What is figurative memory. Introduction. Features of figurative memory

Memory, with the help of which a person has to remember various objects, is called figurative. She remembers past perceptions and sensations.
A person's knowledge about the various properties of objects is reflected with the support of special nerve analyzers. Stimuli affect certain analyzers and the resulting sensitivity characterizes sensations that are:

• Flavoring;
• Visual;
• Olfactory;
• Tactile;
• Auditory.

Sensitivity is limited to certain boundaries and figurative memory depends on them. Some people have a special ability to sense the slightest stimuli - it is absolute sensitivity.
Perceptions and sensations are united by one chain in the labyrinths of figurative memory. Based on past experience, a person cognizes and comprehends a set of sensations called perception.
Perception is a complex process, but its varied inclusion in cognition contributes to deep and lasting memorization. Perception is selective. This suggests that not all information remains completely in consciousness; it serves as a certain background.

Visual memory - is based on irritation of visual sensations and the perception of a person who perceive the surrounding reality. Visual analyzers are intended for orientation in space, with their help he can read, write, follow movement, see colors, sunlight, and the shape of objects. Vision supports approximately 80% of all information perceived by humans.

Auditory memory- This is the perception of auditory sensations. Hearing helps you control your speech and helps you perceive other people’s speech, music, the rustling of leaves, and the sound of rain.

Olfactory memory - These are olfactory sensations. With its help, a person is able to very well distinguish approximately 10 thousand odors. In distant ancestors, the olfactory analyzer worked much better than it does now; it is inferior in importance to vision and hearing.

Tactile memory - This is the sensitivity of the skin, reacting to pain, motor, tactile and temperature changes. Touch (tactile sensitivity) is strongly expressed on the palms and fingers; in other places on the skin it is less pronounced. Mechanical, thermal and chemical changes cause and increase pain sensitivity.

Taste memory - is a memory of taste, the main components of which are:

• bitter;
• sour;
• sweet;
• salty.

They are combined in many flavors and shades, from the most unique and pleasant to the very disgusting and disgusting, these sensations have a different effect on a person.

On the conscious and on figurative memory. It is known that any melody, color painting, or special smell helps to remember what happened to a person in the past or, on the contrary, destroys these memories. Pleasant smells or some sounds in some cases are assistants in creative activity person. For example, the writer Bunin I liked the smell of apples Before starting work, he scattered apples in the room. The composer Meyerbach claimed that he composed his best music on a train. These associations were fixed when they wrote their best works and formed conditioned reflexes: apples are inspiration, and the sound of wheels is inspiration.

https://site/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/tlo2-1024x762.jpghttps://site/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/tlo2-150x150.jpg 2018-08-06T20:32:23+07:00 PsyPage Image Taste memory, Visual memory, Olfactory memory, Figurative memory, Tactile memory, Auditory memoryFigurative memory. Memory, with the help of which a person has to remember various objects, is called figurative. She remembers past perceptions and sensations. Human knowledge about the various properties of objects is a reflection of the material world in the brain with the support of special nerve analyzers. Stimuli affect certain analyzers and the resulting sensitivity characterizes sensations that are: Gustatory;Visual; ...

PsyPage Psychology often talks about human memory and even several of its types stand out. Visual, auditory and tactile, sensory, short-term, long-term and many other types of memory, which have a variety of classifications. Each of them has its own importance for a person, as well as ways. However, in this article we will talk about only one type, which is figurative memory. This is a very interesting species that may surprise many, as it is quite atypical. Every person has a figurative memory, and it plays a very important role. If you want to find out what this role is, as well as what features this memory has, how it appears and how it can be developed, then this article is for you. Visual memory is a very interesting topic to study and will give you a better understanding of how your brain works.

What it is?

First you need to understand what this type of memory is. Figurative memory is a type of memory as a result of which a person remembers information not in text form, but in the form of images. Most often, these are some pictures, images and other similar memories that are displayed in your head not in words using your inner voice, but in images. That is why this type of memory is very interesting, because images cannot be measured like words, accordingly, this type of memory is much more unusual than the standard memory that every person uses every day. Well, now you understand that figurative memory is a type of memory in which recall occurs through images, that is, some images that remain in your brain.

What does she give you?

Many people immediately begin to think about what figurative memory provides, because it seems to them that verbal information is much more important. However, this is far from the case, and now you will understand why. The fact is that the human brain has two hemispheres, each of which is responsible for its own type of perception. The left hemisphere is responsible for processing and remembering verbal information, which is considered by many people to be the only important one, and the right hemisphere is responsible for remembering the images that these words describe. But why are these images needed in memory if only words can describe everything in detail? Everything is not as simple as it may seem, and the clearest example is many children of the current generation. The fact is that the present age is called the information age for a reason: people receive incredible amounts of information from a huge number of sources. Websites on the Internet, advertising in public transport, everywhere you receive information that saturates the left hemisphere of your brain, but the right hemisphere does not receive the corresponding data, that is, images that it could process and use in conjunction with the data of the left hemisphere. The result is a serious imbalance, which causes an increase in attention deficits and absent-mindedness, which most often manifest themselves in young children. To avoid this, it is necessary to develop the right hemisphere, and there is more than one method for this. Figurative memory is very important, and that is why this article will talk about exactly how it can be developed.

How to develop figurative memory?

As mentioned earlier, there is more than one method. Figurative memory develops quite easily and without much effort, because the process of memorizing images is natural for humans. Images and textual information add up to an excellent memory that every person should have, but if your brain is filled with data without images attached to it, then you can easily get confused in that data, so all the capacity of your memory will be effectively useless. Accordingly, it is imperative to develop figurative memory, and the sooner you understand this, the better. Figurative memory develops best in children, since it is in them that it is initially developed very well. It’s just that over time, people begin to rely more on textual rather than figurative information, so they gradually lose the power of this type of memory.

Imaginative thinking and figurative memory are something that every person needs to develop, and this should be done by using all the senses and, accordingly, sources of information in obtaining information. So, the average person simply reads the text or listens to it, it settles in his head and, quite possibly, is forgotten very quickly, even if it important information. Why? The thing is that he does not have an anchor that would allow him to gain a foothold. Memorizing purely textual information at school and university is called cramming - you simply memorize words in a certain order in order to reproduce them in the same order. But do you remember any of what you crammed in school? Hardly.

But if you use images, which are obtained by attaching certain data to textual information, such as images, sounds, smells, and so on, then you will be able to remember much easier. Accordingly, all you need to do is to constantly use all your senses and try to control the memorization process so that you remember not only the text, but also the images associated with it.

Features of figurative memory

Figurative memory has some features that you should know about. The fact is that in most cases it is temporary and the images are stored for about a day. Naturally, if you need specific information, then you can store it in your own brain for a long time, however, so that your brain does not become overloaded with images, it clears itself of that to which requests have not been sent for more than 24 hours. It also turns out that this memory operates on an unconscious level, meaning most of the images are recorded in your brain when they come into your field of vision. This is why many people believe that this type of memory is visual figurative memory. But in fairness, it is worth noting that images can be auditory, tactile, and olfactory, although they are much less common.

If we return to the duration of storage of figurative memory information, then another characteristic emerges here: the longer an image is stored in your brain, the paler it becomes and, accordingly, the more difficult it is for you to remember it in detail.

Fading images

What this is cannot be demonstrated clearly. Visual memory is an abstract concept and all processes occur in your brain, but it is quite possible to describe what it is. So, imagine that you are traveling on public transport during the day. Returning home, you remember that you saw a woman in a blue coat, she was sitting next to you. At this point, you may remember other details such as the color of her hair, her facial features, the accessories she wore, and so on. But if you don’t think about it for at least a day, then the next day you will have difficulty remembering those details that seemed obvious to you yesterday. What can we say about what will happen in a week or month. Figurative memory is different in that the images stored in the brain become pale and fuzzy over time. They are unstable and may be fragmentary. For example, in a month you will forget what the girl was wearing in principle, but the earrings that she wore then will be imprinted in your brain. And of course, it is worth noting that each image can deceptively change over time and after a month it may seem to you that the girl was wearing a green coat, although in fact she was wearing a blue one. This is explained by the fact that it is easier for the human consciousness to create something new to replace the lost element of the image than to waste energy on remembering this element.

When does imagery appear?

The development of figurative memory is something that every person should think about. And as mentioned earlier, this should be done as soon as possible. However, when exactly does a person develop figurative perception and, accordingly, figurative memory? You may be surprised, but a person’s figurative memory appears only at one and a half to two years, that is, quite late. It is then that the child’s brain begins to perceive the phenomena of the surrounding world not just as phenomena, but as information that can be recorded. It is then that concepts begin to accumulate in his brain at tremendous speed, which are accompanied by images, as a result of which memory is formed. Then the child gets the opportunity to independently build logical chains, connecting the concept with the image.

Why is it necessary to develop figurative memory from early childhood? Many parents believe that this is an unnecessary process and the child needs to concentrate on concrete concepts, and not on abstract images. However, this is a big mistake, because figurative memory is often called the foundation of all memorization processes. Without it, the memorization process will not be complete, and if it is poorly developed, then the person’s memory will be very poor. Accordingly, the development of imaginative thinking is one of the important steps towards the formation of a full-fledged personality that can function in the modern world.

Types of figurative memory

Psychologists often highlight certain types of this memory, which you should also familiarize yourself with. Naturally, as you most likely guessed, the most famous is visual memory, because it is visual images that occupy the largest amount of memory, they are the most detailed, and they are the ones you most often rely on when trying to remember something. But there are also other types that are no less important, although they are used a little less frequently. Types of figurative memory include auditory, tactile, gustatory and olfactory, that is, those that correspond to a specific sense organ. Accordingly, all the sound images that you have in your head, that is, the song that you heard on the subway, or the slogan that came to your ears from the loudspeaker, belong to auditory figurative memory. The same applies to other types of memory, which were mentioned above.

Photographic memory

As you have already learned, figurative memory includes any memory associated with the senses, since all such information does not come in the form of specific data, but in the form of abstract images. But at the same time, I would like to separately highlight photographic memory, which most likely every person has heard about.

Photographic memory is a subtype of visual figurative memory, but is distinguished by its incredible detail, which is unusual for most people, and the complete absence of pallor and clarity. What does it mean? Imagine how figurative memory works, it was described above. You look at an object and your brain takes a “snapshot” of that object, recording it in your brain. But this photo is initially blurry, and you are unlikely to be able to see all the details in it to reproduce them. If you have a photographic memory, then your brain can take perfect pictures that you can store for a long time without any loss in quality. Naturally, every person would like to have a photographic memory, however, given the fact that many parents do not strive to develop figurative memory in children, and also do not develop their own memory, this concept is now perceived more as a phenomenon than as something to what you can strive for and what you can achieve. But in reality this is not so, and you can independently change the order of things.

Workout

You can independently influence how developed your figurative memory is, even if your parents did not pay attention to it as a child. special attention. To do this, you need to conduct daily training that will allow you to better remember images. How to do it? You need to memorize various images and then reproduce them. Exercises can be very varied. For example, it could be a series of pictures that you need to look at and remember the images, rather than trying to come up with verbal associations. Then you need to reproduce the order of these images. You can also memorize a picture and then try to reproduce as many details as possible. Exists a large number of a variety of games that involve memorizing images, so this can also help you, and photographic memory may soon seem to you no longer an unattainable phenomenon.

Now that you know everything about figurative memory, you can start training. And finally, one is prepared for you interesting fact. Just as sense organs intensify their action when the functionality of one of them is lost (blind people hear and smell much better), figurative memory compensates for the lack of information, replacing it with other images.

What is memory

What we sense and perceive does not disappear without a trace; everything is remembered to one degree or another. Excitations coming into the brain from external and internal stimuli leave “traces” in it that can persist for many years. These “traces” (combinations of nerve cells) create the possibility of excitation even when the stimulus that caused it is absent. Based on this, a person can remember and save, and subsequently reproduce his feelings, perceptions of any objects, thoughts, speech, actions.

Just like sensation and perception, memory is a process of reflection, and not only what acts directly on the senses is reflected, but also what took place in the past.

Memory- this is the remembering, preservation and subsequent reproduction of what we previously perceived, experienced or did. In other words, memory is a reflection of a person’s experience by remembering, preserving and reproducing it.

Memory is an amazing property of human consciousness, it is the renewal in our consciousness of the past, images of what once impressed us.

In old age I live again, The past passes before me. How long has it been full of events, worrying like a sea-ocean?

Now it is silent and calm, Not many faces have been preserved in my memory, Few words reach me, But the rest has perished irrevocably...

A.S. Pushkin."Boris Godunov"

No other mental function can be carried out without the participation of memory. And memory itself is unthinkable outside of other mental processes. THEM. Sechenov noted that without memory, our sensations and perceptions, “disappearing without a trace as they arise, would leave a person forever in the position of a newborn.”

Let's imagine a person who has lost his memory. The student was woken up in the morning and told to have breakfast and go to class. Most likely he would not have come to the institute, and if he had come, he would not have known what to do there, he would have forgotten who he was, what his name was, where he lived, etc., he would have forgotten his native language and could not say a word . The past would no longer exist for him, the present is hopeless, since he cannot remember anything, cannot learn anything.

When remembering any images, thoughts, words, feelings, movements, we always remember them in a certain connection with each other. Without establishing certain connections, neither memorization, nor recognition, nor reproduction is possible. What does it mean to memorize a poem? This means remembering a series of words in a certain connection, sequence. What does it mean to remember some foreign word, for example the French “la table”? This means establishing a connection between this word and the object that it denotes, or the Russian word “table”. The connections that underlie memory activity are called associations. Association is a connection between separate representations in which one of these representations causes another.

Objects or phenomena that are connected in reality are also connected in human memory. To remember something means to connect what is being remembered with something, to weave what needs to be remembered into a network of existing connections, to form associations.

There are a few types of associations:

- by adjacency: perception or thought about one object or phenomenon entails the recall of other objects and phenomena adjacent to the first in space or time (this is how a sequence of actions is remembered, for example);

- by similarity: images of objects, phenomena or their thoughts evoke memories of something similar to them. These associations underlie poetic metaphors, for example, the sound of waves is likened to the talking of people;

- by contrast: sharply different phenomena are associated - noise and silence, high and low, good and evil, white and black, etc.

Various associations are involved in the process of memorization and reproduction. For example, we remember the surname of a person we know, a) passing near the house in which he lives, b) meeting someone similar to him, c) calling another surname, which comes from a word opposite in meaning to the one from which the surname comes a friend, for example, Belov - Chernov.

In the process of memorization and reproduction, semantic connections play an extremely important role: cause - effect, the whole - its part, the general - the particular.

Memory connects a person’s past with his present and ensures the unity of personality. A person needs to know a lot and remember a lot, more and more with every year of life. Books, records, tape recorders, cards in libraries, computers help a person remember, but the main thing is his own memory.

In Greek mythology, there is the goddess of memory, Mnemosyne (or Mnemosyne, from the Greek word for "memory"). By the name of its goddess, memory in psychology is often called a mnemonic activity.

In scientific psychology, the problem of memory is “the same age as psychology as a science” (P.P. Blonsky). Memory is a very complex mental process, therefore, despite numerous studies, a unified theory of memory mechanisms has not yet been created. New scientific evidence shows that memory processes involve complex electrical and chemical changes in the brain's nerve cells.

Types of memory

The forms of manifestation of memory are very diverse, since it is associated with various areas human life, with its characteristics.

All types of memory can be divided into three groups:

1) What a person remembers (objects and phenomena, thoughts, movements, feelings).

Accordingly, they distinguish: motor, emotional, verbal-logical And aboutdifferent memory;

2) How a person remembers (accidentally or intentionally). Here they highlight arbitrary And involuntary memory;

3) how long the memorized information is saved.

This short-term, long-term And operational memory.

Motor (or motor) memory allows you to remember abilities, skills, various movements and actions. If it were not for this type of memory, then a person would have to learn to walk, write, and perform various activities again every time.

Emotional memory helps to remember the feelings, emotions, experiences that we experienced in certain situations. Here's how A.S. talks about it. Pushkin:

I thought my heart had forgotten the ability to suffer easily, I said: what happened will never happen! It won't happen! Delights and sorrows are gone, And gullible dreams...

But here we are again in awe of the powerful power of beauty.

K.S. Stanislavsky wrote about emotional memory: “Since you are able to turn pale and blush at the mere memory of what you have experienced, since you are afraid to think about a misfortune experienced long ago, you have a memory for feelings, or emotional memory.”

Emotional memory is of great importance in the formation of a person’s personality, being the most important condition for his spiritual development.

Semantic, or verbal-logical memory is expressed in the memorization, preservation and reproduction of thoughts, concepts, reflections, and verbal formulations. The form of thought reproduction depends on the level speech development person. The less developed speech is, the more difficult it is to express the meaning in your own words.

Figurative memory.

This type of memory is associated with our sense organs, thanks to which a person perceives the world. In accordance with our senses, there are 5 types of figurative memory: auditory, visual, olfactory, gustatory, tactile. These types of figurative memory are developed unevenly in humans; one is always predominant.

Arbitrary memory presupposes the presence of a special goal to remember, which a person sets and applies appropriate techniques for this, making volitional efforts.

Involuntary memory does not imply a special goal to remember or recall this or that material, incident, phenomenon; they are remembered as if by themselves, without the use of special techniques, without volitional efforts. Involuntary memory is an inexhaustible source of knowledge. In the development of memory, involuntary memorization precedes voluntary memorization. It is very important to understand that a person involuntarily remembers not everything, but what is connected with his personality and activities. What we involuntarily remember, first of all, is what we like, what we noticed by chance, what we are actively and enthusiastically working on.

Therefore, involuntary memory also has an active character. Animals already have involuntary memory. However, “the animal remembers, but the animal does not remember. In man, we clearly distinguish both of these phenomena of memory” (K. Ushinsky). The best way remember and retain in memory for a long time - apply knowledge in practice. In addition, memory does not want to retain in consciousness what contradicts the attitudes of the individual.

Short-term and long-term memory.

These two types of memory differ in the duration of retention of what a person remembers. Short-term memory has a relatively short duration - a few seconds or minutes. It is sufficient to accurately reproduce events that have just occurred, objects and phenomena that have just been perceived. After a short time, the impressions disappear, and the person usually finds himself unable to remember anything from what he perceived. Long-term memory ensures long-term retention of material. What is important here is the attitude to remember for a long time, the need for this information for the future, and its personal significance for a person.

They also highlight operational memory, which is understood as remembering some information for the time necessary to perform an operation, a separate act of activity. For example, in the process of solving any problem, it is necessary to retain in memory the initial data and intermediate operations, which may later be forgotten, until the result is obtained.

In the process of human development, the relative sequence of formation of types of memory looks something like this:

All types of memory are necessary and valuable in themselves; in the process of a person’s life and growing up, they do not disappear, but are enriched and interact with each other.

Memory processes

The basic processes of memory are memorization, reproduction, storage, recognition, forgetting. The quality of operation of the entire memory apparatus is judged by the nature of reproduction.

Memory begins with remembering. Memorization- this is a memory process that ensures the preservation of material in memory as the most important condition for its subsequent reproduction.

Memorization can be unintentional or intentional. At unintentional memorization a person does not set a goal to remember and does not make any effort for this. Memorization happens “by itself.” This is how one remembers mainly what is of keen interest to a person or evokes in him a strong and deep feeling: “I will never forget this!” But any activity requires that a person remember many things that are not remembered by themselves. Then comes into effect deliberate, conscious remembering, i.e. the goal is to remember the material.

Memorization can be mechanical and semantic. Rote is based mainly on the consolidation of individual connections and associations. Semantic memorization associated with thinking processes. To remember new material, a person must understand it, comprehend it, i.e. find deep and meaningful relationships between this new material and existing knowledge.

If the main condition for mechanical memorization is repetition, then the condition for semantic memorization is understanding.

Both mechanical and semantic memorization are of great importance in a person’s mental life. When memorizing proofs of a geometric theorem or analyzing historical events, literary work semantic memorization comes to the fore. In other cases, remember the house number, telephone number, etc. - the main role belongs to mechanical memorization. In most cases, memory must rely on both comprehension and repetition. This is especially evident in educational work. For example, when memorizing a poem or any rule, you cannot get by with understanding alone, just as you cannot get by with mechanical repetition alone.

If memorization is of a special nature organized work associated with the use of certain techniques for best absorption knowledge, it's called by memorization.

Memorization depends:

a) on the nature of the activity, on the processes of goal setting: voluntary memorization, based on a consciously set goal - to remember, is more effective than involuntary;

b) from installation - remember for a long time or remember for a short time.

We often set out to memorize some material knowing that, in all likelihood, we will only use it on a certain day or until a certain date and that it will not matter then. Indeed, after this period we forget what we have learned.

Emotionally charged material is better learned when a person approaches it with interest and is personally significant to him. This kind of memorization is motivated.

This is very convincingly shown in the story by K. Paustovsky “The Glory of the Boatswain Mironov”:

“...And then an unusual story happened with the boatswain Mironov in the Mayak editorial office...

I don’t remember who - the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs or Vneshtorg - asked the editors to report all the information about Russian ships taken abroad. You need to know that the entire merchant fleet was taken away to understand how difficult it was.

And when we sat through the hot Odessa days over ship lists, when the editorial office was sweating from tension and remembering the old captains, when exhaustion from the confusion of new ship names, flags, tons and “deadweights” reached its highest tension, Mironov appeared in the editorial office.

Give it up,” he said. - So you won't succeed.

I will speak, and you write. Write! The steamship "Jerusalem". Now sailing under the French flag from Marseille to Madagascar, chartered by the French company "Paquet", the crew is French, captain Borisov, the boatswains are all ours, the underwater part has not been cleaned since nineteen seventeen. Write further. The steamer "Muravyov-Apostol" has now been renamed "Anatol". Sails under the English flag, carries grain from Montreal to Liverpool and London, chartered by the Royal Mail Canada Company. The last time I saw him was last year in the fall in New Port Newos.

This lasted three days. For three days, from morning to evening, he, smoking cigarettes, dictated a list of all the ships of the Russian merchant fleet, calling out their new names, captains' names, voyages, condition of the boilers, crew composition, cargo. The captains just shook their heads. Marine Odessa became agitated. The rumor about the monstrous memory of the boatswain Mironov spread like lightning..."

An active attitude to the learning process is very important, which is impossible without intense attention. For memorization, it is more useful to read the text 2 times with full concentration than to reread it 10 times inattentively. Therefore, trying to memorize something in a state of extreme fatigue, drowsiness, when you cannot concentrate properly, is a waste of time. The worst and most uneconomical way to memorize is to mechanically reread the text while waiting for it to be remembered. Reasonable and economical memorization is active work on the text, which involves the use of a number of techniques for better memorization.

V.D. Shadrikov, for example, offers the following methods of random or organized memorization:

Grouping - dividing material into groups for some reason (by meaning, associations, etc.), highlighting strong points (thesis, titles, questions, examples, etc., in this sense, compiling cheat sheets is useful for memorizing ), plan - a set of support points; classification - distribution of any objects, phenomena, concepts into classes, groups based on common characteristics.

Structuring the material is the establishment of the relative arrangement of the parts that make up the whole.

Schematization is an image or description of something in its main features.

Analogy is the establishment of similarities, similarities between phenomena, objects, concepts, images.

Mnemonic devices are certain techniques or methods of memorization.

Recoding - verbalization or pronunciation, presentation of information in figurative form.

Completing the memorized material, introducing new things into memorization (using words or intermediary images, situational features, etc. For example, M.Yu. Lermontov was born in 1814, died in 1841).

Associations establishing connections by similarity, contiguity or opposition.

Repetition consciously controlled and not controlled processes of material reproduction. It is necessary to begin attempts to reproduce the text as early as possible, since internal activity strongly mobilizes attention and makes memorization successful. Memorization occurs more quickly and is more durable when repetitions do not immediately follow each other, but are separated by more or less significant periods of time.

Playback- an essential component of memory. Reproduction can occur at three levels: recognition, reproduction itself (voluntary and involuntary), remembering (in conditions of partial forgetting, requiring volitional effort).

Recognition- the simplest form of reproduction. Recognition is the development of a feeling of familiarity when experiencing something again.

Involuntarily, an unknown force draws me to these sad shores.

Everything here reminds me of the past...

A.S. Pushkin."Mermaid"

Playback- a more “blind” process, it is characterized by the fact that images fixed in memory arise without relying on the secondary perception of certain objects. It's easier to learn than to reproduce.

At unintentional reproduction thoughts, words, etc. are remembered by themselves, without any conscious intention on our part. Unintended playback may be caused by associations. We say: “I remembered.” Here thought follows association. At deliberate reproduction we say: “I remember.” Here associations already follow thought.

If reproduction is associated with difficulties, we talk about recollection.

Recall- the most active reproduction, it is associated with tension and requires certain volitional efforts. The success of recall depends on understanding the logical connection between the forgotten material and the rest of the material, which is well preserved in memory. It is important to evoke a chain of associations that indirectly help to remember what is needed. K.D. Ushinsky gave the following advice to teachers: do not impatiently prompt a student who is trying to remember the material, since the process of remembering itself is useful - what the child himself managed to remember will be remembered well in the future.

When remembering, a person uses various techniques:

1) deliberate use of associations - we reproduce in memory various kinds of circumstances directly related to what needs to be remembered, in the hope that they will, by association, evoke forgotten things in our consciousness (for example, where did I put the key? Did I turn it off? I iron when leaving the apartment, etc.);

2) reliance on recognition (we have forgotten the exact patronymic of a person - Pyotr Andreevich, Pyotr Alekseevich, Pyotr Antonovich - we think that if we accidentally find the correct patronymic, we will immediately recognize it, experiencing a feeling of familiarity.

Recall is a complex and very active process that requires persistence and resourcefulness.

The most important of all the qualities that determine the productivity of memory is its readiness - the ability to quickly extract from the stock of remembered information exactly what is needed at the moment. Psychologist K.K. Platonov drew attention to this. that there are families who know a LOT, but all their baggage lies in their memory as dead weight. When you need to remember something, what you need is always forgotten, and what you don’t need just pops into your head. Others may have less baggage, but they have everything at hand, and exactly what they need is always reproduced in their memory.

K.K. Platonov gave useful tips for memorization. You cannot first learn something in general and then develop memory readiness. The readiness of memory itself is formed in the process of memorization, which must necessarily be semantic and during which connections are immediately established between memorization and those cases when this information may be needed. When memorizing something, we need to understand why we are doing it and in what cases this or that information may be needed.

Saving and Forgetting- these are two sides of a single process of long-term retention of perceived information. Preservation - this is retention in memory, and forgetting - it is a disappearance, a loss from the memory of what has been memorized.

IN at different ages, in different life circumstances, in various types activities various material it is forgotten, as it is remembered, in different ways. Forgetting isn't always such a bad thing. How overloaded our memory would be if we remembered absolutely everything! Forgetting, like memorizing, is a selective process that has its own laws.

When remembering, people willingly resurrect the good and forget the bad in their lives (for example, a memory of a hike - difficulties are forgotten, but everything fun and good is remembered). What is forgotten first of all is what is not vital for a person. important, does not arouse his interest, does not occupy a significant place in his activities. What excited us is remembered significantly better than that, which left us indifferent, indifferent.

Thanks to forgetting, a person clears space for new impressions and, freeing memory from a pile of unnecessary details, gives it a new opportunity to serve our thinking. This is well reflected in popular proverbs, for example: “Whoever needs someone is remembered by him.”

At the end of the 1920s, forgetting was studied by German and Russian psychologists Kurt Lewin and B.V. Zeigarnik. They proved that interrupted actions are retained in memory more firmly than completed ones. An unfinished action leaves a person with subconscious tension and it is difficult for him to concentrate on something else. At the same time, simple monotonous work like knitting cannot be interrupted, it can only be abandoned. But when, for example, a person writes a letter and is interrupted in the middle, a disturbance in the tension system occurs, which does not allow this unfinished action to be forgotten. This interruption of unfinished action is called the Zeigarnik effect.

But forgetting, of course, is not always good, so we often struggle with it. One of the means of such struggle is repetition. Any knowledge that is not consolidated by repetition is gradually forgotten. But for better preservation, variety must be introduced into the repetition process itself.

Forgetting begins soon after memorization and at first proceeds at a particularly rapid pace. In the first 5 days, more is forgotten after memorization than in the next 5 days. Therefore, you should repeat what you have learned not when it has already been forgotten, but while forgetting has not yet begun. To prevent forgetting, a quick repetition is enough, but to restore what has been forgotten requires a lot of work.

But this doesn't always happen. Experiments show that reproduction is often most complete not immediately after memorization, but after a day, two or even three days. During this time, the learned material is not only not forgotten, but, on the contrary, is consolidated in memory. This is observed mainly when memorizing extensive material. This leads to a practical conclusion: you should not think that you can best answer in an exam what you learned immediately before the exam, for example, on the same morning.

More favorable conditions for reproduction are created when the learned material “rests” for some time. It is necessary to take into account the fact that subsequent activities, which are very similar to the previous one, can sometimes “erase” the results of previous memorization. This sometimes happens if you study literature after history.

Forgetting can be a consequence of various disordersmemory:

1) senile, when old man remembers early childhood, but does not remember all immediate events,

2) with a concussion, the same phenomena are often observed as in old age,

3) split personality - after sleep a person imagines himself to others, forgets everything about himself.

It is often difficult for a person to remember anything specifically. To make memorization easier, people came up with different ways, they are called memorization techniques or mnemonics. Let's list some of them.

1. Rhyme technique. Any person remembers poetry better than prose. Therefore, it will be difficult to forget the rules of behavior on the escalator in the subway, if you present them in the form of a humorous quatrain:

Don’t put canes, umbrellas and suitcases on the steps, don’t lean on the railings, stand on the right, pass on the left.

Or, for example, in the Russian language there are eleven exception verbs that are not easy to remember. What if we rhyme them?

See, hear and offend, persecute, endure and hate,

And turn, look, hold,

And depend and breathe,

Look, -it, -at, -yat write.

Or, so as not to confuse the bisector and the median in geometry:

A bisector is a rat that runs around the corners and divides the corner in half.

The median is the kind of monkey that jumps to a side and divides it equally.

Or, to remember all the colors of the rainbow, remember the funny sentence: “How Jacques the bell-ringer once broke a lantern with his head.” Here, each word and color begins with one letter - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.

2. A number of mnemonic techniques are used when memorizing the dates of birth of famous people or significant events. For example, I.S. Turgenev was born in 1818 (18-18), A.S. Pushkin was born one year earlier than the 19th century (1799), M.Yu. Lermontov was born in 1814 and died in 1841 (14-41).

3. To remember which is the organ of daytime vision and which is the organ of night vision - rods or cones, you can remember the following: it is easier to go with a rod at night, but in the laboratory they work with cones during the day.

Memory qualities

What is good and bad memory?

Memory starts with memorization the information that our senses receive from the world around us. All images, words, impressions in general must be retained, remain in our memory. In psychology this process is called - preservation. When necessary, we reproduce previously seen, heard, experienced. It is by reproduction that the quality of operation of the entire memory apparatus is judged.

Good memory is the ability to remember quickly and a lot, to reproduce accurately and on time.

However, all a person’s successes and failures, his victories and losses, discoveries and mistakes cannot be attributed to memory alone. No wonder the French thinker F. La Rochefoucauld wittily remarked: “Everyone complains about their memory, but no one complains about their mind.”

So, memory qualities:

1) speed of memorization. However, it acquires value only in conjunction with other qualities;

2) preservation strength;

3) memory accuracy - absence of distortions or omissions of essential things;

4) memory readiness- the ability to quickly retrieve from memory reserves what is needed at the moment.

Not all people quickly memorize material, remember for a long time and accurately reproduce or remember exactly at the very moment when it is needed. And this manifests itself differently in relation to different materials, depending on a person’s interests, his profession, personal characteristics. Some people remember faces well, but poorly remember mathematical material; others have a good musical memory, but poor memory for literary texts, etc. In schoolchildren and students, poor memorization of material often does not depend on bad memory, but from poor attention, from lack of interest in a given subject, etc.

Performance

One of the main manifestations of memory is reproduction of images. Images of objects and phenomena that we do not perceive at the moment are called presentations. Ideas arise as a result of the revival of previously formed temporary connections; they can be evoked through the mechanism of associations, using words or descriptions.

Representations are different from concepts. The concept has a more generalized and abstract character, the representation has a visual character. A representation is an image of an object, a concept is a thought about an object. Thinking about something and imagining something are not the same thing. For example, a thousandgon - there is a concept, but it cannot be imagined. The source of ideas are sensations and perceptions - visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, kinesthetic.

Representations are characterized by clarity, i.e. direct similarity with the corresponding objects and phenomena (we internally or mentally “see”, “hear”, “smell”, “feel” touch, etc.).

I see Pavlovsk as hilly. The round meadow, lifeless water, The most languid and the most shady, After all, it will never be forgotten.

A. Akhmatova

But ideas are usually much poorer than perceptions. Representations never convey with equal brightness all the features and characteristics of objects; only individual features are clearly reproduced.

Ideas are very unstable and fickle. The exception is people who have highly developed ideas related to their profession, for example, musicians have auditory ones, artists have visual ones, tasters have olfactory ones, etc.

Representations are the result of processing and generalization of past perceptions. Without perceptions, ideas could not be formed: those born blind have no ideas about colors and colors, those born deaf have no ideas of sound.

Representation is more accurately called memory representation, since it is associated with the work of figurative memory. The difference between ideas and perceptions is that ideas give a more generalized reflection of objects. The representations generalize individual perceptions, emphasize the constant features of things and phenomena, and omit the random features that were previously present in individual perceptions. For example, we see a tree - an image of perception, we imagine a tree - the image is duller, more vague and inaccurate.

Representation is a generalized reflection of the surrounding world. We say “river” and imagine it: two banks, flowing water. We saw many different rivers; the presentation reflects visual signs characteristic of objects and phenomena. We can only perceive a specific river - the Volga, Moscow River, Kama, Yenisei, Oka, etc., the image of perception is accurate.

To imagine means to mentally see or mentally hear something, and not just to know. Representation is a higher level of cognition than perception, they are a stage of transition from sensation to thought, it is a visual and at the same time generalized image that reflects characteristic features subject.

We can imagine the sound of a steamboat, the taste of lemon, the smell of gasoline, perfume, flowers, touching something, or a toothache. Of course, anyone who has never had toothache cannot imagine this. Usually, when telling something, we ask: “Can you imagine?!”

In the formation of general ideas, speech plays a crucial role, naming a number of objects in one word.

Ideas are formed in the process of human activity, therefore, depending on the profession, one type of ideas predominantly develops. But the division of ideas by type is very arbitrary.

Visual (figurative, visual) memory

A person perceives the world with the help of his organs. The eyes store figurative, visual memories in the head. In the reservoir of this type of memory, visual images are stored - the face of a mother, a son, the first snow, a seascape seen for the first time, a blooming garden, a bunch of grapes.

In turn, this type of memory can be voluntary and involuntary, judging by the form physical activity. When we walk through a blooming garden, pick mushrooms in the forest, we involuntarily remember everything that comes into our field of vision, and for a long time before our eyes, in our minds, mushrooms and flowering trees stand.

But when we cut a mushroom and carefully examine it, assessing whether it is poisonous or edible, we turn on conscious, voluntary memory, compare it with the image that corresponds to edible mushrooms and put it in the basket. Everyone remembers the bright red caps of fly agarics from childhood, from the pictures in the primer, and they don’t touch them, they pass them by.

The moment we compare the mushroom we find with our memories, long-term visual memory is activated. And when we return our gaze to the clearing, remembering that there was another mushroom nearby, we turn on visual short-term memory.

So, in the process of picking mushrooms, we have many types of memory working, joining the visual one, complementing it, making it more imaginative and vivid.

Motor (motor, kinetic) memory

The level of development of a person’s motor memory can be judged by how graceful his movements and flexible body are. If a person has been involved in sports or dancing, he has a rich motor memory.

A good athlete performs the most complex elements as if it were very easy to do. In fact, such a reliable storage of movements is created by many hours of training, endless repetitions, labor, and diligence.

Sound (auditory) memory

There is a cell in the brain that remembers sounds associated with an important event. It can be the cry of a newborn baby, with which you cannot confuse the whistle of a boiling kettle. Everyone is familiar with the sound of the sea surf. A person is able to recognize the voice of his favorite singer among other voices.

Even when we don’t see a person when talking on the phone, we know for sure that this is a familiar person, because we remember his voice. People unmistakably recognize the voices of their relatives, with whom they often communicate by telephone.

Taste memory

The specific taste of strawberries found in a sunny meadow is familiar to everyone who has tried them at least once. We will not confuse the taste of this berry with raspberries, strawberries, and gooseberries. A person’s mind stores memories of the tastes of all the foods he has ever eaten. He knows that lemon is sour, onion is bitter, orange is sweet.

If a person is blindfolded, he will unmistakably distinguish the taste of sauerkraut from a salted tomato or pickled cucumber. Fried chicken can taste different from French fries. Apple juice from carrots.

Of course, some people's sense of taste sometimes worsens during a cold, but the memory of delicious dishes remains.

Olfactory memory

A person will remember both the taste and smell of an unknown substance while blindfolded. After all, the onion smells so bright when cut that tears involuntarily flow from your eyes. The aroma of fresh cucumber is unmistakable.

The hostess unmistakably knows that the pie in the oven is almost ready, although she is in another room. A woman, a homemaker, knows what fresh fish or chicken should smell like. This allows her to provide her family with good, healthy food.

Pain memory

This type of memory is needed to go to the doctor with a bad tooth without waiting for complications. One day, a cut finger will remind the housewife that she should cut vegetables carefully.

Painful memories encourage caution, teach you to take care of your health and your loved ones, which ultimately prolongs life.

Eidetic memory

There is one phenomenal type of memorization - eidetism. In this case, the object seems to be photographed, very brightly, in all details and details. Not all people have such abilities. But eidetism can be developed.

It is known that at the intelligence school, cadets were taught photographic memorization. This was necessary for such a case when there was no camera at hand. Everyone knows an example of such intelligence work, depicted in the film “Shield and Sword.”

Emotional memory

Stores feelings, experiences, emotions. It plays a very important role in the process of choosing behavior. If a person already knows that he was offended somewhere, he will not go to that company again.

Emotions recorded in memory can deter a person from committing unseemly acts or, on the contrary, encourage them to do worthy ones.

It’s nice to remember how you stood on the podium after a sports competition. This will help you survive difficult moments and trials.

A person who knows how to rejoice and be sad is liked by others. A person who is too unemotional looks and is perceived as a robot. Developed emotional and figurative memory characterizes an interesting person who has seen a lot.

Social memory

Helps a person navigate correctly in society. It is important to remember who your relatives, parents, children are, who are friends and who are ill-wishers. When going to work, it is important to remember who is your boss, mentor, and who is your subordinate. After all, it is necessary to follow the instructions of your superiors, listen to the advice of your mentor, give tasks to your subordinates, and monitor their implementation.

Social memories include the structure of the state, information about the international situation at the moment, the history of humanity, the country in which you live, and much more that allows a person to behave adequately in society.

Spatial memory

Allows a person to navigate the house where he lives. It's important to remember the street you go to work on. kindergarten, where I took the child, the store where I bought groceries.

Memories help you move in space over any distance. If a person knows where plane or train or ship tickets are sold, where he needs to go to get into the desired plane, carriage and cabin, he can travel successfully.

By studying geography and astronomy, a person is able to decide for himself where to go on vacation, whether to live on planet Earth or fly to Mars. Some researchers claim that Mars will soon have its first colony of earthlings.

Episodic memory

Able to highlight particularly important events in life. The hour when the whole family meets the mother and newborn baby at the exit of the maternity hospital remains in the mind forever. Although later you may not remember which bus you took to the maternity hospital.

The first kiss will be remembered by lovers. Although the moments before and after it may be erased.

Semantic memory

Connects words and thoughts. Without knowing the meaning of spoken language, a person will not be able to communicate in society and work, convey his feelings and thoughts to family and friends.

Each word in our speech has a specific meaning, for which semantic memories are responsible. Meaningless speech is not understandable to others. It distinguishes a person with dementia from a healthy person.

Autobiographical memory

Preserves a person’s knowledge about the events of his life, studies, work, career growth, important events for the family. The birth of children and grandchildren, your own and your son’s wedding - these events help a person feel his place in the family and in the life of society.

Years of study and the first steps in a career make a positive contribution to career advancement. Remembering your skills is necessary in order to replenish them and successfully fulfill your professional responsibilities.

Procedural memory

Keeps in its storage a procedure of actions, sometimes brought to the point of automatism. A person knows that he needs to bring a spoon to his mouth, wash his hands before eating, and wipe his mouth with a napkin. All actions that a person performs during the day, he performs in a certain order. Procedural memory is responsible for this.

The procedural nurse is obliged to give injections in a strictly defined order. Lubricate the injection site with alcohol, draw the medicine into a syringe and inject it into the patient’s muscle. Not by spraying, but by injecting a person. Otherwise, the treatment will not be successful. This is why procedural memory is important.

Ultra short-term memory

In other words, instantaneous, stores events in its cell for just a moment. The memory may relate to an unimportant event. If, for example, you need to turn off the lights in an unfamiliar room. You will never return there again; there is no need to remember where the switch is located.

Sometimes a moment can be important, but a person is distracted and immediately forgets the situation. Some events that are not repeated may disappear from memory without a trace if they were in an instantaneous cell.

Short-term memory

Helps a person solve a current problem. When a person picks grapes in the garden, he remembers that the cut bunch must be carefully placed in a box so as not to crush the berries.

All ripe clusters must be harvested, moving along the row of the vineyard, in the direction from the already cleared bush to the branches still full of berries. To successfully complete this procedure, you need to remember the operating procedure for a short time.

Long-term memory

Needed in order to remember some things for life. This important aspects professions, hygiene principles, moral principles, accepted manners of communicating with people at work, in transport, and much that determines adequate human behavior.

For example, it is important to remember that you should not eat washing powder, it is used only for washing. The potatoes are tasty, the onions are bitter, the honey is healthy, the medicine is taken as prescribed by the doctor, you should cross the road when the traffic light is green. This is usually remembered throughout life.

Arbitrary memory

This is memorization with an effort of will. Sometimes this is done if in order to pass an exam or do important work you need to know exactly some factor. For example, you cannot confuse a poisonous mushroom with an edible one, or a dangerous berry with a useful one, when you are harvesting in an unfamiliar forest.

It is important to remember at least the basic signs, because mushrooms of the same variety in different areas look different. But, if a person remembers that when cut, poisonous mushrooms are bright blue or orange or red, he will not be poisoned.

Involuntary memory

It works when you are simply looking around the surrounding area. Seeing a beautiful landscape for the first time can be etched in your memory forever. And those neighborhoods that are visible from the window of a trolleybus on the way to work every day are sometimes difficult to remember in detail.

Everything that comes into view is involuntarily remembered. If desired, you can develop a person’s ability to remember in detail everything that he sees around him. Voluntary and involuntary memories can be equally long and short.

Mediated memory

It is based on linking newly received, new information with already known knowledge and previously experienced experience. Indirect memory is closely related to associative and logical memory. Memories linked by certain associations are logically linked into a chain.

So, a person passing by a pastry shop remembers that he needs to buy a cake for his home. Entering the store, he sees the new kind pastries and delicious cake. He remembers that this already familiar pastry shop now has an assortment of good new desserts.

Unmediated memory

It is memorization, without relying on previous experience and knowledge. This method can be effective if you repeat the information received at least 5 times and pay sustained attention to it, work on it, and think about its meaning. Otherwise, the memory will fall into a short-term cell and quickly disappear from your head.

Some teachers do not bother themselves with sensible explanations and require simple “cramming” from their students. Such information is not stored in the students’ heads for long, and the teacher himself is to blame for this.

Verbal-logical memory

If a person does not know how to organize words into meaningful sentences, and sentences into a consistent story about an event, then he does not have verbal-logical memory. This type of memory is also called verbal. They are unique to humans. Animals can't talk.

A person is able to remember conclusions, judgments of other people, thoughts from stories read in a book. These memories store our thoughts, various objects and their connections, properties, and interactions. The quality of other types of memory and the quality of human speech largely depend on the development of this type of memory. These memories are better preserved in people prone to logical reasoning and with an analytical mindset.

This memory store is closely related to speech. Memorization in in this case improves when figurative, expressive speech is used, with accents of intonation, pauses in the right places.

Verbal-logical memory allows a person to have a rich vocabulary, which facilitates communication and attracts the sympathy of others.

All types of memories complement and intertwine with each other. Therefore, their division is purely symbolic. Experts classify them for themselves in order to better study and apply knowledge in treatment and prevention.

Many people don't know how the human brain works because they simply aren't interested. Meanwhile, everyone receives initial knowledge about this at school, and then at the institute. Many people simply do not know what possibilities the human brain contains and what properties remain hidden in it. After graduating from school and college, most people try to implement the acquired knowledge in their work. However, some easily remember almost all of the material they have studied for many years, while others are not able to repeat even 10% of the material covered after a couple of weeks. Why is this happening? This is due to the fact that short-term memory needs to be trained constantly. However, if a person has never done this, and he urgently needs to learn something, then problems with memorization may arise due to lack of training. The degree of memorization depends on the method of learning, so it is important to choose the right effective method training.

This can be done like this:

An hour after studying the material, you should try to repeat it, spending no more than 10 minutes. What you remember will remain well in your memory for about a day. After a day, it is advisable to repeat what you have learned again in 2-4 minutes, and then it will be stored in memory for another week. After this, you will need another repetition of the material covered, but in a couple of minutes. Another repetition can be done after 30 days. Such study of the material guarantees its memorization for a long period of time, because information will be deposited in the long-term storage of the brain and will be reproduced at the level of consciousness. This rather magical property of the brain guarantees access to everything learned at any time, for example, like knowing your address or telephone number, which people always remember.

You can become a genius by studying special memory training techniques

It is important to note that all repetitions can be made from recordings in which all shortcomings and corrections are corrected, because this information is stored in the long-term storage of the brain and must be accurate and reliable so as not to cause harm when used in the future. It is also important to understand that if during the first repetition, for which 10 minutes are allotted, you can still peek at a textbook or notebook, then during subsequent repetitions the possibility of peeking at notes is excluded. It is recommended to write down what you remember on a blank sheet of paper, and then compare it with the original, analyze it and draw conclusions. Then correct the mistakes and try to remember with additions. The best option would be to take notes in the form of an intellectual map, which has a very beneficial effect on the abilities of the brain.

Memory properties have some features and subtleties

It is worth noting that the collective nature of studying and sequential repetition of information gives the most positive memorization effect. Without doing the listed exercises to repeat what you have learned, soon all the information will be forgotten by 95%, and the time spent on gaining knowledge will be empty. This will lead to the development of complexes in a person due to his poor ability to remember. Cramming, so popular among students, most often does not have a positive effect. The positive property of repeating information is that a person not only remembers a large amount of information, but also begins to understand the properties of his memory. This leads to the fact that it becomes easier for the brain to make many associations, which contribute to significant improvement in memory. Therefore, a large amount of information studied by a person leads to the fact that it becomes easier for him to remember it.

A person is endowed with figurative memory from birth

According to scientific research, it is known that people are born with excellent figurative memory, but subsequently they are retrained, forced to memorize and repeat words. Before people mastered writing, they remembered events only visually, auditorily, through touch, smell and taste. People who constantly visualize and imagine events are able to remember what happened in more detail, however, if they often train and develop their abilities. Having heard information once, a person is able to perceive and remember no more than 35%. When reading what he heard, half of the information learned will be deposited in his memory. Well, if you use all the senses and types of memory, it is likely that a person will be able to immediately perceive and remember everything he hears.

Figurative memory is divided into:

1. visual, which is deposited in a person with the help of pictures, images, text;
2. auditory, perceiving through various sounds (songs, sound of water, bird chirping, etc.);
3. gustatory stores the taste of food;
4. olfactory, when people reproduce certain events in life associated with the familiar smell of a fire, perfume, etc.;
5. tactile remembers touches to a surface (hot battery, soft kitten, pain from a blow, etc.).

You can develop figurative memory with the help of some exercises:

1. Remember the sequence of arranged figures by associating them with something.
2. Try to remember the sentence by making up a story using each word from it.
3. You can remember foreign words by comparing their sounds with Russian ones and assigning them in a certain way.
4. Draw only in imagination bright pictures, play with images. You can remember a historical date by drawing a vivid picture of what happened in your imagination.

By comparing certain sensations with current events, you can also train figurative memory and remember what happened in every detail. The method of training figurative memory is to involve both hemispheres of the brain in the work, which will allow you to perceive what is happening with all the senses. With regular training, you can develop excellent figurative memory. Children can begin developing and improving all types of memory after 3 years of age.