【英语语言学习】记忆没有你想象中的可靠

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

 

So, what's your first memory? You're a baby or a toddler. Maybe it's a specific experience, maybe an impression. Maybe someone's face or just a kind of feeling or sense, or maybe it's a compilation¹ of stories over years. And maybe it's less true than you think it is.

 

In his new book, "Pieces of Light," Charles Fernyhough digs deep into the recesses² of memory to figure out what shapes it, how it works and why some things stick with us forever. He's an associate professor of psychology³ at Durham University in the U.K. Charles Fernyhough joins us from the BBC studios in London.

 

Welcome to the program.

 

CHARLES FERNYHOUGH: Hi, thanks for having me on.

 

MARTIN: So I'd like to start, Charles, by asking you about your first memory. I imagine you've thought about this. What is the first thing you remember?

 

FERNYHOUGH: Well, I'm on the floor of the living room in the house where I lived at the time. And I've got this toy forklift truck and I'm pushing this thing across the carpet. And there's something really strange about this memory; it's vivid, I can imagine the quality of the light, something of the atmosphere in the room. But I'm looking at myself in the third person. OK? I'm not looking out at the room through my own eyes.

 

MARTIN: Yeah.

 

FERNYHOUGH: I'm looking at myself as a kid in this memory. And that is one of the most puzzling things about particularly early memories. Sometimes we see ourselves in our memories as people in the third person - we don't look out through our own eyes. And this is one of the clues that psychologists get about how memory works as a reconstruction⁴.

 

If I was really recording⁵ and reliving an experience that I kind of recorded in my mind, I should be looking out at that room through my own eyes. But I'm not - something has flipped⁶ around. The perspective has changed.

 

MARTIN: So it was really interesting when I read that in the book because it's the same for me. My first memory, I'm in the house where I was growing up and really little. Something kind of embarrassing has happened to me and I remember that sense of kind of shame. But I am looking down on myself as a little kid, as a toddler. I'm not looking out for my toddler eyes. And I hadn't thought about that as a way I may have reconstructed.

 

What does that mean? Does that mean that's not a real memory of mine?

 

FERNYHOUGH: Not necessarily. It means that something has happened, something is being reshaped. Actually Sigmund Freud noted⁷ this when he wrote about these kinds of memories. It doesn't mean that the memory is false. But it does mean that your perspective on it has been flipped. And so, really, all you can say is that it is a sign that memory is a reconstruction of past events.

 

We don't record events like a video camera recording, you know, what's going on. We gather together lots of different kinds of information. We store it sometimes for decades and then we put it all back together. In the moment, we reconstruct those events from the perspective of now.

 

MARTIN: Is there any downside to that, to having a vivid imagination and constructing really detailed⁸ memories that may or may not be true, but they become part of the story we tell ourselves about the life that we've lived?

 

FERNYHOUGH: I think this is my point in the book. There's something weird⁹ going on with memory. The scientists are telling us that memory is a reconstruction, and yet we, as people, tend to stick to our old-fashioned ideas that memory works like a video camera, for example - that it records and it files things away in mental DVDs that we can pull down and set playing. And in a way, that's not surprising because we see memories as foundational for who we are.

 

You know, we commonly feel that we are our memories. You know, our memories define us. So something needs to change. What I'm trying to do with this book is say, let's have a different relationship with our memories. Accepting that memories are not literal representations of the past as it happened doesn't mean that we have to forget about them or start disbelieving them all. But they're shaped by who we are now. They're shaped by what we feel, what we believe, what our biases¹⁰ are right now.

 

MARTIN: How much of our memory do we reconstruct because of conversations we have with other people?

 

FERNYHOUGH: It may not be intentional¹¹ but it certainly happens. Some of the most interesting research is going on at the moment concerns the social influences on remembering. So, let me give you one example. There's a study done in New Zealand of pairs of twins. And what they did is they brought the twins separately and ask them about events from the past. And they have something like 20 pairs of twins.

 

In 14 of those 20 pairs, each twin would come up with a memory that the other one also claimed. For example, one was swinging across the river on a rope, and then slipping from the rope and falling into the river. Both members of the twin pair were claiming that memory. They can't both have done it. One of them must be making it up. One of them must have appropriated that memory for themselves. And we're doing this sort of thing all the time.

 

We're shaping each other's memories all the time, and particularly in the case of parents and children. So parents are talking about the past all the time. The conversations they have with their kids about the past turned out to be very important for those kids' later memory. But also doing things like, you know, one day packing the video camera and taking footage of the day that, you know, the daytrip or whatever. Another day is not doing so.

 

MARTIN: As a new parent that feels like a lot of pressure.

 

(LAUGHTER)

 

MARTIN: Kind of a strange power to have.

 

FERNYHOUGH: Oh, yeah. I don't want to add to the list of things that parents feel...

 

(LAUGHTER)

 

FERNYHOUGH: ...guilty and anxious about. But also, as couples we're doing this all the time. I think one of the most interesting things about memory in relation to couples getting together is that there's this sense, this kind of pressure to agree on a shared representation of the past. You know, husbands and wives tend not to disagree about the past, you know, wholesale¹². They tend to come to a shared representation of what happened in the past.

 

When people split up or couples get separated or divorced or whatever, those tensions about memory can come back to the surface. And you find out that people start to disagree and actually say, Well, I never - it's never happened that way; it actually happened this way.

 

MARTIN: Do you think we can make our memories sharper?

 

FERNYHOUGH: Well, partly thinking about this book made me realize that remembering more stuff isn't necessarily better. Being able to recall every card in a pack of playing cards or recall pi to a thousand decimal places - why? Why would you want to do that? It's no use to me. For some people it might be important, but it's no use at all for me.

 

What I would like to do is remember the stuff that I remember better, in more detail, more vividly¹³.

 

MARTIN: And you think that's possible that you can get better at remembering?

 

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FERNYHOUGH: I don't have any strong scientific evidence to point to. But having thought a lot about how memory works, my hunch¹⁴ is that by paying more attention to what's going on around you, you can encode the events more fully¹⁵. You can pick up more of those details that later goes on to make that big, rich picture. And so, you can have a more intense and more enjoyable, if you like, a more vivid experience of that event when you come back to it.

 

It's just trying to live the moment more intensely.

 

MARTIN: Charles Fernyhough, his new book is called "Pieces of Light." He's an associate professor of psychology at Durham University in the U.K.

 

Charles, thanks so much for talking with us.

 

FERNYHOUGH: Thank you.

 

MARTIN: Do you remember your first memory? Share it with us on Twitter. I am @rachelnpr.

1 compilation   

n.编译，编辑

参考例句：

• One of the first steps taken was the compilation of a report.首先采取的步骤之一是写一份报告。
• The compilation of such diagrams,is of lasting value for astronomy.绘制这样的图对天文学有永恒的价值。

2 recesses   

n.壁凹( recess的名词复数 )；（工作或业务活动的）中止或暂停期间；学校的课间休息；某物内部的凹形空间v.把某物放在墙壁的凹处( recess的第三人称单数 )；将（墙）做成凹形，在（墙）上做壁龛；休息，休会，休庭

参考例句：

• I could see the inmost recesses. 我能看见最深处。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• I had continually pushed my doubts to the darker recesses of my mind. 我一直把怀疑深深地隐藏在心中。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 psychology   

n.心理，心理学，心理状态

参考例句：

• She has a background in child psychology.她受过儿童心理学的教育。
• He studied philosophy and psychology at Cambridge.他在剑桥大学学习哲学和心理学。

4 reconstruction   

n.重建，再现，复原

参考例句：

• The country faces a huge task of national reconstruction following the war.战后，该国面临着重建家园的艰巨任务。
• In the period of reconstruction,technique decides everything.在重建时期，技术决定一切。

5 recording   

n.录音，记录

参考例句：

• How long will the recording of the song take?录下这首歌得花多少时间？
• I want to play you a recording of the rehearsal.我想给你放一下彩排的录像。

6 flipped   

轻弹( flip的过去式和过去分词 )； 按（开关）； 快速翻转； 急挥

参考例句：

• The plane flipped and crashed. 飞机猛地翻转，撞毁了。
• The carter flipped at the horse with his whip. 赶大车的人扬鞭朝着马轻轻地抽打。

7 noted   

adj.著名的，知名的

参考例句：

• The local hotel is noted for its good table.当地的那家酒店以餐食精美而著称。
• Jim is noted for arriving late for work.吉姆上班迟到出了名。

8 detailed   

adj.详细的，详尽的，极注意细节的，完全的

参考例句：

• He had made a detailed study of the terrain.他对地形作了缜密的研究。
• A detailed list of our publications is available on request.我们的出版物有一份详细的目录备索。

9 weird   

adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的

参考例句：

• From his weird behaviour,he seems a bit of an oddity.从他不寻常的行为看来，他好像有点怪。
• His weird clothes really gas me.他的怪衣裳简直笑死人。

10 biases   

偏见( bias的名词复数 )； 偏爱； 特殊能力； 斜纹

参考例句：

• Stereotypes represent designer or researcher biases and assumptions, rather than factual data. 它代表设计师或者研究者的偏见和假设，而不是实际的数据。 来自About Face 3交互设计精髓
• The net effect of biases on international comparisons is easily summarized. 偏差对国际比较的基本影响容易概括。

11 intentional   

adj.故意的，有意（识）的

参考例句：

• Let me assure you that it was not intentional.我向你保证那不是故意的。
• His insult was intentional.他的侮辱是有意的。

12 wholesale   

n.批发；adv.以批发方式；vt.批发，成批出售

参考例句：

• The retail dealer buys at wholesale and sells at retail.零售商批发购进货物，以零售价卖出。
• Such shoes usually wholesale for much less.这种鞋批发出售通常要便宜得多。

13 vividly   

adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地

参考例句：

• The speaker pictured the suffering of the poor vividly.演讲者很生动地描述了穷人的生活。
• The characters in the book are vividly presented.这本书里的人物写得栩栩如生。

14 hunch   

n.预感，直觉

参考例句：

• I have a hunch that he didn't really want to go.我有这么一种感觉，他并不真正想去。
• I had a hunch that Susan and I would work well together.我有预感和苏珊共事会很融洽。

15 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。