You Can Learn to Remember: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life pdfdrive com

do animals remember?
The phrase to have a “memory like an elephant” means to have a good
memory; while to have a “memory like a fish” means to have a bad one.
But can animals truly remember? Some have highly developed genetic
memory – many species (such as horses and giraffes) are able to walk from
the moment of birth, an ability inherited in their genes from their parents
(unlike human babies).
Much of the behaviour of wild animals is pre-programmed before birth.

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Unlike humans, wild animals rely upon instinctual behaviour more than
learned experiences.
Contrarily, most pet owners claim that animals show signs of recognition
and learning: think how the cat comes running when it hears its owners’
footsteps; or how most pets respond to the call of their names.
On the other hand, some experts believe that semantic memory may well
use somewhat different mental processes. It seems that our memory of rules and
concepts is much less susceptible to the pro cess of forgetting than is our
memory for facts. We remember the meaning of a sentence long after we have
forgotten the exact words. In one experiment, university undergraduates who
were told about a Native American hunting trip in canoes later remembered the
story as being about a fishing trip in boats – something with which they were
more familiar. The words were misremembered in order to preserve a more
expected sense. Some believe that forgetting precise facts is partly a sacrifice to
preserve our semantic memory.
Procedural memory is very different from declarative memory, and seems
to involve completely different parts of the nervous system. It is the memory of
how to do things, rather than what they are, and it allows us to perform acquired
skills – for the most part unconsciously – such as riding a bike and even walking
upright. None of these abilities is acquired easily, but it is often claimed that,
once in place, a procedural memory lasts a lifetime. People who have not ridden
a bike in years relearn the skill in minutes. Jockeys who have been thrown from
a mount and brain-damaged so badly that they are no longer able to recognize a
horse, or identify their animal when asked to do so, are still capable of riding it.
For this reason it has been suggested that, whereas declarative memories exist
solely in the brain, procedural memories may in part be stored throughout the
body, in the nerve cells that control the muscles.
However, some researchers have discovered that the survival of procedural
memory depends upon the skill concerned. Only continuous skills that require a
constantly varying response to a constantly varying stimulus are remembered for
a lifetime – such as riding a bike, or anything involving balance. So-called
discrete skills, requiring a succession of separate actions – such as driving a car
– are not nearly so permanent, and can deteriorate notice ably without practice,
even after a relatively short period of time.