Don't you remember?

It's interesting to see how people remember what is said long enough to follow a lecture or an extended answer to a question.  Psychologists have tried to follow this "train" of thinking by hooking electrodes to people's heads.  And, although they can follow the path and judge the strength of such a signal, it's still impossible to watch the smallest particles carrying information to all of the synapses that receive them and subsequently categorize and store them.

That would be helpful in helping people stay focused long enough to retain, even for a short term, what was said long enough to pass a test or repeat, analyze, or summarize needed data.  In working with a college graduate recently, I discovered that she could not retain new information if it was given to her more than about 15 seconds after starting its delivery.  She revealed how friends had had to help her in college in recording and notetaking.  Mainly, they took the notes and she reviewed them.  She also relied on her books because they had the printed information.  But, listening to teachers in class was something she couldn't do.

In one experiment, the woman was to listen to a report in which the pictures changed approximately every 3 seconds.  If a picture of a person was presented for that length of time, and prior to the picture's appearance the name of the person was given, she couldn't remember that the name was ever given.  In fact, if the picture was not in color, she couldn't remember details like whether or not the person wore glasses or was dressed formally or informally.  Topics were important as well.  If the topic was not of interest or was not something she had been previously exposed to, then she could remember only the barest of information.  Most people hear and reduce new information or uninteresting information to gist.  This woman could not perform that task except on rare occasions.

While there are examples of people who have absolutely no short term memory, this was not the case with this woman.  She had great memory of experiences, people that were important to her for some reason, environments that she had grown up in and around, overall impressions of various experiences, and things of impact.

It's just further proof to me that the brain's default is to forget information unless it is memorable.  Everyone designs criteria as the basis for remembering.  That makes memory personal.  That's not a bad thing for the routines of life.  But, it affects job performance sometimes, or new opportunities that we could have taken advantage of if we had designed a little broader range for our basis or if we redesigned part of it to include more than our comfortable routines.  It's perilous to leave us to the care of our own brains.