Memory related demos, tricks and facts to wow design students.

April 3, 2018 3:21 PM

Looking for simple in-class memory experiment/demonstration and/or facts for a bunch of design students.

In the design studio I teach, we'll be focusing this semester's project on making memories.

I'd like to open up the discussion with a simple in-class demonstration about how memory is subjective / unreliable, for instance showing the students something and having them remember it wrong.

It would be great if the demo was not visually focused, as one of the students is vision impaired.

I'd also appreciate your sharing any interesting facts / trivia about memory, or cool new research on the subject that could be simplified far enough for me to explain to 2nd year design students.

posted by signal to Education (4 answers total)

Dan Schacter is a memory researcher who might have a good clip you could use.

Seven Sins of Memory, about memory distortion. His big point is the argument that many common problems with memory are side effects of benefits from how human memory works.

There's this older one from a PBS show about how memories are malleable with Alan Alda narrating it. Visual, yes, but Alda's narration conveys everything well.
posted by Wretch729 at 3:47 PM on April 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

Not sure how to adapt it for visually impaired, but a classic is showing a video of a minor car accident. Then asking people how fast they think the car was going. But people get different versions of the question. Some get asked how fast the car was going when it 'bumped into' the other car, some when it 'hit' the other car, or 'smashed into' another car. Then you can see if the people who heard different versions give different speed estimates, because the language used changes our memory of it.

There's straight up videos of people doing this experiment on youtube, but it would be fun to recreate it in the classroom if we can find a way to make it more accessible.
posted by Caravantea at 4:07 PM on April 3, 2018

I had an old PI who taught human memory. The simplest, most “aha!” example I can think of is where he said aloud a list of 24 or so words, all concrete nouns, one every three seconds or so. Maybe 5-8 of them related to some concept, like CRUST CHEESE PEPPERONI SAUSAGE CIRCLE SLICE SAUCE. The rest were unrelated. Then after giving the list he asked everyone to write down everything they could remember. After the recall period, he asked how many people wrote down PIZZA, as an example of semantic interference.

That Schacter video is great for examples too.
posted by supercres at 4:18 PM on April 3, 2018

This is a fun series of short videos by Transport for London that aim to show how "it's easy to miss something you're not looking for", with the aim of improving cyclist safety. Although they are nominally about 'awareness', I think they also very effectively highlight issues with selective memory and recall. (Note: mostly visual-based, sorry).

If you want to try it on yourself first without seeing spoilers, view the videos isolated from the website first:
- Amazing colour changing card trick
- Whodunnit?
- Basketball awareness test
- Phone joke test
posted by archy at 5:09 PM on April 3, 2018