As regular readers know, I celebrated a milestone birthday last summer. I've officially reached the age where it's no longer funny when I can't remember a word, why I walked into a room, or the plot of a book I read or a movie I watched.
And sometimes, it's scary.
As a psych instructor, I know something about how memory is constructed and, yet, I didn't consider even the most basic aspects of that before I pushed the panic button. But, last week, when I read this article in Fast Company, I heaved a sigh of relief.
Attention, something we take for granted, is hugely important and plays perhaps the biggest role in memory acquisition. And you know how walking back into the room you came from can remind you of what you went in search of in another room? Turns out those same cues can play a role in why so much of our activity (or lack thereof) during the pandemic is a blur. The sheer repetition of walking into the same room without much change in scenery can diminish the value of those visual cues. And that cloud of fear, anxiety (and perhaps worse) we've been breathing in for almost two years? It dampens our ability to truly focus and pay attention, reducing the likelihood that we'll actually get information into our memory in the first place.
I still don't know why I can't bring the just-right word to mind with the same ease as before, but perhaps thinking a bit more about how memory is constructed will help me chill out a bit, control what I can (my attention) and put a few strategies into place.
Definitely beats panic and the mourning the loss of my erstwhile youth.
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