Berlin.
Researchers show with various experiments: Our short-term memory can fail after just a few seconds.
Many people know it: What delicious food did you eat for dinner on vacation? What was the name of the classmate in elementary school who always snapped his fingers? That we forget thingsthat are further back on the timeline is nothing new. Our long-term memory can have weaknesses. Scientists have been researching our for a long time Brain – and recently discovered that our short-term memory also works worse than previously assumed.
Short Term Memory: How Does It Work?
With the short-term memory Our brain stores information that we hear or see for several seconds to minutes. Only some of the recorded data end up in the long-term memory, where the information is stored permanently. Short-term memory can help, for example, when we need to remember where we put our smartphone or what information is important when reading a text.
As we age, our short-term memory gradually declines—this is normal to a certain extent. However, with various exercises one can improve the short-term memory train: It can help that reminder lists leave things out, learn a new language or do little brain exercises.
Memory: After just a few seconds, we remember incorrectly
Researchers at the University of Amsterdam found out in a study that short-term memory can be changed after just a few seconds make mistakes, if you have to remember shapes. The researchers call the phenomenon Short term memory illusion. “Even in the short term, our memory may not be entirely reliable,” said Dr. Marte Otten, the first author of the study from the University of Amsterdam, told the British newspaper The Guardian.
Memory research: do we remember what we expect?
How did the scientists come to this conclusion? Previous investigations have shown, according to Otten, that people who are presented with a mirror-inverted letter often say that they supposedly recognized it correctly. Otten and her team concluded that it must be more of a “memory effect”. “So you got it right, but as soon as you remember it, things start to go wrong,” explains the scientist. In other words, people often recognized the letter correctly, but later misremembered.
To support the thesis, various experiments were carried out with different numbers of participants. A total of 348 test subjects were involved. The researchers also conducted a test with skewed letters. There were errors again. In particular, when the participants were distracted or the time was delayed, the answers were more often wrong. According to the study, this is another sign that our short-term memory can err.
Short-term memory makes mistakes: what our knowledge has to do with it
The researchers also provide a possible reason for the false memories: They believe that our knowledge around the world, in which case around the alphabet, can be to blame. We see things that aren’t there – but that we expect because we actually see them know so.
So far, however, only the memories of shapes tested. The team now hopes to be able to investigate whether short-term memory reacts similarly and makes mistakes in other situations.
(emi)
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