Remembering and Forgetting (Year 2, Sun. Gr 1)
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For Jill Price, living with this memory has its pros and cons. Her memory skills have been with her since early childhood, so they are an integral part of her life and it would probably be hard to imagine life without them.
Reading the book, you can see that her super ability can be both a curse and a blessing – she has no control over her memory, which works automatically, reminding her of things she doesn’t necessarily want to remember – for example, every unpleasant thing she’s heard about herself, arguments and disappointments.
But she also has the ability to “visit” good memories when she feels like it, which she uses as a way to improve her mood.-
Hi Joanna!
Would you like to have some aspects of her memory? And what is her condition called in the first place? How common is it?-
Hello! 🙂
Her condition is called “hyperthymestic syndrome”, characterized by a highly superior autobiographical memory. Jill was the first official case, after which five more people were confirmed, so it is extremely rare!
I wouldn’t switch with her memory one hundred percent, but some aspects are certainly interesting. I certainly wouldn’t want to remember every unpleasant thing, but I would be happy to go back to the pleasant moments I can’t remember anymore. Jill has never lost her keys, her ATM card, always remembers where she leaves off – that would be also very useful for me in my everyday life.
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The “calendar” memory can be a common feature with Kim Peek – when asked about any date they could tell what day of the week it was.
Shereshevsky, on the other hand, was able to consciously remember a virtually unlimited amount of information, while Jill could not – she remembered only autobiographical information (and the events she personally saw in the news or read about).She’s not very good at remembering things voluntarily.
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Hm, if I remember correctly, he had trouble memorizing abstract information and recognizing faces.
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Human faces were “too changeable” for him, he could remember the face only as he saw it for the first time.
The next meeting of the same person after years was troublesome for him because he could not associate that despite minor changes it was still the same person. -
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I think it’s hard to live with remembering all days of our lives. But some of our memory might be nice and we like to go back to them and talk about them. But assume that we had
ahorrible memories about, for example a car accident in whichdiedsomeone who we love dies, we would want to forget about it, repress it but we can’t and we must deal with it forallthe rest of our life. Let’s go back totheJill Prince, she was able to tell the date of the attack on the World Trade Center with all details but she couldn’t learn and memorise historical facts for the history classes or for mathematics classes. It was hard for her to learn anything for each classes. I have never had a brilliant memory skills to learn anything but if I had to choose to remember all things that have happened in my life anddon’tnot be able to memorise things for my classes between skills I have now, I would choose the second option, without a second thought.-
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If she wasn’t interested in
informationsinformation which she had to memorise, she couldn’t memorise it at all. She Had to be interested in something, otherwise she wasn’t able to learn it. Also when she was focused on something important and wanted to memorise it, the memories which were running through her head made it was hard to pay attention.-
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If she liked some foreign language I think she is able to learn it. But I’m not so sure about the poem, because in the text she mentioned that memorizing poetry was especially painful for her, if not impossible, so I think when it comes to poems her interest in it wasn’t important.
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She was not able to memories a poem because it’s not a part of her life.
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Living with such a perfect autobiographical memory for Julie was blessing and a curse. Her case allowed her to catch the smallest details of the course of events.
From the text, we know that her “abilities” appeared at a young age so it didn’t “fall” on her suddenly. She had chance to adapt to this state of affairs.Jill can recall her memories which is in my opinion a huge gift. How many times have we dreamed to come back to the memories of our beloved grandfather? When in worse moments we tried to cheer ourselves by remembering holidays by the sea? Jill had very transparent access to it.
As I wrote before, I think it is a gift. But on the other hand it is a curse. Returning to stressful situations for us or just unpleasant situations must be just not nice. Jill, unfortunately, despite her condition, couldn’t refuse these adverse moments. She had to live with them. So in my opinion Jill was both, curse and gifted in her way, from a very young age.
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To control the recalled memories?
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Yes, but I have the impression that she actually didn’t want to change her memory. She wrote in her book that remembering things accurately is very important to her and it would be hard for her to live with memory gaps that normally people experience. Maybe she wants to have more control over her memories and to be able to switch them off when she wants to relax or focus on something.
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Nobody wants to change memory, but it seems to me that sometimes her memories were bothersome
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I believe Jill’s condition leans more on the side of a curse. I think I’ve seen every interview or documentary that involved her some time ago and the book gave me even broader perspective about her life.
It must be so hard living with this type of condition I can’t even imagine it. Obviously its great to recall pleasent memories but life is not about pleasent things alone. As I rely on repression or simply forgeting hurtful moments of my life I can’t imagine being forced to retrieve difficult memories withour any warning. And as we know Jill doesn’t have an easy life, she is constatntlyhountedhaunted by her past. If not big traumas then little things like when she did something embarasing 10 years ago. We all know that feeling when we lie in bed wanting to fall asleep and suddenly and randomly we recall some embarrassing situation from the past. She remembers nearly all of them. That alone would be a curse.
Obviously it’s not like her life is hell, it may be close but still she is used to it as we all are to our struggles. We adapt and so did she. I think being able to remember good things makes it bearable.-
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Yes, she describes that when she thinks of for example today – Sunday 26th of April 2020 she is able to recall all the 26th of April that fell od Sunday. But she is also able to do that with any given date and trace back to every 26th of April that she remembers. She finds that comforting, it helps her to sort things out in her mind.
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It won
t be nothing original, Ive read these chpaters with constant feeling of curiosity, asking myself, how is this even possble that shes able to 'relive' her memories just as it happened for the first time. For us, people, many things are important just because of emotional impact that they have, thats why I find this possibility of recalling memories and emotions connected to them, desirable, yet I know that I truly wouldn`t like to live like this.
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One of them is the method of loci, it means that we put words or phrases into places (e.g. our way to school) that we know. When I was younger and I needed to remember
the poetrya poem forcontestsa recitation contest I walked around my house and put phrases into furniture. It helped me recollect fragments when I was stressed during the contest. For me it’s the most working method of mnemotechnics.-
Jill mentioned a few mnemonics, which are ways to exercise and remember information.
She gave an example of imagery / rhyming to memorize something. Also loci method, but she never used any of them.
I don’t use any of the above, as they are not efficient for me. I only use categorisation and making Cornell notes. -
I have never used it for fear I would get lost somewhere along the path 🙂 It seems to me that in the case of the method of loci, you not only have to remember something you need to memorise but also where you have put it in the imaginary place.
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Indeed! That’s why I think it’s a difficult technique, doubly complicated 😉
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I only use categorization, sometimes flashcards 🙂
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She mentioned imagery and rhyming. When I ws younger, mostly in primary school I used to use rhyming and associations (I’m not sure If the second one is a thing though). Sometimes I still use some part of it when I find that material is particulary difficult to memorise. But I think I mostly develop some sort of a combination/mix of a lot of mnemonic devices and use them somewhat
subconcouslysubconsciously.-
That’s interesting. Could you, please, give us an example of your method of committing things to memory?
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Sure. So I often use modyfied flashcard method. On one side I put general subject or issue and on the other shortened or full definition or words I’m then able to
assosiateassociate with said definition. It’s difficult to explain because it’s very intuitive for me and I dont’t have strict rules for doing it. Then I highlight key words in the definitions (what is also important is that set of flashcards concerning one bigger subject is highlighted with one color) and I memorise where on the card the key words are situated. For example when there are 3 words I form a triangle that is specific color in my mind. Moreover I often see in my mind first letters of those key words and then they form the shape I mentioned earlier.Honestly, it sounds so confusing I don’t even know how whether it helps me
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So they are memory techniques to help our brains/the brain
betterencode and recall important information better and of course we use them. For me, the most popular is Polish “odmiana przez przypadki czasownika”/declension – (I don’t t know how to translate that) In elementary school I didn’t know how to remember them in sequence, so my mother taught me a poem –
mama – mianownik
dała – dopełniacz
cukierka – celownik
bo – biernik
nie – narzędnik
miała – miejscownik
wafelka – wołacz 🙂-
What a lovely idea! 🙂 I remember inventing a phrase which could teach students the order of adjectives.
On Saturdays and Sundays cute Olga makes pancakes. Can you guess, all of you, what these adjectives are?
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opinion, size, age, shape, color, o….?, material, purpose
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It seems to be that you’re saying that your memory is good on it own and you don’t need help to memorise something. Am I right in thinking so?
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Yes, you
re right. I have never look for any mnemonic device just because I didnt even know that such things exist, I was not aware of it
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Remembering every little detail of your life can be a torment. It doesn’t change the fact that Jill has been struggling with this for most of her life, so she’s already got used to it. It seems to me that there are more advantages here than disadvantages. The fact that she remembers those less happy elements of her life does not mean that she only thinks about them and is unable to focus on happy memories.
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Can you guess that the following mnemonics stand for? Please, do not refer to the Internet ?
a) If you saw a hippo on a campus, you would remember it.
b) For I want a snowy Christmas, my friend.
c) When you are S-T-R-E-S-S-E-D you eat D-E-S-S-E-R-T-S.
d) Spring forward. Fall back.
e) My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nachos.-
e) is acrostic for sure 🙂
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Something that is supposed to be in some specific order – colours for example – magenta, violet, ecru, maroon, jade, steel, ultramarine, navy blue.
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„C” is an anagram
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Transience, absentmindedness, blocking were the first three, he called them ‘sins of omission’ if I`m correct
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Also misattribution, suggestibility and bias, as “sins of commission”
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Transcience, absent-mindedness, blocking, misattribution, suggestibility, bias and persistence 🙂
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All of you, good answer!
It seems to me that it’s our last class, but I’d like you to take a test on memory in about 2 weeks’ time at your convenience. Just give me the date and time. Those of you who would like to continue our online classes, let me know by email.
I will send you today the updated activity report together with information about your written exam.If you’d like to continue the discussion about Jill Price, please do so. I will come back to this topic later today to see if you’ve written anything new.
Thank you very much for your contribution and have a good Sunday!
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