You come out of the supermarket, weighed down with the Tim Tams and red wine that have sustained you throughout lockdown (or is that just me?) only to find youself drawing a blank on where you left your ride.
Now a new study by psychologists at the University of York has revealed that memories for specific locations are either totally forgotten – but if they are remembered, it’s with as much precision as when they were first learnt.
The online study asked more than 400 participants aged 18 to 35 to learn the locations of words on a circle. They were then tested by being shown the word and asked to move a marker to its location on the circle – similar to walking to where you think you parked the car.
In order to find out whether precision gets fuzzier over time, they tested groups of participants at different time intervals – ranging from 10 minutes to four days – after they had learnt the information.
The findings?
Memories recalled with precision – provided they were remembered
While participants who were tested later had forgotten a significant proportion of word-location associations, the ones they did remember were recalled with the same precision (i.e. they were able to pinpoint exact locations) as the groups tested earlier.
The researchers also looked at whether allowing participants to extract a pattern by clustering words on the same theme in one location would aid memory.
They found that when a pattern was present, participants did remember more word-location associations (accessibility went up) – but the precision with which things were remembered went down.
For example, if you parked your car in roughly the same spot every day, you’d be more likely to remember where you parked it – but be less able to remember precisely where you parked it that specific day.
The study authors say it shows that ‘forgetting’ can actually benefit your decision-making process i.e. your brain needs to get rid of unnecessary information so we can prioritise core information that will help us make decisions.
So, when I forget to buy milk and bread, it’s not that I can’t remember what I need to buy – my brain is just prioritising chocolate and alcohol.
