How the mind forgets and remembers: the seven sins of memory - Hardcover

SCHACTER, Daniel L.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0285636839 ISBN 13: 9780285636835

Publisher: Souvenir Press, 2003

Synopsis

A groundbreaking work by one of the world’s foremost memory experts that offers the first framework to explain the basic memory miscues that we all encounter. Daniel L. Schacter, chairman of Harvard University’s Psychology Department, is internationally recognised as one of the world’s authorities on memory, explains that just as the seven deadly sins, the seven memory sins appear routinely in everyday life, and why it is a good thing that they happen and surprisingly vital to a keen mind. The author explains how transience reflects a weakening of memory over time, how absent-mindedness occurs when failures of attention sabotage memory and how blocking happens when we can’t retrieve a name we know well. Three other sins involve distorted memories: misattribution (assigning a memory to the wrong source), suggestibility (implanting false memories), and bias (rewriting the past based on present beliefs). The seventh sin, persistence, concerns intrusive recollections that we cannot forget - even when we wish we could. Daniel Schacter illustrates decades of research into memory lapses with compelling, and often bizarre, examples - for example, the violinist who placed a priceless Stradivarius on top of his car before driving off and the national memory champion who was plagued by absentmindedness. This book also explores recent research, such as the imaging of the brain that actually shows memories being formed. Together the stories and scientific findings examined in How The Mind Forgets and Remembers will reassure everyone from twenty-somethings who find their lives too busy to those in their fifties and sixties who are worried about early Alzheimers. Beautifully written, this original book provides a fascinating new look at our brains and what we more generally think of as our minds.

About this title

About the Author:

Daniel L. Schacter is chairman of the Psychology Department at Harvard University. He has previously written Searching for Memory, which received praise as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and one of Library Journal's Best Science and Technology Books of the Year. The book won the American Psychological Association's William James Book Award and received outstanding reviews in The New Yorker and Publishers Weekly. Schacter was the keynote speaker at the American Psychological Association's 2000 conference and has appeared on 20/20, NBC's Sunday Today, the Discovery Channel, the Learning Channel, and, with Alan Alda, on PBS's Scientific American Frontiers.

About this edition

• Publisher: Souvenir Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0285636839
• ISBN 13: 9780285636835
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272