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These are the user uploaded subtitles that are being translated: 1 00:00:55,021 --> 00:00:59,859 An engaging instructor devoted to exploring the scientific secrets of human memory. 2 00:01:00,326 --> 00:01:05,598 Peter M Vision is Associate Professor of Psychology at the College of William and Mary. 3 00:01:06,099 --> 00:01:07,367 He received his B.A. 4 00:01:07,367 --> 00:01:12,505 in Psychology and Computer Science from Swarthmore College and his Ph.D. 5 00:01:12,505 --> 00:01:16,142 in psychology and Cognitive Science from Cornell University. 6 00:01:16,776 --> 00:01:23,550 Professor Visteon has served as program director for Developmental and Learning Sciences at the National Science Foundation. 7 00:01:24,150 --> 00:01:28,221 His research interests include perception and motor systems of the brain. 8 00:01:28,855 --> 00:01:35,228 He has been published in the top journals in the field of psychology, including science, Psychological Science, 9 00:01:35,528 --> 00:02:00,420 the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology and Experimental Brain Research. 10 00:02:01,521 --> 00:02:04,891 Imagine this You're an early hunter gatherer. 11 00:02:05,291 --> 00:02:08,094 Starting your day, searching some bushes for berries, 12 00:02:09,395 --> 00:02:12,165 getting these berries is critical to your survival. 13 00:02:12,632 --> 00:02:19,772 So you're going to check the bushes, even though you know an important fact there are lions hiding in some of the bushes. 14 00:02:20,540 --> 00:02:25,378 If you stick your head into a bush that has a lion in it, that's it for you. End of the line. 15 00:02:27,180 --> 00:02:27,780 Okay. 16 00:02:27,780 --> 00:02:30,450 So here is the critical information. 17 00:02:30,450 --> 00:02:33,520 This knowledge will save your life when you're searching those bushes. 18 00:02:34,020 --> 00:02:45,698 You should avoid Bush numbers 9 to 19 six, 24, 17, seven, ten, 24, 16 and 22. 19 00:02:46,466 --> 00:02:47,167 Got it. 20 00:02:47,534 --> 00:02:48,368 It's important. 21 00:02:48,368 --> 00:02:49,435 So let's try again. 22 00:02:49,435 --> 00:02:51,571 9 to 19. 23 00:02:51,604 --> 00:02:55,608 Six. 24. 17. Seven. Ten. 24 00:02:55,842 --> 00:02:59,145 24. 16 and 22. 25 00:02:59,145 --> 00:03:00,747 Okay. Go ahead. 26 00:03:00,747 --> 00:03:04,617 Find enough berries to feed your family and survive the winter and don't get eaten. 27 00:03:05,585 --> 00:03:07,554 How confident do you feel? 28 00:03:07,554 --> 00:03:10,156 Did you remember all of those numbers? 29 00:03:10,156 --> 00:03:14,460 If you're like most people, then you probably remembered a few. But not all of them. 30 00:03:15,028 --> 00:03:19,499 No matter how much you wanted to remember them, your brain is just not built for it. 31 00:03:20,166 --> 00:03:23,102 What it is built for is spatial information. 32 00:03:24,837 --> 00:03:26,639 Okay. Here are all the lions. 33 00:03:26,639 --> 00:03:31,911 Here's the same information, the same thing conveyed by reading you that list of numbers. 34 00:03:32,312 --> 00:03:35,615 You may note that there are lions in each of the numbered spots. 35 00:03:35,615 --> 00:03:37,684 9 to 19. 36 00:03:37,717 --> 00:03:45,391 624. 17, seven, ten, 24, 16 and 22. 37 00:03:45,992 --> 00:03:46,693 Just like I said, 38 00:03:47,660 --> 00:03:49,662 if you look at this image for a few seconds, 39 00:03:49,662 --> 00:03:53,866 however, you will be able to remember where all of the lions are located. 40 00:03:55,702 --> 00:04:00,173 It really is the same information, but it's converted into a different format. 41 00:04:00,540 --> 00:04:04,177 The number labels are replaced by locations in space. 42 00:04:05,011 --> 00:04:08,081 Your brain also probably notices a spatial pattern here. 43 00:04:08,381 --> 00:04:12,952 All of the lion bushes are right next to one of the four corners of the space. 44 00:04:13,486 --> 00:04:20,660 By converting this information into a location based format, our memory is suddenly able to perform much, much better. 45 00:04:22,629 --> 00:04:30,370 Part of that remembering locations is based on an excellent ability that humans possess to remember natural images. 46 00:04:31,804 --> 00:04:39,412 You should be able to look at the world around you, taking in some image through your eyes and recognize if you've seen it before or not. 47 00:04:40,213 --> 00:04:43,683 It's also important that this recognition process function very quickly. 48 00:04:44,117 --> 00:04:47,186 More than a few seconds and a lion might be chasing after you. 49 00:04:48,688 --> 00:04:54,294 I'm Peter Vista and I've been fascinated with human cognition and the brain for more than two decades now. 50 00:04:54,927 --> 00:05:02,835 I've done many experiments on perception and action control, and much of my research focuses on cognitive development in infants and children. 51 00:05:03,603 --> 00:05:10,343 Since the beginning of my time studying psychology, however, I've also been interested in memory, for one thing. 52 00:05:10,543 --> 00:05:13,446 Memory is present in almost everything that we do. 53 00:05:14,280 --> 00:05:17,150 Without it, we would exist in a sort of vacuum. 54 00:05:17,984 --> 00:05:26,959 Without memory, we could perceive things and do things, but we wouldn't have a sense of how our lives exist in a continuous, ongoing fashion. 55 00:05:28,027 --> 00:05:30,596 Memory is the thing that links us to our past. 56 00:05:31,497 --> 00:05:37,904 Our understanding of our memory also links us to the future innate allows us to plan and reason 57 00:05:38,304 --> 00:05:44,243 with an understanding that we'll have access to those plans and conclusions in the future. 58 00:05:44,377 --> 00:05:49,382 While I'm talking about myself, I should also mention that I don't have an especially good memory. 59 00:05:49,916 --> 00:05:54,587 I forget birthdays where I left my car keys sometimes, where I parked my car. 60 00:05:55,421 --> 00:06:00,159 Perhaps my fascination with memory originally arose from some concern about this. 61 00:06:00,993 --> 00:06:06,132 That said, when I do choose to encode something in my mind, I'm very good at it. 62 00:06:06,933 --> 00:06:09,702 Even with my relatively limited memory capacity, 63 00:06:10,236 --> 00:06:17,243 I'll be showing off some tricks that I think are rather impressive, at least until I show you how they're done. 64 00:06:17,610 --> 00:06:20,279 Human memory is a truly amazing thing. 65 00:06:21,180 --> 00:06:23,082 Just think about this. 66 00:06:23,082 --> 00:06:30,056 You experience these sounds that I'm making, these ideas that I'm explaining, and they somehow stick in your head. 67 00:06:30,757 --> 00:06:37,096 Your brain, with its millions of neurons and trillions of synaptic connections between those neurons, 68 00:06:37,096 --> 00:06:43,302 is always changing itself, always changing itself to store the things you remember, the things you experience. 69 00:06:44,070 --> 00:06:49,208 You can't feel it, but it's changing right now, as amazing as human memory is. 70 00:06:49,709 --> 00:06:51,744 There are times when it seems to fail us. 71 00:06:52,378 --> 00:06:53,579 Why is that? 72 00:06:53,579 --> 00:06:57,417 Why can we remember some things with perfect clarity and fidelity 73 00:06:57,850 --> 00:07:03,122 and yet forget other things like where we left our keys or the date of a good, good friend's birthday. 74 00:07:03,923 --> 00:07:08,161 We often forget these things and not because we don't really want to remember them. 75 00:07:08,895 --> 00:07:10,730 They just don't stick. 76 00:07:10,730 --> 00:07:20,139 Why? In this course, I'll argue that with rare exceptions, all humans have an amazing memory capacity. 77 00:07:20,873 --> 00:07:23,276 Scientific research on memory has established us. 78 00:07:24,043 --> 00:07:30,583 The real problem is that our brains were not really built for the types of memory challenges that we give them in our classrooms, 79 00:07:30,616 --> 00:07:33,019 offices, and throughout our everyday lives. 80 00:07:33,820 --> 00:07:40,560 The central trick to enhancing the power of your memory is to transform things that are hard to remember 81 00:07:40,960 --> 00:07:46,632 into things that are easy for your brain to encode and later recall. 82 00:07:46,966 --> 00:07:54,006 There's a field of science called evolutionary psychology that makes a strong and not uncontroversial assertion. 83 00:07:55,208 --> 00:08:00,780 Modern humans, they claim, go through their lives with the brains of primitive cave people. 84 00:08:01,481 --> 00:08:07,587 You, they claim, have the brain of a primitive early human who lived hundreds of thousands of years ago. 85 00:08:09,222 --> 00:08:15,127 Evolutionary psychologists start, of course, with the notion that humans evolved from ancestral species 86 00:08:15,127 --> 00:08:23,736 through a process of selective adaptation, random mutation combined with a survival of the fittest, according to the standard theory. 87 00:08:23,970 --> 00:08:28,641 This is how our species and all species developed. 88 00:08:28,908 --> 00:08:37,049 Another thing that's central to the evolutionary psychologist's position is the notion that evolution is very, very slow. 89 00:08:38,117 --> 00:08:44,257 Our species first walked the earth, according to most theories, about 200,000 years ago, somewhere in East Africa. 90 00:08:45,091 --> 00:08:48,060 For the vast majority of those 200,000 years. 91 00:08:48,294 --> 00:08:53,065 Humans survived by hunting and gathering food. 92 00:08:53,065 --> 00:08:59,472 Until relatively recently, humans didn't work in offices with computers or even with books. 93 00:09:00,339 --> 00:09:04,710 We didn't have to remember phone numbers, social Security numbers, pin codes. 94 00:09:05,278 --> 00:09:10,850 Our brains didn't evolve to process that type of information, and so they aren't especially good at it. 95 00:09:12,818 --> 00:09:18,057 Our species has always been social, so remembering faces and names has always mattered. 96 00:09:18,457 --> 00:09:24,564 But only recently if we started living in social groups bigger than a few dozen people, our brains 97 00:09:24,564 --> 00:09:31,170 didn't evolve to represent the names and faces of 7000 colleagues, neighbors and Facebook friends. 98 00:09:31,537 --> 00:09:34,140 And so they aren't very good at it. 99 00:09:34,740 --> 00:09:36,108 The human brain. 100 00:09:36,108 --> 00:09:39,211 Your human brain is very good at what it does. 101 00:09:40,112 --> 00:09:42,548 So what does it do? 102 00:09:42,548 --> 00:09:48,487 If you wanted to build the perfect hunter gatherer brain, the perfect hunter gatherer 103 00:09:48,487 --> 00:09:51,891 information processing machine, what should you build in? 104 00:09:52,758 --> 00:09:55,127 A few things come to mind right away. 105 00:09:55,127 --> 00:10:01,567 If you're going to forage for food and avoid predators, you'd better be able to remember locations really, really well. 106 00:10:01,867 --> 00:10:06,606 Is this a place I've searched before now? Was there good food here in the past? 107 00:10:06,939 --> 00:10:09,542 Was there a lion hiding behind that bush over there? 108 00:10:10,343 --> 00:10:14,347 What other areas near here might also be good places to look for food. 109 00:10:15,848 --> 00:10:16,549 Your brain should be 110 00:10:16,549 --> 00:10:22,221 very good at remembering how information is related to particular locations within within the environment. 111 00:10:22,555 --> 00:10:25,891 And it is the brain's very, very impressive with this sort of memory. 112 00:10:26,459 --> 00:10:29,161 As long as you present that information in the right format, 113 00:10:29,829 --> 00:10:35,301 the lion, the lion avoidance game that we played at the beginning of this session provides some good evidence for that. 114 00:10:37,003 --> 00:10:41,807 Okay, so you have a caveman brain that's good at remembering images. 115 00:10:41,807 --> 00:10:47,313 It's not it's much less good at encoding arbitrary information like the things on your shopping list. 116 00:10:47,613 --> 00:10:49,115 Why would that be? 117 00:10:49,348 --> 00:10:55,021 Imagine you have a computer with a powerful memory able to store hundreds of gigabytes of information 118 00:10:56,155 --> 00:10:58,758 in order for that computer to store any information. 119 00:10:59,058 --> 00:11:05,464 It first has to be coded into a particular digital format, likely a long strings of string of ones and zeros. 120 00:11:05,965 --> 00:11:07,566 The bits of the information 121 00:11:08,734 --> 00:11:12,271 you can hold up, printed images to a computer all you want. 122 00:11:12,772 --> 00:11:19,045 But unless they're encoded into a format that the computer is designed to use, then there will be no memory at all. 123 00:11:20,046 --> 00:11:21,814 The same is true for humans. 124 00:11:21,814 --> 00:11:25,651 The best way to enhance your memory is to encode the things you want, 125 00:11:26,018 --> 00:11:30,823 the things you want to remember into the format that your caveman brain is good at processing. 126 00:11:32,491 --> 00:11:33,893 For the rest of this session. 127 00:11:33,893 --> 00:11:36,529 I'll be talking a little bit more about how memory works. 128 00:11:37,163 --> 00:11:41,367 What? I want to give you a quick memory tests that I'm confident you'll ace. 129 00:11:42,068 --> 00:11:50,443 In so doing, I hope to convince you that your memory, at least for certain types of material, is very fast and tremendously accurate. 130 00:11:51,711 --> 00:11:58,184 The methods that I'll describe for memory improvement in this course are mostly about encoding things that are hard to remember. 131 00:11:58,384 --> 00:12:05,458 For instance, dates, names and numbers into the types of things that are easy to remember, things like images and locations. 132 00:12:06,192 --> 00:12:09,028 When the time comes to remember some information. 133 00:12:09,328 --> 00:12:16,335 You recall the easy to remember stuff and just decode it back into the original format. 134 00:12:16,969 --> 00:12:25,111 After our memory, tests will then start that process of learning to encode things into your brain in a format that it likes to use. 135 00:12:25,978 --> 00:12:29,915 The first technique is one of the most basic number two sound encoding systems. 136 00:12:29,915 --> 00:12:31,183 It's called the major system. 137 00:12:32,451 --> 00:12:33,486 I'll talk about how you can 138 00:12:33,486 --> 00:12:39,291 use it to encode numbers into words and then into images that you can store very easily in your memory. 139 00:12:39,692 --> 00:12:45,664 Images that you can recall whenever you like, and then decode back into the numbers that you'd like to be able to remember. 140 00:12:46,532 --> 00:12:51,737 Finally, at the end of this session, I'll give you a little homework for next time. 141 00:12:52,104 --> 00:12:55,574 Okay. Let's move on to convincing you that your memory is amazing. 142 00:12:56,509 --> 00:13:01,313 In a moment, you'll see a sequence of images for a few seconds, a piece. 143 00:13:01,313 --> 00:13:03,182 I want you to watch those images. 144 00:13:03,182 --> 00:13:05,251 I'll be testing you on your memory for them. 145 00:13:05,251 --> 00:13:09,722 But there's really no need for you to make any special effort to encode them into your brain. 146 00:13:10,689 --> 00:13:12,992 You'll see 20 images for a few seconds apiece. 147 00:13:13,592 --> 00:13:17,196 As soon as they start, just please make sure to keep looking at the screen 148 00:13:32,678 --> 00:14:22,928 for I'm now going to show you another sequence of images. 149 00:14:23,629 --> 00:14:26,732 This time there will be two images on the screen at once. 150 00:14:27,333 --> 00:14:31,170 One of them will be taken from the sequence of images that you just watched. 151 00:14:31,770 --> 00:14:33,839 The other will be new. 152 00:14:33,839 --> 00:14:40,746 Your task is to try to identify which one is the image that was in the presentation sequence a few moments ago and which one is new. 153 00:14:41,881 --> 00:14:46,352 If this were a real experiment, we would ask you to press one button on a keyboard. 154 00:14:46,352 --> 00:14:50,522 If you recognize the image on the left, then another key if you recognize the image on the right. 155 00:14:51,123 --> 00:14:55,494 For our purposes, you can just raise your right finger for the right and your left finger for the left. 156 00:14:56,228 --> 00:15:02,534 I encourage you, however, to actually do that, as opposed to simply watching the images. 157 00:15:02,701 --> 00:15:09,408 After a few seconds, a text label indicate which one of these images is the new image and which was the old image 158 00:15:09,408 --> 00:16:30,122 from the original presentation sequence. 159 00:16:34,159 --> 00:16:35,294 How did you do? 160 00:16:35,961 --> 00:16:40,432 If you watched those initial images, you almost certainly did very well on the test. 161 00:16:40,966 --> 00:16:49,008 Recognizing 19 or even 20 correctly, the human brain is simply magnificent at this image recognition task. 162 00:16:49,875 --> 00:16:53,579 You only saw that initial sequence of images for a few seconds apiece. 163 00:16:54,413 --> 00:16:59,585 During that time, you encoded the image into your memory in such a way that when you saw 164 00:16:59,585 --> 00:17:04,323 the image again, you recognized it as something that was already stored in your mind. 165 00:17:05,824 --> 00:17:10,662 In the test sequence, I made a point of putting in two images that you've likely seen in the past. 166 00:17:11,196 --> 00:17:15,167 An image of the Mona Lisa and an image of Neil Armstrong walking on the moon. 167 00:17:16,068 --> 00:17:21,540 Your task, of course, was not to just know images that you'd seen at some time in the past, 168 00:17:22,007 --> 00:17:26,812 but rather to pick out images that you saw in the presentation sequence just prior to the test. 169 00:17:27,646 --> 00:17:30,783 I think it's really notable here that we can do that pretty effortlessly. 170 00:17:31,383 --> 00:17:35,521 You know, just accurately, quickly, almost perfectly recognize images. 171 00:17:35,921 --> 00:17:41,026 You can recognize with some impressive accuracy when and where those images were seen. 172 00:17:42,327 --> 00:17:45,497 Many experiments have been run on human image memory like this. 173 00:17:46,031 --> 00:17:48,901 Several really fascinating things are worth noting about them. 174 00:17:49,234 --> 00:17:53,672 The first is that these image memories you've created are very durable. 175 00:17:54,440 --> 00:18:00,813 If you were to go away and come back to this test in 24 hours or even a week, you would still perform very well. 176 00:18:01,713 --> 00:18:06,051 Our brains are affected in long lasting ways by experiences that we have all the time. 177 00:18:07,453 --> 00:18:08,687 Even right now. 178 00:18:08,687 --> 00:18:10,923 As you're listening to the things I'm saying. 179 00:18:10,923 --> 00:18:13,959 The physical structure of your brain is being modified. 180 00:18:14,693 --> 00:18:18,030 These changes, once they're made, can be very long lasting. 181 00:18:18,430 --> 00:18:22,334 They certainly are. With images that you've seen. 182 00:18:22,468 --> 00:18:26,338 Another aspect of these experiments on image memory is worth noting here. 183 00:18:27,005 --> 00:18:29,575 In many ways, this is the most remarkable. 184 00:18:30,109 --> 00:18:34,413 I've noted that you can remember images even with just very little exposure. 185 00:18:34,413 --> 00:18:36,281 A few seconds is enough. 186 00:18:36,281 --> 00:18:38,684 I've noted that these memories can be very long lasting. 187 00:18:39,585 --> 00:18:42,955 This third thing has to do with how many images you can remember. 188 00:18:44,523 --> 00:18:48,293 I showed you and tested your recognition of 20 images. 189 00:18:48,760 --> 00:18:54,600 In the interest of time, I didn't show you more than 20, but I could have if I'd shown you 100 images. 190 00:18:55,067 --> 00:18:56,935 The results would have been the same. 191 00:18:56,935 --> 00:19:01,840 You would have encoded the 100 images and been almost perfectly able to recognize any of them. 192 00:19:02,341 --> 00:19:05,978 If I'd shown you a thousand images, the story would still be the same. 193 00:19:07,713 --> 00:19:16,655 One recent experiment conducted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology participants watched 3000 images for about 3 seconds apiece. 194 00:19:17,289 --> 00:19:23,262 That's about two and a half hours of just watching a very, very long slideshow. 195 00:19:24,863 --> 00:19:28,500 The experimenters then presented these participants with pairs of images. 196 00:19:29,201 --> 00:19:35,307 One of the images was one that had been in the original marathon slideshow, and one of the images was new. 197 00:19:35,674 --> 00:19:39,578 The participants tried to pick out which was the familiar image and which was the new one. 198 00:19:39,811 --> 00:19:41,813 Just like the task you did 199 00:19:41,813 --> 00:19:48,187 the study, participants had very average memories based on other testing that was done probably very similar to yours. 200 00:19:49,021 --> 00:19:53,492 They were able to correctly pick out the correct image 92% of the time, 201 00:19:54,426 --> 00:19:54,826 even in 202 00:19:54,826 --> 00:20:00,933 cases where an image was specifically selected to be similar to one of those demonstration images. 203 00:20:01,099 --> 00:20:04,169 With, for instance, many of the same objects placed in it. 204 00:20:04,603 --> 00:20:10,642 Participants still identified it as a new image 88% of the time. 205 00:20:10,909 --> 00:20:16,515 The human brain is simply very, very good at encoding and later recognizing images. 206 00:20:16,915 --> 00:20:20,152 It seems to be something that we're just built to do. 207 00:20:21,753 --> 00:20:25,524 If you're like many people, you may feel that your memory is very limited. 208 00:20:25,958 --> 00:20:28,360 But trust me, it is remarkable. 209 00:20:28,360 --> 00:20:31,830 We may have trouble remembering phone numbers and names at times. 210 00:20:32,164 --> 00:20:34,566 We may have trouble remembering where we left our keys. 211 00:20:35,133 --> 00:20:37,803 We may even have trouble remembering facts for an exam. 212 00:20:38,036 --> 00:20:40,072 Even though we studied extensively for it. 213 00:20:40,772 --> 00:20:46,645 All of these failings, however, are not due to limitations of our brain to encode and store information. 214 00:20:47,279 --> 00:20:49,982 We all have this capacity to a remarkable level. 215 00:20:51,950 --> 00:20:53,885 The trick of improving our memory 216 00:20:53,885 --> 00:20:59,558 performance, essentially all of the techniques that I'll teach you about in this course revolve around a single goal. 217 00:21:00,259 --> 00:21:03,562 If you want to remember something both accurately and for a long time, 218 00:21:03,962 --> 00:21:10,469 you need to take the information that you want to remember and transform it into something that's easy for your brain to remember. 219 00:21:10,669 --> 00:21:12,371 Something like an image. 220 00:21:12,371 --> 00:21:14,940 Later, when you want to recall the information, 221 00:21:15,240 --> 00:21:20,946 you recall the image, and then decode it back into the information that you wanted to remember in the first place. 222 00:21:20,946 --> 00:21:22,080 And voila. 223 00:21:22,080 --> 00:21:25,217 Rapid, accurate, seemingly unlimited recall. 224 00:21:25,951 --> 00:21:27,786 Let's begin that process now. 225 00:21:27,786 --> 00:21:34,660 We live in a world in which we're asked to remember many numbers, phone numbers, birthdates, Social Security and ID numbers, 226 00:21:34,960 --> 00:21:36,261 locker combinations. 227 00:21:36,261 --> 00:21:41,700 And one of my nemeses, the number of the parking lot zone where I parked my car at the airport. 228 00:21:42,567 --> 00:21:49,007 Our brains, my brain to are really good at remembering things but numbers not so much. 229 00:21:49,007 --> 00:21:53,211 How can we convert hard to remember numbers into easy to remember images? 230 00:21:54,446 --> 00:21:56,682 There have been many systems developed for this. 231 00:21:56,682 --> 00:21:58,850 Some of them are extremely complex. 232 00:21:58,850 --> 00:22:03,021 I want to start with a classic, a relatively simple one called the Major System. 233 00:22:03,455 --> 00:22:06,692 It was developed by Johann WINKELMAN in 1648. 234 00:22:08,193 --> 00:22:12,464 When you want to encode numbers into your memory, you'll be able to do that quickly. 235 00:22:12,764 --> 00:22:17,669 But you first need to add some tools to your mental toolkit for next time. 236 00:22:17,703 --> 00:22:19,271 I want you to do some homework. 237 00:22:19,271 --> 00:22:24,476 There won't be a quiz, not a graded one anyway, but there will be some demonstrations that you can do yourself. 238 00:22:24,710 --> 00:22:28,113 If you just invest an hour or so memorizing that major system. 239 00:22:29,815 --> 00:22:32,517 The major system converts numbers into letters. 240 00:22:32,517 --> 00:22:38,623 Sounds actually each digit from 0 to 9 gets a particular phonetic sound. 241 00:22:39,157 --> 00:22:44,796 0ss or S one gets T, or D, or 242 00:22:45,931 --> 00:22:48,934 two gets N, three gets M, 243 00:22:49,801 --> 00:22:56,274 four gets R, five L, six gets a choice of either or 244 00:22:57,709 --> 00:23:03,715 seven K or G, eight F or V and $0.09 or B. 245 00:23:05,217 --> 00:23:08,687 I suggest making flashcards on one side of these. 246 00:23:08,987 --> 00:23:11,656 Put the numbers from 0 to 9 on the other. 247 00:23:11,823 --> 00:23:14,025 The major system sounds that go with them. 248 00:23:14,760 --> 00:23:20,632 You can just write them down without the flashcards, but cards have a great characteristic to them for studying these. 249 00:23:21,032 --> 00:23:22,667 They can be shuffled. 250 00:23:22,734 --> 00:23:25,470 You'll need to recall the digits in many different orders. 251 00:23:25,737 --> 00:23:28,273 So you'll need to study them that way. 252 00:23:28,273 --> 00:23:33,812 You want to study these ten letter to sound connections such that if I were to say any digits, 253 00:23:33,879 --> 00:23:41,186 you would instantly be able to come up with the letter or sound or letters or sounds that go with that particular number. 254 00:23:42,788 --> 00:23:44,856 You also have to be able to go in the other direction. 255 00:23:44,890 --> 00:23:47,025 That's just as important, actually. 256 00:23:47,025 --> 00:23:56,234 If I were to give you a particular letter sound, you should be able to instantly, or at least very quickly tell me which number goes with it. 257 00:23:56,468 --> 00:24:02,407 Like many homework assignments, this one won't be especially fun, but trust me, it will pay off in the next session. 258 00:24:03,008 --> 00:24:10,749 With this information and a little practice, you'll be able to memorize and remember any number up to ten digits in just a few moments. 259 00:24:11,249 --> 00:24:18,723 And the best part is that once you have them memorized as an image, you'll essentially never forget them. 260 00:24:19,124 --> 00:24:23,995 It might be worth stopping here for a moment to talk about the limitless capacity of your memory. 261 00:24:24,629 --> 00:24:31,069 I'm a fan of Sherlock Holmes, as imagined and described by the great author, Sir Arthur CONAN Doyle. 262 00:24:31,703 --> 00:24:37,275 These books have great stories, and the detail with which they're imagined and written is actually endlessly impressive. 263 00:24:38,210 --> 00:24:44,583 So Arthur knew a lot about a lot of things, but his knowledge of memory seems to have been largely incorrect. 264 00:24:46,284 --> 00:24:46,985 Sherlock Holmes 265 00:24:46,985 --> 00:24:52,824 occasionally described his thinking to Watson and anyone else who would listen, but mostly to Watson. 266 00:24:53,325 --> 00:25:02,667 In one story, a study in Scarlet, he described his memory as being very good, but also very carefully governed so as not to overfill it. 267 00:25:03,435 --> 00:25:08,273 In the story, Watson had just discovered that Sherlock is smart as he was, 268 00:25:08,573 --> 00:25:13,411 didn't understand the basic mechanics of the movements of the planets in our solar system. 269 00:25:14,579 --> 00:25:18,717 Holmes explained that he'd heard of this information, but then chosen to forget it 270 00:25:19,117 --> 00:25:24,422 so as to save space for other, more useful information that would help with his detective work. 271 00:25:26,124 --> 00:25:31,630 You see, he explained, I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, 272 00:25:31,963 --> 00:25:34,866 and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. 273 00:25:35,300 --> 00:25:38,303 Holmes then describes this attic analogy in great detail, 274 00:25:38,670 --> 00:25:44,643 arguing that he intentionally chooses to forget things all the time so as not to overfill his mental attic. 275 00:25:45,176 --> 00:25:46,144 Depend upon it. 276 00:25:46,144 --> 00:25:52,150 There comes a time when for every addition of knowledge, you forget something that you knew before. 277 00:25:53,718 --> 00:25:58,423 This is a lovely little passage, but it's also completely, completely wrong. 278 00:25:59,291 --> 00:26:05,163 Science has repeatedly tested the capacity of human long term memory, and the result has always been the same. 279 00:26:05,697 --> 00:26:08,099 There seems to be no upper limit. 280 00:26:08,099 --> 00:26:14,372 It's never the case that in order to learn something new, you must forget something else that you already know. 281 00:26:15,040 --> 00:26:16,908 We do forget things, of course. 282 00:26:16,908 --> 00:26:22,747 Sometimes things we learn, like the new phone number of our new home can interfere with old or knowledge. 283 00:26:22,781 --> 00:26:25,550 Like our memory for the old phone number at our old home. 284 00:26:25,984 --> 00:26:32,424 But when associations are linked with new contexts, new times and events, we just don't run out of memory space. 285 00:26:32,457 --> 00:26:35,160 We just don't run out of it. 286 00:26:35,560 --> 00:26:40,265 This is remarkable just to know, I think. But it has a direct relevance for this course. 287 00:26:40,732 --> 00:26:47,973 I'm going to be asking you to practice memorizing a wide range of different things that probably aren't especially important to you. 288 00:26:48,540 --> 00:26:49,107 Don't worry. 289 00:26:49,107 --> 00:26:55,180 However, I wouldn't dream of doing this if it would somehow use up your limited memory resources. 290 00:26:55,180 --> 00:27:00,151 Those resources, as far as we can tell, are unlimited. 291 00:27:00,619 --> 00:27:06,091 Okay, so I've given you your homework of memorizing those number to sound associations. 292 00:27:06,591 --> 00:27:10,362 Let me use our last few minutes here to demonstrate how we're going to be using them. 293 00:27:11,096 --> 00:27:14,933 Let me describe how I would memorize a string of important numbers. 294 00:27:16,167 --> 00:27:17,235 Let's say I learn in a 295 00:27:17,235 --> 00:27:23,575 passing conversation that my friend Sebastian's birthday is December 13th, 1994. 296 00:27:24,175 --> 00:27:28,346 I'd like to be able to remember that when it comes up in the future. 297 00:27:28,546 --> 00:27:30,782 Now, I could just say it over and over to myself. 298 00:27:30,982 --> 00:27:35,120 But as soon as I'm distracted by something else, it would be gone. 299 00:27:35,820 --> 00:27:41,793 I'm unlikely to be able to remember it unless I can encode it in some meaningful, easy to remember format. 300 00:27:42,661 --> 00:27:44,763 I'll use the major system to accomplish that. 301 00:27:46,164 --> 00:27:46,531 Okay. 302 00:27:46,531 --> 00:27:48,733 December 13, 1994. 303 00:27:49,034 --> 00:27:51,936 Can be thought of as 12 1394. 304 00:27:52,604 --> 00:27:59,844 I just have to remember those six digits, those three numbers and I'm all set with the major system. 305 00:27:59,878 --> 00:28:06,451 Those three pairs of numbers become ten, D, M and F are 306 00:28:08,319 --> 00:28:09,654 with the major system. 307 00:28:09,654 --> 00:28:11,956 You start with these consonant sounds 308 00:28:11,956 --> 00:28:19,164 and then intersperse vowels in other non-major system consonants to make words of items that you can easily imagine. 309 00:28:20,131 --> 00:28:21,933 So let's start with ten. 310 00:28:21,933 --> 00:28:24,035 When your words come to mind for you. 311 00:28:24,035 --> 00:28:27,439 Ten tangle tone. 312 00:28:28,039 --> 00:28:32,043 Tiny. Actually, Tiny might not be a good word to use here. 313 00:28:32,744 --> 00:28:38,683 I could certainly imagine something that is tiny, but that could get confusing later when I have to remember 314 00:28:38,683 --> 00:28:44,222 letters for the adjective tiny rather than letters for the noun to which tiny refers. 315 00:28:44,756 --> 00:28:51,396 The best words for this type of task are those that have a clear imaginable object directly associated with them. 316 00:28:52,263 --> 00:28:54,632 For me, t n sounds like tun. 317 00:28:55,333 --> 00:29:00,305 I imagine a giant metal weight with the words one ton written on the side. 318 00:29:02,173 --> 00:29:04,409 How about dum 319 00:29:04,442 --> 00:29:09,047 dum dimple dummy dimmer? 320 00:29:10,081 --> 00:29:12,951 Notice that with dimmer there's an extra sound there. 321 00:29:13,885 --> 00:29:18,123 D goes with the number one and goes with the number of three. 322 00:29:18,423 --> 00:29:21,025 But there's still that ah sound at the end of dimmer 323 00:29:22,026 --> 00:29:24,729 that could go with the number for later on. 324 00:29:24,729 --> 00:29:28,099 That might be confusing for me when I'm trying to decode dimmer. 325 00:29:28,566 --> 00:29:32,070 I'd have to remember do I want one, three or one, three, four? 326 00:29:33,071 --> 00:29:35,740 I could use dimmer as in dimmer switch here. 327 00:29:36,074 --> 00:29:40,512 As long as I've decided that I'm always going to use two digits per object, 328 00:29:41,246 --> 00:29:45,049 as long as I'm consistent about that with dates, which I am, I'll be fine. 329 00:29:46,518 --> 00:29:48,853 Actually, DM makes me think of dime. 330 00:29:49,521 --> 00:29:57,762 I imagine a giant balance scale now with the the one ton weight on one side and a giant dime on the other side. 331 00:29:58,329 --> 00:30:02,767 Apparently my giant dime weighs a ton because that's why the scale is balancing. 332 00:30:04,068 --> 00:30:06,137 How about f r? 333 00:30:06,137 --> 00:30:09,908 Our last pair of sounds represents that year of 94 334 00:30:11,176 --> 00:30:14,112 Friar Fair 335 00:30:14,112 --> 00:30:17,649 Forest Fork. There are a lot of words that you could think of here. 336 00:30:18,683 --> 00:30:21,486 This one actually makes me think of fire. 337 00:30:21,486 --> 00:30:23,955 Now I have the last big piece of my image. 338 00:30:24,556 --> 00:30:31,029 I imagine my friend Sebastian holding a raging campfire in his hands, in my imagination. 339 00:30:31,296 --> 00:30:34,065 This does not hurt or even bother him. 340 00:30:34,065 --> 00:30:40,171 He's holding the fire, standing next to the balance scale, saying this fire weighs one ton also. 341 00:30:40,705 --> 00:30:42,140 One last thing. 342 00:30:42,140 --> 00:30:46,878 I have a particular arrangement of these items in my mental image from left to right. 343 00:30:47,612 --> 00:30:50,114 The one ton weight is on the left side of the balance. 344 00:30:50,548 --> 00:30:53,451 The giant dime is on the right side of the balance. 345 00:30:54,185 --> 00:30:56,588 And there's Sebastian, a little further to the right. 346 00:30:56,654 --> 00:31:00,992 Holding his fire in front of the whole arrangement is one more thing. 347 00:31:01,426 --> 00:31:04,863 It's a key that I always use for birthday birthdate memories. 348 00:31:05,163 --> 00:31:10,201 A giant birthday cake. That's a pretty memorable image for me. 349 00:31:10,702 --> 00:31:16,641 It might not be for you, but with some practice, you can take any set of numbers and generate one for yourself. 350 00:31:17,408 --> 00:31:21,512 Once you've memorized those number to sound associations, that's fairly easy. 351 00:31:23,114 --> 00:31:25,216 This image will stick with me for a long time. 352 00:31:25,283 --> 00:31:27,619 Actually, I think it will stick with me pretty much forever. 353 00:31:28,486 --> 00:31:31,923 This is like one of those images that we watched in the image memory test. 354 00:31:32,156 --> 00:31:33,958 It just sticks. 355 00:31:33,992 --> 00:31:36,194 So fast forward a few weeks or months. 356 00:31:36,828 --> 00:31:39,797 What's Sebastian's birthday? When is it? Hmm. 357 00:31:40,198 --> 00:31:42,800 The image comes back really easily on one 358 00:31:43,902 --> 00:31:47,906 dime and fire that becomes a ton. 359 00:31:47,906 --> 00:31:57,649 Ten time doom and fire f r that becomes one, two, 1394. 360 00:31:58,082 --> 00:32:00,485 December 13th, 1994. 361 00:32:01,052 --> 00:32:03,121 Got it. 362 00:32:03,454 --> 00:32:04,422 In this session, 363 00:32:04,422 --> 00:32:11,829 I hope I've convinced you that you have a remarkable memory ability, just as remarkable as people who seem to effortlessly remember things. 364 00:32:12,530 --> 00:32:18,036 The only difference between people with an excellent memory and those with an average memory is how they use it. 365 00:32:19,837 --> 00:32:22,006 I've also taught you how to use your own memory. 366 00:32:22,006 --> 00:32:25,343 Better to encode arbitrary numerical information. 367 00:32:26,010 --> 00:32:31,082 You need to memorize those major system lengths, but as soon as you do, you'll be able to. 368 00:32:31,082 --> 00:32:34,552 And that's easy. You'll have a tremendous new tool at your disposal. 369 00:32:35,553 --> 00:32:40,758 Over these six sessions, we'll discuss everyday memory problems that people have and how to solve them. 370 00:32:41,693 --> 00:32:45,029 We'll also explore the science behind why those solutions work. 371 00:32:46,531 --> 00:32:49,867 In the next session, we'll do some more practice with the major system. 372 00:32:50,435 --> 00:32:54,605 Once you get the basics links down, you should start to practice encoding things right away. 373 00:32:55,473 --> 00:32:59,010 Ask someone what their birthday is and then create an image to go with it. 374 00:32:59,610 --> 00:33:02,680 If your driver's license is all numbers, memorize it. 375 00:33:03,114 --> 00:33:06,751 Do the same with your license plate if you can. 376 00:33:07,285 --> 00:33:10,121 We'll also talk about the method of loci next time. 377 00:33:10,855 --> 00:33:13,891 This is a powerful method for remembering lists of items. 378 00:33:14,559 --> 00:33:21,599 The method of loci can also be used in combination with the major system to encode some rather impressive amounts of information. 379 00:33:22,500 --> 00:33:24,569 In the meantime, get studied. 380 00:33:24,569 --> 00:33:29,674 I look forward to seeing you and your newly turbocharged memory when we start the next session. 381 00:33:30,308 --> 00:33:32,844 Happy study. 41323

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