Today's media covers a wide variety of different life challenges and triumphs, one of the more common movie plots seems to be the idea of memory loss and the process of recalling/recovering ones previous experiences. In the movie Unknown (2011), Dr. Martin Harris is the victim of a terrible car accident, and when he comes out of his four day coma he remembers only, "bits and pieces" of what happened. Dr. Harris is aware of who he is, as well as his wife's name and why he is in Germany as well as other details including his coworkers name and office number, but surprisingly not his wife's phone number. I believe that Dr. Harris can remember his coworker's number because they have been in contact for quite some time, and he has hand dialed his number on numerous occasions. Whereas, his wife's number is likely to be set as a speed dial, and he would not have to know the numbers. This might be seen as a stretch, but after thinking about this, I asked a few friends and they can recall more numbers of old friends because they had to dial them, then they could of their siblings, parents or more recent friends. I know this to be true of myself too. Why can we retain the numbers of childhood friends better than that of those we call most often? Due to the brains ability to retain long term memory for years, or decades, we remember the childhood numbers because most of us did not have cell phones and had to physically press the buttons whereas now all one has to do is type in the name of friend XYZ, hit call and that is it. The actual number is only typed in once upon adding it as a contact, rather than every time you want to talk. The repetition of dialing the numbers years ago put these digits in our long term memory, as for the newer numbers, they are only saved to short term memory and my only be remembered long enough to enter them into ones contact list.
Repetition and Memory
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I think that we may also be more likely to remember an old friend's phone number because when we were young we probably did not have a cell phone, so we had to dial it in order to call them. I don't have any of my friend's numbers memorized because they are in my cell phone's contacts.
I see where you are coming from with this argument. There are numbers that you probably remember better than others. However, I kind of find it hard to believe that he would remember his co-workers' numbers and not his wife's due to this idea. Especially since most of the world uses cell phones, I would assume that everyone just saves people's numbers under their contact name. Therefore, you technically would never have to know their number again. I feel like you could make the same argument about the man knowing the co-worker for a long time versus the wife. The man obviously knew the woman for a long time if they got married. I also feel like there would be a better chance that he remembered her number because he meant so much to her. I feel like his injury just affected different parts of the brain. It seems like certain memories may have been erased depending on where they were located in the brain.
Just throwing out ideas..
Goog point, I've never really thought about that but it's totally right. I don't think I could tell you a single non-family member number in my phone.
This concept can also be applied to successful study habits. Copying down notes from the slideshow blindly really doesn't do jack, just like dialing a number one time ever to add it to your contact list. Only writing and re-writing/thinking/re-evaluating the knowledge in question will ever really set it in your mind successfully.