The Trained Memory by Warren Hilton (ebook and pdf reader TXT) π
[Sidenote: "Acres of Diamonds"]
You who are a bit vain of your visits to other lands, your wide reading, your experience of men and things; you who secretly lament that so little of what you have seen and read remains with you, behold, your "acres of diamonds" are within you, needing but the mystic formula that shall reveal the treasure!
THE MECHANISM OF RECALL
[Illustration: Decorative Header]
CHAPTER III
THE MECHANISM OF RECALL
[Sidenote: The Right Stimulus]
Somehow, somewhere, all experiences, whether subject to voluntary recall or not, are pre
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Far the greater part of your successive states of consciousness, or even of your ordinary "thinking," commonly so-called, consists of trains of mental pictures "suggested" one by another. If the associated pictures are of the everyday The Reverse of Complex Formation type, common to everyone, you have a prosaic mind; if, on the other hand, the associations are unusual or unique, you are happily possessed of wit and fancy.
These instances of the action of the Law of Recall illustrate but one phase of its activity. They show simply that groups of ideas are so strung together on the string of some common element that the activity of one "group" in consciousness is apt to be automatically followed by the others. But the law of association goes deeper than this. It enters into the activity of every individual group, and causes all the elements of every group, ideas, emotions and impulses to muscular movements, to be simultaneously manifested.
Prolixity and Terseness There is no principle to which we shall more continually refer than this one. Our explanation of hay fever a moment ago illustrates our meaning. Get the principle clearly in your mind, and see how many instances of its operation you can yourself supply from your own daily experience.
So far as the mere linking together of groups of ideas is concerned, this classifying quality is developed in some persons to a greater degree than in others. It finds its extreme exemplar in the type of man who can never relate an incident without reciting all the prolix and minute details and at the same time wandering far from the original subject in pursuit of every suggested idea.
The Law of Contiguity Law II. Similarity and nearness in time or space between two experiential facts causes the thought of one to tend to recall the thought of the other.
This is the Associative Law of Contiguity considered from the standpoint of recall. The points of contiguity are different for different individuals. Similarities and nearnesses will awaken all sorts of associated groups of ideas in one person that are not at all excitable in the same way in another whose experiences have been different.
Law III. The greater the frequency and intensity of any given experience, the greater the ease and likelihood of its reproduction and recall.
This explains why certain groups in Laws of Habit and Intensity any complex are more readily recalled than othersβwhy some leap forth unbidden, why some come next and before others, why some arrive but tardily or not at all.
This is how the associative Laws of Habit and Intensity affect the power of recall.
There is no department of business to which the application of these Laws of Recall is so apparent as the department of advertising. The most carefully worded and best-illustrated advertisement may fail to pay its cost unless the underlying principles of choice of position, selection of medium and size of space are understood. The advertisers in metropolitan newspapers Applications to Advertising and magazines of large circulation are the ones who have most at stake. But whatever the field to be reached, it is well to bear in mind certain facts based on the Laws of Recall that have been established by psychological experiment.
Most advertisers have a general idea that certain relative positions on the newspaper or magazine page are to be preferred over others, but they have no conception of the real differences in relative recall value. When the great cost of space in large publications is considered the financial value of such knowledge is evident.
By a great number of tests the relative recall value of every part of the newspaper page has been approximately Effect of Repetitions determined. It has been found, for example, that a given space at the upper right-hand corner of the page has more than twice the value of the same amount of space in the lower left-hand corner.
Many advertisers adopt the policy of repeating full-page advertisements at long intervals instead of advertising in a small way continually. Laboratory tests have shown, on the contrary, that a quarter-page advertisement appearing in four successive issues of a newspaper is fifty per cent more effective than a full-page advertisement appearing only once. It does not follow, however, that an eighth-page advertisement repeated eight times is correspondingly more effective; for below a certain relative size the value of an advertisement Ratio of Size to Value decreases much more rapidly than the cost. There are, of course, modifying conditions, such as special sales of department stores, where occasional displays and announcements make it desirable to use either full pages, or even double pages, but the great bulk of advertising is not of this character.
Every year in the United States alone six hundred millions of dollars are expended in advertising the sale of commodities, and for the most part expended in a haphazard, experimental and unscientific way. The investment of this vast sum with risk of perhaps total loss, or even possible injury, through the faulty construction or improper placing of advertisements should stimulate the interest of every Risks in Advertising advertiser in the work that psychologists have done and are doing toward the accumulation of a body of exact knowledge on this subject.
THE SCIENCE OF FORGETTINGThe Skilled Artisan Attention is the instrumentality through which the Laws of Recall operate. Wittingly or unwittingly, consciously or unconsciously, every man's attention swings in automatic obedience to the Laws of Recall.
Attention is the artisan that, bit by bit, and with lightning quickness, constructs the mosaic of consciousness.
Having the whole vast store of all present and past experiences to draw upon, he selects only those groups and How the Attention Works those isolated instances that are related to our general interests and aims. He disregards others.
The attention operates in a manner complementary to the general Laws of Recall. It is an active principle not of association, but of dissociation.
You choose, for example, a certain aim in life. You decide to become the inventor of an aeroplane of automatic stability. This choice henceforth determines two things. First, it determines just which of the sensory experiences of any given moment are most likely to be selected for your conscious perception. Secondly, it determines just which of your past experiences will be most likely to be recalled.
Such a choice, in other words, determines Iron Filings and Mental Magnets to some extent the sort of elements that will most probably be selected to make up at any moment the contents of your consciousness.
From the instant that you make such a choice you are on the alert for facts relevant to the subject of your ambition. Upon them you concentrate your attention. They are presented to your consciousness with greater precision and clearness than other facts. All facts that pertain to the art of flying henceforth cluster and cling to your conscious memory like iron filings to a magnet. All that are impertinent to this main pursuit are dissociated from these intensely active complexes, and in time fade into subconscious forgetfulness.
By subconscious forgetfulness we The Compartment of Subconscious Forgetfulness mean a compartment, as it were, of that reservoir in which all past experiences are stored.
Consciousness is a momentary thing. It is a passing state. It is ephemeral and flitting. It is made up in part of present sense-impressions and in part of past experiences. These past experiences are brought forth from subconsciousness. Some are voluntarily brought forth. Some present themselves without our conscious volition, but by the operation of the laws of association and dissociation. Some we seem unable voluntarily to recall, yet they may appear when least we are expecting them. It is these last to which we have referred as lost in subconscious forgetfulness. As a matter of fact, none are ever actually lost.
Making Experience Count All the wealth of your past experience is still yoursβa concrete part of your personality. All that is required to make it available for your present use is a sufficient concentration of your attention, a concentration of attention that shall dwell persistently and exclusively upon those associations that bear upon the fact desired.
The tendency of the mind toward dissociation, a function limiting the indiscriminate recall of associated "groups," is also manifested in all of us in the transfer to unconsciousness of many muscular activities.
As infants we learn to walk only by giving to every movement of the limbs the most deliberate conscious attention. Yet, in time, the complicated co-operation How Habits Are Formed of muscular movements involved in walking becomes involuntary and unconscious, so that we are no longer even aware of them.
It is the same with reading, writing, playing upon musical instruments, the manipulation of all sorts of mechanical devices, the thousand and one other muscular activities that become what we call habitual.
The moment one tries to make these habitual activities again dependent on the conscious will he encounters difficulties.
Until the toad, for fun,
Said, 'Pray which leg goes after which?'
This stirred his mind to such a pitch,
He lay distracted in a ditch,
Considering how to run."
All these habitual activities are started as acts of painstaking care and conscious attention. All ultimately become unconscious. They may, however, be started or stopped at will. They are, therefore, still related to the conscious mind. They occupy a semi-automatic middle ground between conscious and subconscious activities.
Practice in Memorizing Inadequate It is evident that if what we have been describing as the process of recall is true, then the commonly accepted idea that practice in memorizing makes memorizing easier is false, and that there is no truth in the popular figure of speech that likens the memory to a muscle that grows stronger with use.
So far as the memory is concerned, however, practice may result in a more or less unconscious improvement in the methods of memorizing.
Torture of the Drill By practice we come to unconsciously discover and employ new associative methods in our recording of facts, making them easier to recall, but we can certainly add nothing to the actual scope and power of retention.
Yet many books on memory-training have wide circulation whose authors, showing no conception of the processes involved, seek to develop the general ability to remember by incessant practice in memorizing particular facts, just as one would develop a muscle by exercise.
The following is quoted from a well-known work of this character:
"I am now
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