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

the power of suggestion
Hypnosis (a deep state of relaxation, akin to sleeping) is usually brought
about by external suggestion. Psycho analysts use it to help patients recall
blocked memories. A person in a hypnotic state is able to respond to
instructions and answer questions.
Responses to hyp nosis vary considerably from one individual to the
next, as does the clarity of the memories that are recalled. Some people
have been able to recall their experience of their mother’s womb and of
birth. Why hypnosis works is not altogether clear, but it is thought that
during deep relaxation we are able to make more fluid associations in our
minds (just as we do when we dream), which permits us to find more cues
to take us to certain apparently forgotten memories.
memory in children
H
ow old are babies before they begin to remember? And can a fetus learn in
the womb? In early infancy we lack a consciousness of ourselves as individuals.
As a result, experts used to think that we could not possibly have memories,
because we could not recognize events as happening to us. In fact, at the moment
of birth, infants already have a preference for their mother’s voice, presumably
because its characteristic timbre has already been learned in utero. The neurons
in the brain of the human fetus experience a growth spurt that starts some ten
weeks before birth. New axons begin to proliferate, increasing the opportunity
for communication between the dendrites and axons of other neurons. This
process allows the formation of memory (see pp.
40–43
).
Most researchers now agree with the instincts of many mothers that their
babies recognize them within only a few days of birth. It seems that memory –
however rudimentary – precedes consciousness, and not the other way round. It
can be argued that memories – and a sense of continuity between them – are the
necessary building blocks for any permanent sense of self.

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At around eight or nine months, infants begin to show clear signs of having
developed explicit and short-term memory (see pp.
36–7
). They begin to gesture
to specific objects that they want, and can search for objects after they have been
hidden. Several months to a year later, the child is already acquiring language,
and therefore developing semantic memory (see pp.
37–8
). However, a child’s
semantic memory is much more fluid than an adult’s, and grows by a
combination of loose association and trial and error. In one case, a child first
used the word “quah” for a duck on a pond, then for a liquid, then a coin with an
eagle on it, then any coin-like round object. Similarly, a child who learns the
word “ball” may then use it for a balloon, anything that can be bounced, a
rounded pebble, and so on.
The child’s mind appears to be constantly experimenting, testing, adopting
and rejecting new hypotheses about the external world. As a result, its memories
are not as stable as they will become in adulthood. This also explains why the
child’s grasp of facts will appear to progress in fits and starts, and why language
skills that seem to have been securely learned can temporarily seem to disappear.