7 replies to this topic

[ironfistx]

Do you ever just get a thought in your head for something you were supposed to do?  You get mad at yourself for not remembering.  To be precise, I am talking about something that you actually told yourself to do.

 

I will illustrate.  If you remember one night that you forgot to put your shoes away, that is fine.  The case I am talking about is if you take your shoes off, leave them out, and say to yourself that you are going to put them away before bed.  And then you realize you didn't.  In those cases, can you do something to mentally make up for not remembering?  An idea would be to quickly get out of bed and go put them away because you said you were going to.

 

You have a list of things that you are going to get at the store.  When you get back you remember that you forgot one.  You immediately return to the store and get it.  It doesn't matter what you were doing.  The fact that you told yourself you were going to get it implies you have to go get it.  Now.  Because you said you would.  Are you doing something?  Too bad, go get it.

 

You have something in your car that you were going to bring inside.  You said to yourself that you were going to bring it with you.  You get inside and realize you forgot it.  Right away, go back to your car and get it.  You have to do it because you said you were going to.

 

Is this a process by which one could improve their memory?  It would be more convenient to just get it next time you go to your car, however you said that you were going to bring it in that time, so you go do it now.  For the first example, you can just put your shoes away the next morning, but you told yourself that you were going to do it that night, which means you have to go do it.

What about furthering it?  Forget something in your car, go back to your car and back ten times as punishment.

 

Didn't do something you said to yourself you were going to do?  Go do it ten times (or whatever number) to make up for it.  Can this create new connections in the brain?  Is it possible to rewire the brain to stop forgetting things?  The punishment for not doing something you said to yourself that you would is that you have to do it more the second time.

 

Is this like psychosis bordering on OCD or over a specific duration would this actually make you better at remembering to do the things you said you were going to do?

[psychejunkie]

I believe this is a terrible thing to do!

 

If you think you can improve your recall or memory consolidation by Condition Training it, forget it!

Condition Training most only works for conscious tasks, not unconscious ones.

 

[umop 3pisdn]

I think all you'll be training yourself to do is not notice when you've forgotten something (because noticing you've forgotten something results in punishment, it forms a negative association). When you notice you've forgotten something, just calmly remind yourself and get yourself back on track with no fuss, that's how you train yourself to notice and abandon distractions in meditation, and the alternative of punishing yourself for distractions is actually actively counterproductive.

[gamesguru]

you could also reward yourself for remembering. i think its unlikely to improve memory much.... but better command of your powers? maybe. the most likely result of punishing forgetfulness and rewarding attentiveness is a large head dressed up with self-command, but with no where to go and nothing to show for its size

[fairy]

In the behavioral sciences, the terms "positive" and "negative" refer when used in their strict technical sense to the nature of the action performed by the conditioner rather than to the responding operant's evaluation of that action and its consequence(s). "Positive" actions are those that add a factor, be it pleasant or unpleasant, to the environment, whereas "negative" actions are those that remove or withhold from the environment a factor of either type. In turn, the strict sense of "reinforcement" refers only to reward-based conditioning; the introduction of unpleasant factors and the removal or withholding of pleasant factors are instead referred to as "punishment," which when used in its strict sense thus stands in contradistinction to "reinforcement." Thus, "positive reinforcement" refers to the addition of a pleasant factor, "positive punishment" refers to the addition of an unpleasant factor, "negative reinforcement" refers to the removal or withholding of an unpleasant factor, and "negative punishment" refers to the removal or withholding of a pleasant factor.

 

Source: https://en.wikipedia...i/Reinforcement.

 

So we are talking about positive punishment here. The idea is very interesting and in my opinion deserves some research.

[gamesguru]

it's basically working as a professor or dual-n-back monkey. you do well, you win trophies. you do poorly, you win the chance to try again (well not so much as a professor haha).

[ironfistx]

When you are making dinner you turn on the wrong burner. You made a mistake accordingly. Might you punish yourself by preparing something else; You cannot use that appliance today because you made a mistake.

[ironfistx]

Can this kind of action lessen the amount of mistakes somebody makes?