Fluent Forever : How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It
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• Memory tests are most effective when they’re challenging. The closer you get to forgetting a word, the more ingrained it will become when you finally remember it. • If you can consistently test yourself right before you forget, you’ll double the effectiveness of every test. P RINCIPLE 5 : R EWRITE THE P AST The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant. —Salvador Dalí I remember waking up one day with a symphony in my head. I had dreamt that I was sitting at my desk, composing, and I woke up with the results intact. Beaming with pride, I ran to my brother. “Listen to this,” I said, and began humming a few bars. “Isn’t that awesome? I composed it in my sleep!” “No, you didn’t,” my brother replied. “It’s from the Superman movie. We saw it last week.” As we discussed earlier, a memory is just a web of connections: disparate neurons fire together, wire together, and become more likely to fire together in the future. In my dream, I remembered the Superman theme at the same time as I envisioned myself composing. My brain reflexively connected the two into a convincing new memory—a false memory—and I went and embarrassed myself in front of my brother. This happens to all of us, and it’s a result of the way we store memories. In a 2011 memory study, researchers showed two groups of college students a vivid, imagery- laden advertisement for a new, fake brand of popcorn: Orville Redenbacher’s Gourmet Fresh. Afterward, they thanked the first group and sent them home. Then they gave the second group samples of fresh popcorn. One week later, they brought both groups back and asked them about their impressions. Here’s where it gets creepy: both groups vividly remembered trying the popcorn, even though one group never had. They all thought it was delicious. When we remember, we don’t just access our memories; we rewrite them. Prompted by the popcorn advertisement, these college students remembered movie nights at home, the smell of corn and butter, the crunch in their mouths, and the salt on their lips. In the midst of reliving these experiences, they saw images of other people enjoying popcorn in bags marked “Orville Redenbacher’s Gourmet Fresh,” and their memories changed. The network of neurons from past movie nights activated at the same time as they saw the brand’s logo. Because neurons that fire together wire together, their brains stored these new connections as if they had always been there. Our “single” memories are amalgamations of every recall experience we’ve ever had. When I remind you of the word gato, you probably recall the little image of a cat from earlier in the chapter. But as that image floats around in your head, you can’t store it just as it was. You are a different person now, with different information in your head and a different section of this book in front of you. Perhaps you’ve changed rooms, or your emotional state, or perhaps you now have a cat in your lap. You have a wholly new set of neurons involved in this gato experience compared with your last one. As a result, your new gato memory will join the new connections from your present to the old reactivated connections from your past. In that single act of recall, your gato network has doubled in size. This rewriting process is the engine behind long-term memorization. Every act of recall imbues old memories with a trace of your present-day self. This trace gives those memories additional connections: new images, emotions, sounds, and word associations that make your old memory easier to recall. Once you’ve rewritten these memories enough times, they become unforgettable. tải về 3.86 Mb. Chia sẻ với bạn bè của bạn:
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