Memory - When is it Best, When is it the Worst.
"One need not be a chamber to be haunted, one need not be a house. The brain has corridors surpassing material place", Emily Dickinson in Time and Eternity. It's amazing what things we remember with no effort at all and what things we forget although we try our best to remember? What exactly is this amazing thing called memory? When does it seem to be best and when do we have problems remembering? .
According to our textbook, memory is the persistence of learning over time through the storage and retrieval of information. There are many different types of memory that serve different purposes. Everything from our mood, good or bad, to the level of rest we are getting can have an effect on what and how we remember things.
Our short-term memory is important in helping us take care of the here and now. Basically, we use it to remember something just long enough to accomplish the task. My short-term memory is very short. If I try to remember a phone number as I walk towards the phone I inevitably have to go look it up again. For my short-term memory to be helpful to me I must repeat whatever I am trying to remember until I use the information. Short-term memory is just that, for the short term. We see or hear the information, use it, then discard it. When we want to remember something, beyond the immediate, we must rely on other types of memory such as long-term.
Long-term memory is defined in our textbook as the relatively permanent and limitless storehouse of the memory system. I feel like my long-term implicit memory is great but my explicit memory, or declarative memory, could use some work. If required to tell someone how to do something that I have knowledge of I find I tend to stumble on the answer. However, if I am casually asked to complete a task, I can accomplish it with no problem. This is clearly shown in my test taking abilities and my habit of second and third guessing myself.