Memory can be erratic for everyone
Advertiser Staff and News Services
Joelly Kawabata routinely memorizes Bible verses for Sunday school, and she maintains the equivalent of a 3.5 average in the home-schooling classes her mother teaches her in their Kane'ohe home.
But every once in a while, the 17-year-old draws a blank: "The other day, I realized I'd forgotten some key things from the history module we were working on before we took our summer break. I know mom's going to ask me that stuff."
George Spilich, chairman of the Psychology Department at Washington College in Chestertown, Md., and a researcher on memory, can recollect students from 20 years ago and knows where they sat — but he's not sure what he ate for lunch last week.
It's not the summer sun causing the lapses. In Kawabata's case, brain experts would say the problem is infrequency of use; in Spilich's, he simply hasn't organized a structure in his head to store that information. Teachers construct in their brains a schema — or organizational structure — that more easily remembers students than meals.
Meghan Pierce is a 16-year-old senior whose excellent memory has helped her achieve a 3.9 grade average in a tough Fairfax County, Va., academic program. But asked which of last year's lessons she is forgetting this summer, she joked, "Everything."
"My mom will tell me to do a chore, and I'll walk upstairs to get the vacuum cleaner, and I'll have to walk back downstairs to ask her what I was supposed to do," said Pierce.
Kawabata knows the feeling: "I'll see something on TV that I'm interested in and I'll think, 'Oh, I'll remember that Web site address' and then I sit down at the computer and it's gone."
Such concerns are fueling a national obsession with improving memory, seen in the millions of dollars spent each year on books and herbs of scientifically dubious value that promise sharper recall.
Researchers say memory can indeed be improved. But the keys to achieving it are simpler than you might think: lots of practice and better organization. Forget names? Use word associations: Knowing someone's name is Baker means less than remembering that someone is a baker.
And new research is showing that memories can be diminished by stress, nicotine and even small amounts of alcohol, as well as physical trauma. Young soccer players who take a lot of head shots report some mild memory problems, Spilich said.
Besides, experts say, forgetting some things is normal.
Although folks who forget how to spell common words or when to pick up their children worry that they are losing their memories, they probably aren't, experts said.
It is troublesome, however, when people cannot hold on to new information for more than a few seconds, Schacter said. And, said Terry Goldberg, a neuropsychologist in Bethesda, Md., it is time to get checked when people close to you say, "Boy, you are becoming really forgetful."
Forgetting long division over the summer doesn't count, in part because lots of "lost information" isn't really lost. The foundation has probably been retained in the brain, and it can be easily retrieved with review in the fall, experts said.
