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{{B}}The Need
to Remember{{/B}} Some people say they have no memory at all: "I just can't remember a thing!" But of course we all have a memory. Our memory tells us who we are. Our memory helps us to make use In the present of what we have learnt in the past. in fact we have different types of memory. For example, our visual memory helps us recall facts and places. 'Some people have such a strong visual memory, they can remember exactly what they have seen, for example, pages of a book, as a complete picture. Our verbal (言语的) memory helps us remember words and figures we may have heard but not seen or written: items of a shopping list, a chemical formula, dates, or a recipe. With our emotional (情感的) memory, we recall situations or places where we had strong feelings, perhaps of happiness or unhappiness. We also have special memories for smell, taste, touch and sound, and for performing physical movements. We have two ways of storing any of these memories. Our short-term memory stores items for up to thirty seconds enough to remember a telephone number while we dial. Our long-term memory, on the other hand, may store items for a lifetime. Older people in fact have a much better long-term memory than short-term. They may forget what they have done only a few hours ago, but have the clearest remembrance (记忆) of when they were very young. Psychologists tell us that we only remember a few facts about our past, and that we invent the rest. It is as though we remember only the outline of a story. We then make up the details. We often do this in the way we want to remember them, usually so that we appear as the heroes of our own past or maybe victims needing sympathy (同情). |