Factors Affecting Memory
Memory is concerned with acquiring, storing, retaining, and later retrieving information.
We encounter a lot of stimuli every day. It is not possible to store information about all stimuli. We pay attention to only important stimuli to us and avoid rest stimuli in the environment.
Encoding, storage, and retrieval are the three main processes of memory. Information can be affected at any stage of the memory process and create problems in the future. Here we consider a few different factors than the usual ones that affect memory.
Memory and Smell
It is commonly understood that smells and scents can have a significant impact on memory. The olfactory bulb is thought to be positioned near the amygdala, a brain area connected to emotion feeling, and memory.
Furthermore, the olfactory nerve is located near the hippocampal region, which is linked to memory. They are so intimately related that when people lose their memories (due to aging or disease), they frequently also lose their sense of smell. Scents, on the other hand, would not trigger memories if not for conditioned responses.
When you first come across something, you can tie it to a person, an event, an object, or a moment. The brain establishes a link between smell and memory.
If you come across the smell again, the link is already made, and the memory or mood is ready to be triggered. Because we are exposed to the bulk of new odors during our youth, odours might evoke childhood memories.
Memory and Emotion
Emotional states can have a big impact on memory. Numerous studies have shown that the most vivid memories are frequently related to emotionally charged experiences. These are more likely than neutral experiences to be remembered more frequently and with greater clarity and depth.
Memories are seen differently depending on whether they are associated with pleasant, positive sentiments or painful, negative feelings.
Positive emotions, in particular, appear to fade from our memory more slowly than negative emotions, possibly because they are often linked to more context-specific information. It’s worth noting that there’s no difference in the time it takes for pleasant and bad memories to fade away in people with mild depression.
Memory is affected by mood, particularly during the encoding and retrieval processes. The idea of congruence based on mood states that we recall events that correlate to our current mood, which explains why when we’re happy, we remember happy times, and when we’re sad, we remember only terrible experiences in our lives (and therefore become depressed).
Mood dependence theory, claims that remembering is easier when your mood at retrieval matches your mood during encoding.
Memory and Stress
Stress can have a significant impact on memory and learning. The brain produces neurotransmitters and hormones in response to stressful situations, which change the memory-encoding process in the hippocampus. Stress-induced learning impairs memory recall.
The influence of stress on memory, on the other hand, can be lessened; when the content to be remembered is related to the learning context, memory is improved, even when learning is taking place under stress.
A related study by Schwabe and Wolf demonstrated that memory impairment and the negative effects of stress on learning can be mitigated when memory testing is performed in a situation similar to the original learning task (i.e. in the same room).
Participants who were agitated and were not to be taught were placed in a room with a vanilla smell, and their recall improved in a similar room (with a vanilla scent), but declined in a different one (i.e. no vanilla scent). Both stress-free and stressed subjects experienced this.
The finding could be useful in the future. Instead of an examining room, students are more likely to perform well in their regular classroom. Eyewitnesses are more likely to recall information at the scene of an event than in court.