The Constructive Nature of Memory • 221TAKING STOCK:
THE PLUSES AND MINUSES OF CONSTRUCTION
The constructive property of memory refl ects the creative nature of our mental processes,
which enables us to do things like understand language, solve problems, and make deci-
sions. This creativity also helps us “fi ll in the blanks” when there is incomplete informa-
tion. For example, remember the experiment in which some participants inferred that
John was using a hammer after reading that he was pounding a nail. Imagine how tire-
some it would be if we had to explain everything in excruciating detail in order to know
what was happening. After all, John could be pounding the nail into the birdhouse with
a rock! Luckily, we know that a hammer is the tool that is usually used to pound nails.
Even though this creativity serves a good purpose, it sometimes results in errors of
memory. These errors, plus the fact that we forget many of the things we have expe-
rienced, have led many people to wish that their memory were better—an idea that
most students would agree with, especially around exam time. However, the case of
the Russian memory expert Shereshevskii (S.) shows that perhaps almost-perfect mem-
ory may not be advantageous after all. After extensively studying S., the Russian psy-
chologist Alexandria Luria (1968) concluded that S.’s memory was “virtually limitless”
(though Wilding & Valentine, 1997, point out that he did occasionally make mistakes).
Although S.’s impressive memory enabled him to make a living by demonstrating
his memory powers on stage, it did not seem to be very helpful in other aspects of his
life. Luria described S.’s personal life as “in a haze.” And when S. performed a memory
feat, he had trouble forgetting what he had just remembered. His mind was like a black-
board on which everything that happened was written and couldn’t be erased. Many
things fl it through our minds briefl y, and then we don’t need them again. Unfortunately
for S., these things stayed there even when he wished they would go away.
S. also was not good at reasoning that involved drawing inferences or “fi lling in the
blanks” based on partial information. We do this so often that we take it for granted,
but S.’s ability to record massive amounts of information, and his inability to erase it,
may have hindered his ability to do this.
A.J.’s excellent memory for personal experiences, which we described at the begin-
ning of the chapter, differed from S.’s in that the contents that she couldn’t erase were not
numbers or names from memory performances, but the details of her personal life. This
was both positive (recalling happy events) and negative (recalling unhappy or disturbing
events). But was her memory useful to her in areas other than remembering life events?
Apparently, she was not able to apply her powers to help her remember material for
exams, as she was an average student. And testing revealed that she had impaired
performance on tests that involved organizing material, thinking abstractly, and
working with concepts—skills that are important for thinking creatively.
What the cases of S. and A.J. illustrate is that it is not necessarily an advantage
to be able to remember everything; in fact, the mechanisms that result in supe-
rior powers of memory may work against the constructive processes that are an
important characteristic not only of memory, but of our ability to think creatively.
Moreover, storing everything that is experienced is an ineffi cient way for a sys-
tem to operate because storing everything can overload the system. To avoid this
“overload,” our memory system is designed to selectively remember things that are
particularly important to us or that occur often in our environment (Anderson &
Schooler, 1991). Although the resulting system does not record everything we expe-
rience, it does operate well enough to have enabled humans to survive as a species.
One way to appreciate the survival value of the memory system is to remember our
discussion in Chapter 3 of why we may erroneously perceive the object in Figure 3.24a
(repeated here as ● Figure 8.15) as an animal lurking behind a tree. Our perceptual
system, like our memory system, is designed to use partial information to arrive at
a “best guess” solution to a perceptual problem, which is correct most of the time.
Occasionally, this system comes up with an erroneous perception (see Figure 3.24b),
but most of the time it provides the correct answer. The few errors we may experi-
ence are more than compensated for by a feature of our perceptual system that is●FIGURE 8.15 The “animal lurking
behind a tree” picture from Chapter 3.
This looks like an animal, but maybe it
isn’t one.
Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part.