My boyfriend: “What was your favorite part in that movie?
Me: “Definitely when the bad guy got high-kicked in the face by a ninja.”
My boyfriend: “Um, actually I’m pretty sure he got punched.”
Me: “Are you sure?”
My boyfriend: “Yes. And it wasn’t a ninja – it was a librarian.”
Aside from establishing how shamefully poor my movie watching skills are, this little scenario also demonstrates the severe fallibility of human memory.
Researchers have developed different models for how human memory operates, but for the most part, the process is broken into three parts: Immediate (or Sensory) Memory, Short-Term (or Working) Memory, and Long-Term Memory.
Why, then, did I mistake a librarian for a ninja? Possibly my sensory organs were not operating at full capacity – I was sleepy, I wasn’t wearing my glasses, I was distracted. (Browsing Facebook while watching the movie – who, me?) This would cause me to either perceive the stimulus incorrectly, or not at all.
It might have been that I perceived the stimulus correctly, but did not invest enough energy in paying attention to it. This is how information is entered into short-term memory – an active effort is made to pay attention to something. As far as movie watching goes, there is “movie watching,” and “movie watching.” Either you’re paying attention to it, or you’re not.
How does an afternoon-movie memory last all the way through dinnertime, when your significant other asks how you liked it? That is, how does an event make it into the VIP Section of your brain, a.k.a., your long-term memory? It gets there through repetition – thinking about the movie, playing certain parts back in your head, imagining the faces of the actors, asking yourself questions about plot points.
The next time you watch a movie, see if you can’t fine tune your memory to pick up on, and retain, a few more details than you normally do. Unless it’s Dunston Checks In– in which case, please try to forget about it as soon as possible.
Emily Kingston