{"id":1499,"date":"2023-07-21T08:54:48","date_gmt":"2023-07-21T08:54:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/?p=1499"},"modified":"2024-10-04T14:50:26","modified_gmt":"2024-10-04T14:50:26","slug":"memory-pt-2-associative-networks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/memory-pt-2-associative-networks\/","title":{"rendered":"Memory (branding!) pt. 2 (Associative networks)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We know what you are thinking. “Memory part 2? I already know about multiple stores, and how information goes in and out of memory. What else can there be to say?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We hear that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But part 2 is the really interesting part. Because part 2 is about what our memory does to the information it stores. And that is crucial for some of the most basic things about how marketing works. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don’t believe us?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Good. As we said in the intro, we academics are very pro skepticism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But do check back at the end of this page. We’ll see if you believe us by then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A little diversion before we start <\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Are you ready for some heavy hitting psychology? Us neither. So let’s do a little light reading. Let’s say you find an old novel in a used book store, and you open it to the first line:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

For whatever reason that line hooks you, and keep reading to the book’s last line, roughly half-million words later (no really<\/a>):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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‘Well, I’m back,’ he said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

For those who aren’t familiar you just made it through Lord of the Rings. Or maybe you just watched the movies, either way. But what would you tell someone who asked for everything you remember#up?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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#down. Feel free to substitute any other long story if you don't know Lord of the Rings. Maybe Harry Potter or Love in the Time of Cholera. Maybe Shrek, the Diary of Anne Frank, Spiderman, Dream of the Red Chamber, or Phineas and Ferb. The exact story does not matter<\/pre>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n
For Lord of the Rings, you might say something very approximately like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“There are these hobbits, who are very short people who are also very chilled-out, and just like to eat and relax. But one of them has this ring that makes you turn invisible, which sounds cool, but it turns out it is a ring of power that makes you turn evil if you have it long enough. So a wizard called Gandalf tells them they have to throw it into a volcano, a long way away, in a place called Mordor which is where Sauron lives. Oh, Sauron is this evil demon guy who made the ring, except he wants it back and keeps sending his armies of orcs to attack places (literal armies with swords and catapults and stuff). And um, Gandalf helps them. And a dwarf and an elf too, And the main character is Frodo, who is the one taking the ring, and he’s a hobbit…”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You wouldn’t use exactly those words, but you would probably convey roughly similar ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What you would not<\/strong> do is recite the novel back, line by line. You couldn’t do that if you tried. I’m guessing you couldn’t tell me even the first line of most books you’ve read, let alone the second or third. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So there are many things you remember about the book, but almost none of that information is the actual words the book was made of. You somehow extracted meaning from those words, and stored that meaning in some new different format that loses almost all of the details (you probably can’t even remember the exact order in which most things happened: What is the last thing the main characters did before they meet Gollum? We don’t know either).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you had to draw a picture of what you know about the book it might look something a little bit like this:<\/p>\n\n\n
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\"A
A possible  mental map for Lord of the Rings<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
Now here is a question for you to ponder: How is it that you take in several hundred thousand words (and\/or 10+ hours of movie runtime) and what you get out of it are a bunch of circles and lines that would be nearly completely incomprehensible to someone who didn’t also know the story already?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It’s ok, I’ll tell you before you scratch those furrows any deeper into your head (you’re thinking hard here, and I appreciate that#up).<\/p>\n\n\n
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#down. And if you aren't, then start thinking harder, darn it!<\/pre>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n
It’s because this, on some fundamental level, is the language that your long-term (semantic) memory system stores information in#up <\/span>. If you want to understand how people remember things, you need to understand the basics of this language.<\/p>\n\n\n
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#down. Technically in psychology-speak this is the 'spreading-activation model' of semantic memory. It isn't the only model for how memory works, but it's one of the most dominant ones, and that's plenty good enough for our purposes<\/pre>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n
The language of long-term memory<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Side note: we’re diving deep into psychology stuff here, but stick with us: it’s going useful places.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It’s easiest to understand this by following an example. So let’s pick a tasty one: If I ask you to start naming Colas, which brand comes to mind first? Which one second? Is there a third?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cool. Let’s map out what just happened in your head. Your mental map for colas, if you had to draw it, might look something like this:<\/p>\n\n\n
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\"A
How you think of colas, maybe (if you have heard of Moxie)?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
The ovals here (cola, coke, etc) are concepts that are stored in your long-term memory. Coke, Pepsi, and Moxie are all brands (Moxie is a very small one#up), and ‘cola’ is your concept for that type of drink. <\/p>\n\n\n
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#down. Moxie Cola is actually older than Coke and Pepsi,  but it never reached their level of fame. Not even close. It is only available in a few parts of the USA, and was bought by Coke in 2018 (story<\/a>)<\/pre>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n
Here’s the important part: Think of these concepts as ‘nodes’ that are connected to each other In a big sprawling multi-dimensional network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We’ll talk about those connections more in a minute but first: How many concepts \/ nodes do you have in your memory?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Answer: Millions of them. Or more. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every meaning that you can think of is a node! You have nodes for specific things (i.e., your best friend, pet cat, or favourite coffee mug), for general types of things (i.e., cats, police officers, galaxies), for feelings (i.e., sad, cheerful, miffed), for activities (like eat, sleep, read) and goals (get sandwich), for times (Christmas, Tuesday, tomorrow), and even for qualities (slow, friendly, crunchy) and abstractions (freedom, diffusion, thoughtfulness) and more. Here’s how to think of it: every meaning in your mind is a node. They are all concepts in your memory. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So… they’re basically just words? <\/h5>
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Often. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most words have a meaning… <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
a) Languages are full of “function words” that don’t have one fixed specific meaning (examples: “the”, “and”, “hers”, “isn’t”)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
b) There can be multiple words with the same meaning (e.g., “near” and “close”)… Especially for people who speak more than one language<\/p>\n\n\n\n
c) There can be multiple meanings for the same word. For example, ‘cool’ is “rich spot” in the English language (that’s what linguists call it) because it has dozens of possible meanings. It can mean “physically cold”, or “awesome”, or “non-judgmental”, or “yes I agree”, or “calm”, or “emotionally distant”, or “we can stop talking about this now”, among other things#up – all depending on how it is said, and in what context. Miraculously, fluent speakers are rarely confused about which meaning was intended.<\/p>\n\n\n
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#down. It has 2 or 3 different meanings in this one old lyric<\/a>: \"How many times did she fall for his lies \/ Should I tell her? Or Should I keep cool?\"<\/pre>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n
c) There are some meanings that we don’t have words for. For example, what do you call the bittersweet feeling of knowing that you are going to miss something when it is gone, even though it is still right in front of you? You might have this concept, but not a word for it#up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
(side note: Beloved comedic genius Douglas Adams defined “Liff” as: “A common object or experience for which no word yet exists”. He wrote an entire pseudo-dictionary<\/a> finding words for dozens of them. It is much recommended for those who a) enjoy British humour, and b) are reasonably tolerant of rude bits)<\/p>\n\n\n
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#down. The word \"pre-nostalgia\" seems to have been re-invented a few times for this, and that seems about right to us <\/pre>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
When I told you to think of colas, you:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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  1. Found the cola node in your long-term memory, and activated it into your working memory. <\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Activation then spread outwards, along its connectors\n