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Casual thoughts about memory and our misconceptions about it, based on the last few weeks of seeing a LOT of lay mental models about memory and cognition:

- it is well known in the psychological and cognitive sciences that memory is not like a man-made recording device. Your memory is not a tape recorder, or analogous to computer memory. Nevertheless people will insist on constantly using computer metaphors for memory. Just know this is widely regarded as inaccurate

in reply to Dr. Cat Hicks

mastodon - Link to source

Dr. Cat Hicks

- a key principle of much of the memory that we're concerned with in casual conversations (how we learn, retrieve information for large and complex tasks, "meaning" memory) is that we store information in relationship with the previous information and organization of our memories. Over and over, research has found that we are much more "active" participants in this process rather than "passive recorders"
in reply to Dr. Cat Hicks

mastodon - Link to source

Dr. Cat Hicks

With this knowledge in hand, we start to understand illusions of learning, e.g.:

"Conscientiously taking verbatim notes or reading to-be-learned content over, if it is done in a passive way, is not an efficient way to learn"

- Bjork, R. A., Dunlosky, J., & Kornell, N. (2013). Self-regulated learning: Beliefs, techniques, and illusions. Annual review of psychology, 64(1), 417-444.

in reply to Dr. Cat Hicks

mastodon - Link to source

Grant_H

@edutooters

No matter what level educator you are, this thread has some important reminders on learning.

mastodon.social/@grimalkina/11…

Dr. Cat Hicks

2025-07-02 15:05:44

mastodon - Link to source

Casual thoughts about memory and our misconceptions about it, based on the last few weeks of seeing a LOT of lay mental models about memory and cognition:

- it is well known in the psychological and cognitive sciences that memory is not like a man-made recording device. Your memory is not a tape recorder, or analogous to computer memory. Nevertheless people will insist on constantly using computer metaphors for memory. Just know this is widely regarded as inaccurate


in reply to Dr. Cat Hicks

mastodon - Link to source

Mark T. Tomczak

My favorite quick example of this is this simple game:

"Hey computer, here's twenty random things. Memorize them."
"Okay."
"Recite them forwards."
"Okay."
"Recite them backwards."
(flips the sign of one counter increment) "Okay."

"... hey human, here's twenty random things. Memorize them."
"Okay."
"Recite them forwards."
"Okay."
"Recite them backwards."
head explodes

People can train themselves to be better at this, but most people don't have sequence-flipping of unpatterned data come naturally to them, and with computers it's almost exactly as easy as forward readout.

in reply to Dr. Cat Hicks

mastodon - Link to source

William Oldwin

And of course the computational theory of mind has achieved a pretty dominant position in philosophy of mind. Since the Enlightenment and the ascendence of scientism we homo sapiens have had a weakness for interpreting things through the framework of our shiniest, most advanced technology. A few hundred years ago the universe was thought of as a great clockwork. Today we understand things as computers. We keep making the same mistakes, don't we?
This entry was edited (1 day ago)
in reply to Dr. Cat Hicks

mastodon - Link to source

Dr. Tim Schatto-Eckrodt

I really found the historical perspective on this (i.e. technology serves as the metaphor for intelligence) fascinating: aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does…

In Our Own Image (2015) by George Zarkadakis is a great read as well.

A screenshot of the linked article with two paragraphs: The invention of hydraulic engineering in the 3rd century BCE led to the popularity of a hydraulic model of human intelligence, the idea that the flow of different fluids in the body – the ‘humours’ – accounted for both our physical and mental functioning. The hydraulic metaphor persisted for more than 1,600 years, handicapping medical practice all the while. By the 1500s, automata powered by springs and gears had been devised, eventually inspiring leading thinkers such as René Descartes to assert that humans are complex machines. In the 1600s, the British philosopher Thomas Hobbes suggested that thinking arose from small mechanical motions in the brain. By the 1700s, discoveries about electricity and chemistry led to new theories of human intelligence – again, largely metaphorical in nature. In the mid-1800s, inspired by recent advances in communications, the German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz compared the brain to a telegraph.

Your brain does not process information and it is not a computer | Aeon Essays

Your brain does not process information, retrieve knowledge or store memories. In short: your brain is not a computer
Robert Epstein (Aeon Magazine)
in reply to Dr. Cat Hicks

mastodon - Link to source

Pendell

"the Mandela effect" should be an opportunity to explore how fallible human memory is, and how it can interact with group dynamics, leading to things like widespread memories of events that never happened. Instead it's a basis for people who are certain their memories are 100% digitally accurate to unmoor themselves from reality and start rambling about parallel universes while fashioning tinfoil hats for themselves.
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