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| | | Mysteries | Home » » » The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers | | | | | | | Description: | | Daniel L. Schacter, chairman of Harvard University"s Psychology Department and a leading expert on memory, has developed the Þrst framework that describes the basic memory miscues we all encounter. Just like the seven deadly sins, the seven memory sins appear routinely in everyday life. Although we may hate these difÞculties, as Schacter notes, they"re surprisingly vital to a keen mind.
Schacter, whose previous trade book, SEARCHING FOR MEMORY, was called "splendidly lucid" (The New Yorker), offers vivid examples of the memory sins — for example, the absent-mindedness that plagued both a national memory champion and a violinist who forgot that he had placed a priceless Stradivarius on top of his car before driving off. The author also delves into the recent research — such as imaging that shows memories being formed in the brain — that has led him to develop his framework. Together, the stories and the scientific findings examined in THE SEVEN SINS OF MEMORY provide a fascinating new look at our brains, and at what we more generally think of as our minds.
THE SEVEN SINS OF MEMORY is a groundbreaking work that will provide great reassurance to everyone, from twenty-somethings who find their lives are too busy, to baby boomers who mutter about "early Alzheimer"s," to senior citizens who worry about how much (or how little) they can recall. | | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Daniel L. Schacter | | Hardcover:
| 270 pages | | Publisher:
| Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | | Publication Date:
| May 07, 2001 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 0618040196 | | Package Length:
| 9.31 inches | | Package Width:
| 6.27 inches | | Package Height:
| 1.05 inches | | Package Weight:
| 1.2 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 42 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
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 College ClassDec 19, 2009
This book was required for a class, Human Memory, at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. It was very easy to understand, and sometimes it explained concepts better than the actual textbook that was used. I bought it new, in hardback form, from amazon, and was cheaper (including shipping) than the paperback book in the bookstore.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
Engaging read about memory malfunctions and how they can be virtuesDec 06, 2009
Overall Opinion:
"The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers" by Daniel Schacter is an excellent book that describes the various faults of memory, of which everyone has experienced at least one. What initially drew me to the book was its title; the term "sins" is an interesting way to refer to cases when our memory fails us, and I thought it was a clever allusion to the Seven Deadly Sins. "The Seven Sins of Memory" is fascinating and humorous, and I found the abundance of concrete examples and clinical cases in each chapter to be excellent illustrations of each sin. In this review, I hope to persuade others to purchase and read this outstanding book.
Synopsis:
Sins of Omission:
The first three chapters of the book describe the malfunctions of memory which Schacter defines as sins of omission; the first sin described, transience, refers to the act of forgetting that occurs over a period of time. Schacter collaborated with Anthony Wagner and Randy Buckner to study whether the strength of fMRI signals could indicate what words participants would later remember when a list of words was presented to them. They found that the parahippocampal gyrus in the left cerebral hemisphere and the left inferior region of the frontal lobes exhibited greater activity when individuals later remembered words than when they forgot others.
Absent-mindedness refers to lapses of attention that lead to inabilities to recall information that was never encoded properly or has been encoded but overlooked at the moment retrieval is required. For the case of divided attention, being mentally consumed with another task prevents an individual from recording enough specific information necessary for subsequent recollection; for instance, a person with a divided attention who meets another for the first time may later recall a feeling of familiarity but not specific details about the person's name or occupation. Performing routine tasks that require minimal attention, such as driving, result in a lack of recollection for tasks that people had performed "on automatic."
The sin of blocking can be described as the inability to recall information that has not faded from memory but seems to be just out of reach. This "tip of the tongue" sensation occurs more frequently for proper names than common ones. Because proper names provide little information about characteristics of their bearers, new names of people we just meet are difficult to learn. Blocking of familiar names likely occurs because these proper names are not well integrated with concepts and associations related to the bearer.
Sins of Commission:
The remaining four sins are sins of commission. Misattribution involves the assignment of a memory to the wrong source; people may incorrectly remember that they learned a fact from reading the newspaper when in actuality, they heard about it from a friend. These source confusions can be attributed to a failure of an object or action to be properly bound to a particular time and space.
Suggestibility can be defined as a person's tendency to incorporate misleading information external sources into personal memories. Suggestive questions distort memory by creating source memory problems; individuals misattribute information present in the misleading suggestion. Suggestibility has significant implications for police interrogations of eyewitnesses and criminals as misleading suggestions can lead to false memories of an event.
Bias refers to the distortion of new experiences or our memories of them due to present knowledge, beliefs, and feelings. Schacter divides bias into the categories of: 1) consistency and change, which demonstrate how beliefs of ourselves can lead us to reconstruct the past, 2) hindsight, which show that past memories are filtered by current knowledge, 3) egocentric, which portray how the role of the self influences memories, and 4) stereotypical, which show how generic memories form an interpretation of the world.
Persistence refers to intrusive memories that an individual wishes he could forget but cannot. Emotionally charged events are remembered better than non-emotional ones, and persistence exhibits the greatest effect after traumatic experiences, including events such as wars, serious accidents, and childhood abuse.
Finally, Schacter concludes by noting that even though these sins may seem like vices, they can be virtues as well. For example, remembering life-threatening incidents persistently enhances the chance of avoiding future recurrences, which may prove to be crucial to survival. In addition, if transience did not exist, an abundance of information that is no longer useful or needed could overwhelm memory.
Review:
The structure of this book consists of eight chapters, seven of which describe each of the sins of memory and one which describes how the sins can be viewed as virtues rather than vices. I appreciated this framework because it clearly delineated between each sin and allowed for a thorough description of each. The author's writing style flows well, and the diction is not complex. Terms which the general reader may not know are defined, and the sentence structure facilitates readability.
One aspect of the book that I appreciated was the multitude of concrete examples that demonstrated well how each sin manifests itself in everyday life. These examples helped to define clearly the difference between each sin when some appeared to be similar; for instance, the sins of misattribution and suggestibility are quite similar. In fact, suggestibility results from source memory problems, which is how misattribution arises as well. To distinguish between the two, Schacter provided concrete examples of each sin and made sure to use specific diction to differentiate between the two.
In addition, I found the clinical examples of each memory malfunction to be particularly interesting. For instance, to illustrate an extreme and fascinating example of the sin of blocking, Schacter described patient LS, who sustained damage to regions of the frontal and temporal lobes in the left cerebral hemisphere. Following this accident, LS could recognize people with whom he was familiar but failed to produce their names; in addition, he could not retrieve the names of countries or cities but was able to provide conceptual knowledge relating to the places. Interestingly, LS had no difficulty producing common names.
The personal stories illustrating various sins of memory that Schacter detailed were a welcome addition to the book. The stories were often humorous ones that made the book more enjoyable to read, and I found that it made the read more personable and relatable.
As I read about each memory malfunction, I was often amused by the fact that I experience many of them on a frequent basis. I found myself thinking about the numerous times that I can't seem to recall a person's name although his face is familiar, or how I can never remember whether I've locked my car door as I leave the parking garage. In particular, I found it very easy to relate to the chapter on absent-mindedness; I constantly misplace pens, keys, and books while I'm thinking of another task that I have to do later. The frustration experienced is especially great when I ransack my room in search of the misplaced item, only to find it lying innocuously on my desk or in another conspicuous location. Since I exhibit absent-mindedness much more commonly than the other sins, I found the relating chapter on how absent-mindedness occurs to be particularly amusing and fascinating.
In the final chapter where Schacter describes how each sin can be viewed as a virtue, I found the pages on evolutionary adaptations and spandrels to be slightly off-topic. Although he eventually tied this discussion with the sins of memory, I felt like he had digressed a bit and was expounding too much information on adaptations.
Interesting Quotes:
"[My wife] also reminded me not to set the security alarm, because the cleaners do not know the code. I immediately removed the cash needed to pay them...I then resumed what I had been doing (writing this very chapter) and left for the office later that morning. Two hours later, I received a message from a friend who had been notified by our security company that the blaring siren alarm in our house had gone off...the cleaners faced the awkward task of explaining that they intended to clean - not to clean out - our house." - excerpt from the chapter on absent-mindedness.
I found this anecdote to be particularly humorous because it sounds exactly like something I would do. I also think it's quite ironic that this incident occurred as Schacter happened to be writing the chapter about absent-mindedness.
Conclusion:
I extremely enjoyed reading "The Seven Sins of Memory" partly because I found it so easy to relate to the memory malfunctions that Daniel Schacter described. Schacter's writing is clear and easy to understand, and the discussions in the book flow well from one topic to another. Every chapter contains fascinating clinical examples of each sin and thoroughly describes what each sin is in addition to how it occurs. I highly recommend this book to all audiences, especially those who experience bouts of memory malfunctions and have always wondered how and why they occur.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
memoryJul 17, 2009
I find this was a great book. It was recommended to me by a teacher.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Excellent coverage of human memoryDec 22, 2008
This answered many questions I had about human memory. Simple things like why a memory champion struggles to find their car keys. Now I understand the different types of memory much better.
The book also included tips on doing a better job of encoding things we want to remember, explaining why "visualization" is so powerful.
It also made a case for why memory fails, and why people sometimes end up falsely convicted of crimes by testimony of witnesses whose memories have been corrupted by suggestibility.
 Entertaining while scientific -- don't forget to read this bookOct 21, 2008
If you're at all interested in the strange, wondrous, and occasionally disappointing thing known as memory, Daniel Schacter's The Seven Sins of Memory will take you on an exciting and fascinating exploration. A little bogged down by its seemingly endless journey through medical literature, the book is saved by Schacter's selection of quirky and relevant anecdotes and case studies. While I was captivated by the easy writing style, mostly accessible to the layperson, Schacter nevertheless incorporates plenty of scientific inquiry and investigation to satisfy professionals and scholars. Unfortunately, he occasionally gets carried away and veers from what he does best: connecting the hard science with familiar (and famous) experiences and episodes.
Schacter arranges the book around his titular seven sins, or transgressions. The first three sins are related to memory omission: (1) transience, (2) absent-mindedness, and (3) blocking. The latter four are problems of commission; that is, the memories exist but are for some reason incorrect or undesired. These consist of (4) misattribution, (5) suggestibility, (6) bias, and (7) persistence. I wondered throughout the book how Schacter came upon this list of seven. Was it not possible he had missed a different "sin"? Or perhaps some in his list were the result of hair-splitting and could be combined? But despite my continuous brain-racking, I was unable to find either a sin that either needed to be added or removed.
The first chapter deals with one of the more obvious sins: transience, or that often-painful process known as forgetting. Schacter invokes not only Ebbinghaus, one of the pioneers of memory study, but also more recent (and notorious) examples, such as President Clinton's testimony before the grand jury. Despite the high-profile case studies, here Schacter drags a bit, wandering through a litany of researchers' names and their recent fMRI and PET studies. One gets the sense that Schacter could talk (or write) all day about relevant experiments and related brain regions, but I think the skill of a writer is found in distilling and connecting only what is most essential and necessary for one's audience.
Absent-mindedness, the focus of the second chapter, is a sin we are all familiar with. When we are unable to remember where we placed our wallet or our keys, Schacter argues, it is usually because of a failure to encode the information when it happened. This may be because we were preoccupied with other activity, on an "autopilot" of sorts. Other times we forget to do something we meant to do, because we were not paying attention to cues. Here I noticed how well Schacter was able to connect everyday experience with scientific studies to better illustrate memory's functions. Schacter gives some painful examples as well as several intriguing experiments that explore how we attend to details and tasks.
Blocking is another familiar and frustrating phenomenon. Often we clearly know a concept or person, but completely fail to generate the label, that is, the associated word or name. I had simply thought of this as merely a vexing glitch in my memory, but Schacter delves deep in an effort to understand why it happens, and even what it might mean. We block most often on names of other people, for example, but not on names of objects, perhaps indicating the unique existence of a "person identity node" in our cognitive system.
From here on, Schacter shifts gears to focus on erroneous or unwanted recall, instead of failures to recall. The fourth chapter describes misattribution, which can result in a sense of déjà vu, or even perhaps mistakenly identifying the source of a face or a fact.
Distinct from misattribution suggestibility is one of the more treacherous sins and the most fascinating, to me. In chapter five, my favorite, Schacter gives incredible evidence of how our memory is tricked--and in turn tricks us. This has widespread implications, from (as he shows) "recovered memories" of child abuse to false confessions of murder. The wider social and legal context of this sin is what drew me to it.
Bias is not as obvious or dangerous as the other sins, but nevertheless must be considered. The sixth chapter details how our current emotion can influence memories of the past, and vice versa. Several different biases are considered, and all are thought-provoking. Which are we guilty of?
The seventh chapter explains persistence: how memories linger after the occurrence of an event. Most famously, this is seen in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Schacter discusses more of the psychological aspects of persistence; its role as a result and an indicator of depression, for example. More drastically, persistence can drive one to suicide, as in the case of Red Sox pitcher Donnie Moore.
You could argue that all of these are faults of memory, being "sins", but Schacter thinks otherwise. Using an evolutionary perspective, in the final chapter he relates evidence and hypotheses for these transgressions actually being byproducts or even necessary components of useful memory characteristics. Transience, for example, helps us forget unnecessary information, which would otherwise hopelessly overwhelm our cognitive abilities.
This is a very careful and thorough examination of memory, filled with intriguing studies and stories. Despite not having read many other books on memory, I am willing to bet this is one of the better ones. There were times when I felt Schacter could have easily made his point (and enthralled us all the same) with far fewer words: shorter descriptions of experiments and briefer discussions of brain anatomy. However, these were the only points which kept the book from being more accessible to a wider audience. Schacter's knack for tying in literature, his own experiences, famous (and not-so-famous) news stories, and scientific experiments is undeniably impressive. His thorough examination of his topic is also to be commended. On the whole, Schacter admirably balances science with storytelling, and for that I recommend this book.
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