Blog Post #5 – Round 3 Of Research

Hey everyone, on today’s agenda we are going to be looking at the question why do we remember certain things but not others? For example, we can i remember certain song lyrics but not the facts for my test. Another one is why do we forget things about our past like our childhood. Sometimes we can remember specific days, or events. For me i always wonder why i remember “useless” stuff like song lyrics, or that one day i went to the beach but not the facts i learned in my grade 6 science class. Well today we are going to discover the answer.

You know why parents and teachers say “do as much work as you can in the classroom” it’s because by the time an hour goes by you have forgotten 56% of the information. After a day 66%, and after 6 days 75% (1). But why? It’s because most information never actually makes it into the long-term memory. When we learn something there’s no emotion tied to it, you’re neutral, because of that your brain doesn’t feel the need to remember it. You won’t forget an event like embarrassing yourself in front of your class or such as the joy of the birth of your first child, this is because the stress hormones kick in. Those hormones are called epinephrine and cortisol, they enhance and consolidate memory. (2) Emotions function like highlighters, drawing attention to specific elements of experiences and making them more memorable. You know the saying sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me well scientist have proved that it’s the opposite. Emotional pain can hurt more than physical pain. In fact, we tend to remember emotional experiences much better than physical pain (1). Our memory can also be linked to your moody if we are feeling frustrated then we think of all the frustrating things in our lives and your mood can trigger certain memories based on what’s around you, like smells, sounds, people, or scenery.

For our childhood we often forget things because nothing in our bodies is fully developed like our brains, our speech and the concept of self. The hippocampus, essential for memory formation, is still maturing during your childhood, making it difficult to store long-term memories. (3) From ages 0-7 we don’t really know a full coherent sentence which then hinders their ability to form and recall memories. We don’t really know what we are, our self-concept isn’t developed which is necessary for organizing memories. New experiences and information can interfere with or overwrite early memories, making them harder to recall as we accumulate more memories. These factors contribute to why many early childhood experiences are forgotten. (4)