" may be an effective method to facilitate the 'storage' of characters, it may not necessarily be the most efficient way to 'input' or 'retrieve' information in general. If you used it for everything you had to remember, it could become time consuming and inefficient.
To review, memory strategies involve several distinct aspects: (1) how you input the information, (2) how you store the information and (3) how you retrieve what has been stored. Overlapping the senses, using the appropriate physiological "accessing cues", combining or breaking information into manageable "chunks," and creating mnemonic associations, are all ways to facilitate the various aspects of memory. Combining all of these processes together typically leads to the most powerful memory strategies.
For example, in one NLP seminar, a who woman was able to have perfect recall for the random sequence of characters that she had never seen before: 'A24705S58B', described her strategy for memorizing in the following way, "I work in the food service business so I related the characters to my work. For instance, 'A' is for Apple and is at the beginning of the alphabet. '24' is how old I was when I changed jobs last. '705' means I'm 5 minutes late getting up. 'S' is for Salmon - and it kind of looks likes a fish swimming. '5' and '8' were difficult to find an easy meaning for so I just imagined that they were twice as big as all of the other characters and were bright red. 'B' is for Bacon and it follows A in the alphabet, so A and B kind of bracketed the whole group."
Often, just by hearing this story, people will be able to remember these characters very easily, demonstrating that it is the strategy, not the degree of effort, that is responsible for effective learning and memory.
From the NLP point of view, there is no single "correct" or "best" memory strategy for everybody. Different strategies will be more effective for some individuals, depending on the degree of development they have achieved with respect the various sensory representational systems. The key is to discover your own most effective strategy, or strategies, and then continue to enrich your memory abilities by exploring other possible strategies.
For example, think of the last time you misplaced your car keys, and were able to remember where you put them. How did you finally remember where they were? Did you make an image of the last place you saw them? Did you hear the special sound the keys made when you set them down or placed them in your purse or pocket? Did you have to go back physically to the last place you had them and retrace your steps? These are all ways of using different representational systems to facilitate memory.
For information on Robert Dilts’ products and services, please see Upcoming Seminars or Robert’s Product Page or return to Home Page. If you have problems or comments concerning our WWW service, please send e-mail to the following address: michaelp@bowsprit.com.
This page, and all contents, are Copyright © 1999 by Robert Dilts., Santa Cruz, CA.