Music and Memories

This is a response to this week’s discussion prompts for 6411 Cognition and Learning, about long term memory.

Describe something you have never forgotten and why you never forgot it. 

I’ve never forgotten learning how to waltz. It was with my father in the living room of our farmhouse. I don’t remember details or why this happened the way it did, but I remember it because of the overwhelming feeling of being loved, and feeling special while he was dancing with me. Why have I never forgotten this – because, as Willingham (2009) states, “we remember things that bring some emotional reaction” (p. 57).

Next, describe something that you forgot but then later remembered, and why you think you forgot it. Perhaps you even thought “I can’t believe I forgot that”! 

I don’t remember the name of the song my husband and I danced to at our wedding. It was obviously an emotionally significant moment in time, but I can’t ever remember it. Not the name of the song or the band who sang it – poof, gone! But when I concentrate, visualize the event, think through the possible options, then ask my husband, who always remember it and doesn’t hesitate to say ‘I can’t believe you forgot that’! But, as Willingham states, “memory is the residue of thought” so I guess the specific details of this event of my wedding was something that had no meaning, or wasn’t attached to a peg word. I obviously didn’t rehearse it within a method of foci, linked to that special moment or attached a mnemonic or acronym (Willingham, 2009, p. 77).

Morton, Sherrill, and Preston (2017) assert that the individual memories are integrated into coherent maps based on the “spatial, temporal, and conceptual proximity to existing knowledge” (p. 161). Perhaps the first event was encoded into my memory because of pre-existing special moments that were linked conceptually to my father, while the music at my wedding wasn’t remembered because there were no other preexisting memories of that particular song or band in my mind. It was meaningful to my husband, obviously, but not for me.

Funny how I will remember the song my husband and I danced to at my daughter’s wedding because of the pre-existing memories and feelings attached to the artist and how the selected song connected to the temporal and spatial context of the wedding location and time. It was Neil Young’s Harvest Moon. I don’t like Neil Young, but my husband does. The wedding was held at my cottage under an ‘august moon’. I had secretly asked my daughter to put this tune into the playlist to surprise my husband. So, true to Willingham’s (2009) statement about memory being a residue of thought, this happy thought is further encoded in a story structure (p. 67), including a time, space, and conceptual context (Morton et al., 2017).

How do your two stories link to Willingham’s argument in Chapter 3 about how you remember?

Willingham (2009) argues that several factors are necessary for memory – emotional connection, attention, repetition, and it has meaning in relation to prior experiences. My two stories support this argument in that the memorable story is one where there was a strong emotional connection and I gave it repeated attention due the positive feelings. It was remembered due to its connection to previous special events where my father paid special attention to me. Clewett and Davichi (2017) support Willingham’s (2009) argument by identifying how representations are bound into memory through a process of linking to prior representations (meaningful), implementing an associative encoding strategy (attention and comparison to similar/dissimilar details), sensory changes (emotions), and modulation from an expected goal. With these factors in mind, educators can structure learning events that tap into these specific factors, including Willingham’s (2009) suggestion to use a storytelling format.

References

Clewett, D. & Davachi, L. (2017). The ebb and flow of experience determines the temporal structure of memory. Current Opinion in Behavioural Sciences, 17, 186-193.

Morton, N., Sherrill, K., & Preston, A. (2017). Memory integration constructs maps of space, time, and concepts. Current Opinions in Behavioural Sciences, 17, 161-168.

Willingham, D. (2009). Why don’t students like school?San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass.