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Do you have > 5-second auditory memory? | ||
Tags: Language Acquisition Theory | Memory | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5670 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes  Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 1 of 14 21 March 2013 at 2:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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If you meet a stranger, and they tell you their name, can you remember it five seconds later, or is it "in one ear and out the other"?
Likewise, if somebody tells you a telephone number for, say, a local plumber, can you keep it in your head for a few seconds and then dial it, or do you have to write it down first? I ask, because for a few months now I have been looking into memory and its relationship to language learning. In the past, I always assumed that language learning is about getting things into your long-term memory. However, I have been reading a lot about research over recent months that shows that really great language learners have a perfectly ordinary long-term memory, and what differentiates them is that they actually have really great short-term auditory memory. Hence, my questions at the top of this post. That is, according to research, great language learners should remember names, phone numbers, and other bits of information for several seconds longer than average: long enough to "process" the information. Whereas most of us forget something the instant we hear it, so there is no time to dwell on it. Personally, my short term auditory memory has always been pretty bad. In recent years, though, it has started to become better (despite me getting older) and this seems to have helped my language learning. I am very interested, then, in hearing the experiences of others here, from both accomplished polyglots, and also folks like me who always struggled with language learning. At some point in the next couple of months, I will post a detailed summary of this whole area, including a summary of feedback I receive here. Edited by Splog on 21 March 2013 at 2:24pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 14 21 March 2013 at 2:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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I forget things almost before I hear them. And my cure for that is to learn things through writing, where I have more time - enough to make repetitions and invent 'memory hooks'. If I really want to remember something then I have to find a place for it in some kind of conceptual map.
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| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4534 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 3 of 14 21 March 2013 at 2:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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I would love to see some of the research you have been looking at. I used to study Visual Short-Term Memory (VSTM), the visual equivalent to Auditory Short-Term Memory.
With VSTM the usual argument is that you can hold about four things in memory (though there is a lot of debate about what that actually means). However, you can maintain these four things for a long time, every accurately, if you are distracted by new visual items. I had read that a similar thing was true for Auditory STM (i.e., you could on average hold about 5 seconds worth, but you could maintain that for a long time if you weren't distracted). So I am curious, does the research you have read suggest that people are able to hold more than 5 secs worth of auditory memory at a time (e.g., 10 secs) or does it suggest that they are able to maintain/rehearse the 5 seconds they have heard for a longer time? There is no evidence, as far as I am aware, that better VSTM leads to better long term retention of visual scenes in memory, so I would suspicious of any such similar claims vis-a-vis Auditory STM and language learning. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4640 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 4 of 14 21 March 2013 at 3:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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Interesting topic Splog. Depends what you mean by short-term. If it is a question of seconds or a couple of minutes, then I think mine is reasonably good. However, it also depends on how much I concentrate. To remember a phone number I really need to concentrate harder than to remember a name, for example.
Unlike you, I think my short-term memory was better when I was younger (and my long-term memory as well, by the way). When I study new vocabulary, it takes more of an effort and more repetition to remember the meaning of new words even in the short term. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4534 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 5 of 14 21 March 2013 at 3:37pm | IP Logged | ||
"Short-term" in memory research is used to contrasted with long-term memory. It's really what you can store short-term before it's put into a longer more permanent store. STM is not just different in terms of time of retention, it's also thought to be relatively unprocessed. So for example, the standard visual STM experiments shows two images, one after the other, with some possible change between them and asks people to report if there is a difference or not. Simply flipping the image, or doubling its size or whatever, will destroy all short-term memory, because the semantics of the scene have not yet been extracted. The semantics only comes in at a later (higher) processing stage. Presumably this is also true for Auditory STM, so it makes me wonder how useful 5s vs 10s of auditory short-term memory would really help. Edited by patrickwilken on 21 March 2013 at 3:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 6 of 14 21 March 2013 at 3:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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I remember practically all of those useless details. If someone tells me their name I
will remember (and I will have a visual image of that person to go with it - I memorise better visually, but auditive I can still do a lot). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Majka Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic kofoholici.wordpress Joined 4658 days ago 307 posts - 755 votes Speaks: Czech*, German, English Studies: French Studies: Russian | Message 7 of 14 21 March 2013 at 4:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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I would say in everyday life the information goes really "in one ear and out the other".
However, I am able of walking through a production plant and doing consecutive interpreting in about 2-8 minutes chunks without notes. The time depends on the complexity and distractions. It does take effort and I am not able to do it all day. And the information is gone as soon as the translation is out of my mouth. But this indicates that my main problem isn't memory but focus - in everyday situation, I am too scattered, I am multitasking too much or simply dismissing the information as soon as I hear it. My ADD-personality shows. I think even here, motivation plays a role. If somebody offers you ton of money to remember a telephone number, the chances are high that you will be able to repeat it when asked 2 minutes later. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| LaughingChimp Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4700 days ago 346 posts - 594 votes Speaks: Czech* | Message 8 of 14 21 March 2013 at 5:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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I can usually pick up words or sequences of sounds that are used repeatedly, even if I don't speak the language, so I guess I can hold at least two or three whole sentences in my auditory memory.
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