How Good Is Your Memory

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Your memory is phenomenal.

1. Most people remember fewer than 10 per cent of the names of those whom they meet.

2. Most people forget more than 99 per cent of the phone numbers given to them.

3. Memory is supposed to decline rapidly with age.

4. Many people drink, and alcohol is reputed to destroy 1000 brain cells per drink.

5. Internationally, across races, cultures, ages and education levels, there is a common experience, and fear of, having an inadequate or bad memory.

6. Our failures in general, and especially in remembering, are attributed to the fact that we are 'only human', a statement that implies that our skills are inherently inadequate. Your memory does decline with age, but only if it is not used. Conversely, if it is used, it will continue to improve throughout your lifetime.

There is no evidence to suggest that moderate drinking destroys brain cells. This misapprehension arose because it was found that excessive drinking, and only excessive drinking, did indeed damage the brain.

Across cultural and international boundaries 'negative experience' with memory can be traced not to our being 'only human' or in anyway innately inadequate but to two simple, easily changeable factors: negative mental set and lack of knowledge.

There is a growing and informal international organisation, which I choose to name the 'I've Got an Increasingly Bad Memory Club'.

How often do you hear people in animated and enthusiastic conversation saying things like, 'You know, my memory's not nearly as good as it used to be when I was younger; I'm constantly forgetting things'. To which there is an equally enthusiastic reply: 'Yes, I know exactly what you mean; the same thing's happening to me ...' And off they dodder, arms draped around each other's shoulders, down the hill to mental oblivion. And such conversations often take place between thirty-year-olds!

Consider the younger supermemoriser to whom most people romantically refer. If you want to check for yourself, go back to any school at the end of a day, walk into a classroom of a group of five to seven-year-old children after they have gone home and ask the teacher what has been left in the classroom (i.e. forgotten). You will find the following items: watches, pencils, pens, sweets, money, jackets, physical education equipment, books, coats, glasses, erasers, toys, etc.

The only real difference between the middle-aged executive who has forgotten to phone someone he was supposed to phone and who has left his briefcase at the office, and the seven-year-old child who realises on returning home that he's left at school his watch, his pocket-money and his homework is that the seven-year-old does not collapse into depression, clutching his head and exclaiming, 'Oh, Christ, I'm seven years old and my memory's going!'

Ask yourself, 'What is the number of things I actually remember each day?' Most people estimate somewhere between 100 and 10,000.

The answer is in fact in the multiple billions. The human memory is so excellent and runs so smoothly that most people don't even realise that every word they speak and every word they listen to are instantaneously produced for consideration, recalled, recognised precisely and placed in their appropriate context. Nor do they realise that every moment, every perception, every thought, everything that they do throughout the entire day and throughout their lives is a function of their memories. In fact, its ongoing accuracy is almost perfect. The few odd things that we do forget are like odd specks on a gigantic ocean. Ironically, the reason why we notice so dramatically the errors that we make is that they are so rare.

There is now increasing evidence that our memories may not only be far better than we ever thought but may in fact be perfect.