08.10.06
How We Make Memories
Check out this article titled How we make memories. The gist of the research is the following:
“Chunking” occurs when otherwise unrelated items are perceived as a unit. For example, the three-letter combination FBI—but not, say, SVQ or TMY—is chunked because it’s associated with an entity, and we hear the grouping so often. Items that are chunked take up less of our mental resources to encode since each item doesn’t have to be encoded separately.
But when something is not a chunk, it can’t be bound to a context, which is important for memory.
In other words, we can remember things better if we can associate them together, and/or previous experiences. So while in some cases we may remember our first experience at something because it was unique or exciting, it will probably seem like a blur if it went by too fast.