Objects and memory: academic research

My research until now has mainly been led by general understanding of cognitive psychology and my own conclusions about how memories and objects are connected. Further investigation into existing research needs to be conducted to help validate my findings and to be able to compare them. To help situate this project within an academic context, some research has been conducted into how memory and the physical form is related.

The first article that I looked at is a paper about research that has been conducted by the University of Bristol into how people  remember faces and names and it is available here at Science Daily. Supposedly, research has shown that 'we can recognise faces much better if we have extra clues as to where or indeed when we encountered them in the first place'. There is a concept of an 'internal library' and we connect faces to the environmental factors and memory of where they were encountered. The memory of the physical form seems to be affected by the strength of the association is with where it was encountered.

Of specific interest were two types of recognition memory: ''object-in-place recognition memory'' (remembering where we put our keys), and ''temporal order recognition memory'' (when we last had them).

There is lots of research into object recognition memory and this is explored in this paper. When an object is taken out of context, it can be said that we remember it by trying to remember the associations with it, and this applies to my project and research into memory and objects. I have suggested that objects represent a 'link' to memory or memories that may or may not be implied by their form and may be different for different people. I have said that they provide a 'vessel' for memories. Supposedly this also works the other way round: whilst we are trying to remember where an object is from we attempt to remember the context to remember the significance of said object.

My project has taken this concept  a step further and tried to create a flexible object that can be a 'vessel' for many different memories and that the memories don't have to be 'static'. The significance of said object can be different for different people, and it can form a part of different experiences for different individuals. Memories only exist momentarily and are not stored in the object which emphasises the objects significance as a 'vessel rather than a 'container' for memories, unlike many other digital artefacts i.e. computers and phones that store many type of textual communications for later reference.

Objects are used in group gaming over the internet through game consoles and TV’s or computers. These are experience ‘vessels' AND containers: they allow transient memory: gaming, but also store information about how well a player doing i.e. wins vs. losses or other things. 

I must remember this factor in my project: if there is anything can be 'adjusted' during communication, it may need to be 'reset' at the end of communication otherwise it would be possible to retrieve this information from a device after the fact. i.e. if there is a button which can be manipulated and it is left manipulated, you will be able to see is state even after interaction. This means that a memory is 'stored'. However, the memory would be overwritten at the next interaction, so it is debatable whether this is acceptable or not and whether it may indeed form transient memory and be of value to users.

Another article that was looked at was at scienceblogs.com and is available here and it suggests that the orientation of the viewer to an object affects their memories of it. Also, the physical aspects of the space affect how we remember other objects within them. 'The orientation of the viewer and the surrounding area can impact our memory for object locations'. 

 So, when we're confronted with such a massive landmark, do we use it to organize the surrounding area as well? Several studies have shown that we do pay attention to the surroundings of objects in order to remember their location.

Objects and memory has long been researched within psychology and applied to technology and design. The field of HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) is influenced by human psychology and how people interact with digital artefacts and finding what they like and don’t like based on the way their minds work and the experiences that they've had.

This is a face memory test by the BBC. The test is in three parts. In part one you are shown 12 photos, part 2 is another 12 photos and in part three you are shown 48 photos and have to decide whether you have seen the photos before and if yes, then if they were in part 1 or 2. I rushed this test slightly so only took 2 minute breaks which probably affected the result as i did badly on 'temporal memory': when i remembered it at 65 % compared to 68% average, although well on 'recognition memory': if i had seen it before at 95% versus 92%.

'Sleep scientists say that:

·          Recognition memory for faces is unaffected by sleep loss. A person who has not slept for as much as 35 hours can perform as well as someone who is not sleep deprived.

·          The area of the brain that controls temporal memory can be affected by prolonged sleep loss and/or ageing. So a healthy 65 year old who sleeps normally would be able to perform this test similarly to a 20 year old who has gone without sleep for 36 hours.'

It interested me to see if I could apply some of the theories from earlier research to this test: if I moved between rooms between tests to see if the physical aspects of the space affected my performance. It did. I improved my performance by 30% simply by associating the memory of the faces with different rooms.