Watchting the World: Ignoring useless information aids memory

by What-A-Coincidence 3 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  What-A-Coincidence

  Ignoring useless information aids memory - study 23 Nov 2005 19:47:08 GMT

  http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L23608850.htm

  LONDON, Nov 23 (Reuters) - Filtering out useless information can help people increase their capacity to remember what is really important, researchers said on Wednesday.

  Scientists at the University of Oregon in the United States have demonstrated that awareness, or visual working memory, does not depend on extra storage space in the brain but on an ability to ignore what is irrelevant.

  "Until now, it's been assumed that people with high capacity visual working memory had greater storage, but actually it's about the bouncer (I need one or at least an upgrade )-- a neural mechanism that controls what information gets into awareness," said Edward Vogel who headed the research team.

  The findings reported in the journal Nature would overturn the accepted concept of memory capacity, which has suggested that how much a person can remember depends on the amount of information crammed into the brain at one time.

  Vogel and his team believe the results could lead to better ways to enhance memory and improve the diagnosis and treatment of cognitive problems such as attention deficit disorder and schizophrenia.
• 

  rebel8

  That is the technique Einstein used.

  I find the comment about schizophrenia makes me question the researchers' credibility. It is not a cognitive problem like ADD as the article says. It is a brain disorder that causes psychosis. Telling psychotic people to ignore unimportant info will do nothing to help them.
• 

  jgnat

  I wonder, rebel8, if there might be a connection for schizophrenics, though. I've done some reading that suggests that schizophrenics CANNOT filter out irrelevant information, so they are constantly bombarded, distracted. My son described his school years as wading through molasses. Dragging through the day took all of his concentration. He was exhausted at the end of the day. I also confuse him if my body language does not match what I am saying.

  Perhaps we can't teach them that irrelevant information can be ignored, but perhaps we can learn more of the brain chemistry that keeps them from being able to do so.

  P.S. I might be the world-leader at filtering information. If the data is indexed, I don't retain. Unfortunately, I also do not retain... people's names, keys, bus pass, work pass, gloves, lunch bag, notebook, bank card.... nearly ALL of these items I have lost track of in the last month.
• 

  The Thinker

  I find the part on schizophrenia very interesting, I've studied with and/or knew about 6 schizo's as a JW and my Brother in-law is a schizo, and I noticed that they all seem to woffle on about useless information that I wasn't interested in, it wasn't me its just that it was trully useless and irrelevent to anything that we were discussing, and they all seem to just keep going on and on. I thought it was just me who was impatient but after a while I noticed a pattern and this info just confirms it more.