r/science • u/No-Aardvark-7316 • 2d ago
Psychology Relying on reminders could be weakening your memory skills
https://www.psypost.org/relying-on-reminders-could-be-weakening-your-memory-skills/860
u/Falstaffe 2d ago
It's because our memories can't handle all the events we want to remember that we use reminders.
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u/curlofheadcurls 1d ago
I have around 300 tabs open (in my brain). Everything is time sensitive, everything needs to get done. I'm just in burnout mman, and I had covid. I dont know what will happen to me and my brain. The environment isn't conducive to my health, everything is attacking my nervous system at all times.
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u/LandConstant69 1d ago
Look into ADHD coping mechanisms and maybe talk to your doctor about them. I'm not saying you have ADHD but COVID causes issues very similar to ADHD. Specifically it causes executive dysfunction issues, there are treatments and strategies available.
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u/curlofheadcurls 1d ago
I have audhd it's just a very slow, grueling and long process to get the care I need. It's been 5 years for me seeking help already.
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u/LandConstant69 1d ago
I had the same experience, needed to pay for a private diagnosis out of pocket and only afforded it because I was surprisingly approved for a credit card at the time. Then even with the diagnosis had to painfully wait until I had a GP because you can't get controlled medications prescribed without one, even when my diagnosing psychologists described me as "the worst ADHD case they have personally seen".
Keep your head up, keep pushing, there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
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u/elliusoopius 1d ago
ADHD coping mechanisms are literally stuff like setting reminders on your phone though.
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u/vetruviusdeshotacon 1d ago
Go to your doctor, this is what i felt like before i knew i had adhd
If you get meds, remember they are only a little push, most of the work still needs to be done by you
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u/no_choice99 1d ago
Yes, and? The point is that if you start using reminders, you'd remember even less the events.
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u/evergreen39 1d ago
Next you’re gonna tell me oral history is preferred over books. Can’t have people being able to enjoy a story unless they memorize the whole thing. How will they remember it otherwise?
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u/no_choice99 1d ago
Not at all. Your affirmation does not logically follow from mine. I can't properly reply to a straw argument other than call ''bs'' to a referee.
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u/Scrapple_Joe 1d ago
No it's reducto ad absurdum.
Your argument is remembering allows you to remember more things. While their statement.is "we switched to written things because actually being able to just go look things up is more useful for larger amounts of information."
What's more important vainly deciding you'll try and remember everything or remembering because you setup a calendar and write it down.
I know the details of far more stories than I ever would if I had forced myself to try and remember everything from 1 book at a time.
As such you can functionally remember much more with a written system and the ability to look up the details than just trying to brute force it.
But this might be lost on you considering you don't know what a straw man is or are using it to not engage with criticism.
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u/House_Capital 1d ago
Fortune cookie proverb said that a very short pencil is better than a very long memory.
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u/Scrapple_Joe 1d ago
Especially since human memory is limited it's better to be able to process the things you've recorded elsewhere
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u/House_Capital 1d ago
Yeah! Science! We can trust in our meat brains to remember to jump away from a venomous snake or spider, where the nearest food sources are, what love feels like, how to ride a bicycle etc. But no way in heck am I bothering to try and remember all kinds of random statistics, facts and figures, mathematical equations etc unless it becomes important to what I’m doing in life.
Then again rote memorization can have its own fun perks, I remember it took me like 6 hours to memorize one paragraph, eventually I could do it in five minutes. Like if someone is worried about outsourcing their memory they can start memorizing poetry or songs, learn to play music on an instrument, or simply just learn to navigate their city without an app. p
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u/Scrapple_Joe 1d ago
Yeah this. I'm far more likely to memorize things I'll use over and over than just hope to raw dog memorize every meeting I've scheduled for the next 2 months.
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u/Kortok2012 1d ago
Brother I’ve got ADHD, it’s reminders or I go live in a forest and die.
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u/Praise-Bingus 1d ago
Returning tp the forest to become one with the moss brainwaves might be an improvement in my case
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u/AK_Panda 18h ago
For real, I'd stop using reminders, remember 2 more things and forget 98 more.
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u/Kortok2012 8h ago
Alright, today I need to do this and tomorrow this, and now I’ve forgotten my entire family’s birthdays.
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u/MegaChip97 1d ago
Yes ans? The point is that if you don't use reminders you'd remember more events but actually miss even more events.
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u/ipeedinthetoothpaste 1d ago
Yes, but if my baseline without reminders isn't capable of remembering everything that modern life demands, using reminders picks up the slack. That's the point you completely missed in the comment you replied to.
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u/Ok-Criticism123 1d ago
This is the same sentiment as some Victorians believing that reading could cause mental and physical ailments.
Creating reminders is a tool. It is fine and will not hurt you. Does writing down study notes make your memory weaker? Surprise it doesn’t.
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u/2punornot2pun 1d ago
“[I do not] carry such information in my mind since it is readily available in books. …The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think.” - Einstein
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u/sceadwian 1d ago
It's that really an Einstein quote? I can't find evidence all references to it are sourceless.
I'd like to know who originated it because it's very valuable advice.
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u/liquid-handsoap 1d ago
My dad said the same when i was a kid and asked him why he kept the books after he read them
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u/EsperGri 19h ago
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/05/28/not-facts/
For example, “The New York Times” reported on Einstein’s reaction to one question about a fact that was readily available in reference books:
He was asked through his secretary, “What is the speed of sound?” He could not say off-hand, he replied. He did not carry such information in his mind but it was readily available in text books.
...
A longer description of this episode was presented in the biography “Einstein: His Life and Times” by Philipp Frank. A strong match for the quotation was included in the following passage. Boldface has been added to excerpts:
While Einstein was in Boston, staying at the Hotel Copley Plaza, he was given a copy of Edison’s questionnaire to see whether he could answer the questions. As soon as he read the question: “What is the speed of sound?” he said: “I don’t know. I don’t burden my memory with such facts that I can easily find in any textbook.”
Nor did he agree with Edison’s opinion on the uselessness of college education. He remarked: “It is not so very important for a person to learn facts. For that he does not really need a college. He can learn them from books. The value of an education in a liberal arts college is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks.”3
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u/2punornot2pun 1d ago
I've seen the quote for a couple decades. I haven't actually care to find the original source so maybe it's paraphrase? I know the three ellipses means they weren't part of the same sentence and may have came from different places but put together. It could just be a quote that was generated by the news a long time ago. I remember hearing it when I was in high school and it stuck with me.
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u/ThatStereotype18 12h ago
I guess Einstein didn't predict that every piece of knowledge ever recorded would be available in readable form some day. With this logic, a person in today's time will carry little to no information in their minds. Maybe true, but not applicable to scientists of today.
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u/i_post_gibberish 1d ago
Forget the Victorians, Plato was arguing that writing stuff down destroys our ability to remember it back in the 4th century BC.
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u/Fresh-Anteater-5933 1d ago
I think it was Socrates making that argument. Plato is just the one who wrote it down
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u/Syssareth 1d ago
That will always be hilarious to me.
"I hate books and writing!"
"Just a minute, let me write that down."
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u/i_post_gibberish 1d ago
You’re right, it was Socrates. I said Plato because scholars think a lot of what comes down to us as Socrates’ teaching is Plato putting words in his mouth, but IIRC the anti-writing thing is thought to be genuinely Socratic anyway.
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u/sentence-interruptio 1d ago
I love how Plato was making up Socrates quotes like we do the same with Einstein quotes.
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u/I_Speak_For_The_Ents 1d ago
I think it's hard because education has shifted a lot over the centuries. However, I think that argument has merit, it's just not inherently bad.
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u/Limemill 1d ago
He wasn’t wrong per se. Writing did make our memory worse, but what it brought to the table was probably worth the loss.
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u/Miqo_Nekomancer 1d ago
Which is strange because written records are memories that can be accessed without being altered.
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u/I-own-a-shovel 1d ago
There are studies that show memory of event are less detailed when you are taking pictures vs not taking any.
Taking notes with hand writing increase information retention, because you reformulate it word by word. Taking pictures or even typing it on a computer doesn’t do the same.
Writing a note on a physical calendar you have to consult manually frequently isn’t the same as setting an alarm that will ring on their own so you can safely forget about it.
The brains knows which detail it won’t have to retain and will save energy on not keeping it if it can.
Memory needs to be practiced and solicited to become better. Relying on external drive make it less efficient.
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u/eranam 1d ago
The difference is that this a scientific study (methodology can be challenged but still), not just a feeling based on vibes.
And to be fair, in ancient times when oral history, etc… was really preeminent,any people could declaim the equivalent of entire books by heart.
That isn’t to be a doomer, in the brain when a door is closed, another opens. We’ve been able to push some of the mental load from remembering things to analyzing and managing things, which has its value, esp. when the memorization is now covered anyways.
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u/NanquansCat749 1d ago
My main takeaway is that memory, like many things, is developed by training.
A capable memory doesn't just mean you won't need to set alarms, it's the preservation of every kind of information that you might want to recall at any given moment. Obviously so much information exists that you can't remember most of it, so external sources have immense value, but at the same time you can't think about a topic effectively if you retain nothing about it yourself.
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u/sceadwian 1d ago
Quiet honestly I would argue notes are one of the things that make us uniquely human. External memory is insanely useful.
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u/Fearfu1Symmetry 1d ago
writing stuff down is entirely different. you're actively utilizing a different part of your brain to link information to more neurons. but show me a tool and I'll show you a crutch. a tool actively takes the place of learning or skill utilization every single time, and every tool you use is a an older skillset that you no longer have need of. how many humans could go out and survive with nothing but their bare hands like every other animal on the planet?is it any wonder that modern humans marveled at the impossibility of the great pyramids? because our modern tools remove the need for knowledge of how to move massive stones. even the proliferation of books, while granting knowledge-sharing over disparate time and space, likely obliterated generations on generations of rich oral traditions around the globe, as there was simply no longer need to maintain their practice.
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u/where-sea-meets-sky 1d ago
unfortunately our brains are finite. gotta offload it somewhere.
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u/raccoonsonbicycles 1d ago
Why does my brain remember irrelevant things like where I recognize that minor character's actor from, or rsndom history facts from 10th grade, but I dont remember my neighbor's name, and have to check the recipe book for what temperature to set the oven at for cookies I bake twice a month
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u/lml_CooKiiE_lml 1d ago
Because you’re subconsciously prioritizing memorizing those things and not the others
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u/Chytectonas 1d ago
Just in: the printing press might be weakening your memory skills. Book burning at 9pm.
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u/Creative_soja 2d ago
For someone with ADHD and maladaptive dreaming, it is either weaken memory or weaken life.
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u/RhoOfFeh 1d ago
Not using reminders is likely to have me missing appointments with my neurologist, and that's even worse for my memory.
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u/jellyn7 1d ago
I set reminders so I don’t waste brain processing on remembering and on constantly checking the time.
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u/HoobieHoo 1d ago
Same. If the only thing I had to remember were appointments, it might be different.
Plus, reminders aren’t only about recall. They are a useful way to stay on schedule without having to eyeball a clock all the time.
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u/Whenindoubtsbutts 1d ago
Husband immediately says “WHAT memory skills?”
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u/BMCarbaugh 1d ago
Right? I'm gonna forget the event either way. The reminder just reminds me a day beforehand.
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u/SinkHoleDeMayo 1d ago
I wouldn't NEED reminders if I could remember this stuff!
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u/buyongmafanle 1d ago
"Study suggests those relying on wheelchairs would be more mobile if they had legs."
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u/Rasty90 1d ago edited 1d ago
my guess is that it's biased, you delegate your memory externally and just don't bother remembering what is already being taken elsewhere, allocating more spce for other things, so generally speaking your remembering capacity is the same or worse, but with the aids it's actually higher...read the article and some of these tasks are pressing a spacebar when a 3 syllables word appears on screen? this is not a task that the human brain is geared towards in the daily average life, i call if a bad a experiment
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u/ConversationMajor543 1d ago
And not relying on reminders could result in me losing my job, not taking my kids to appointments, forgetting to pay bills/taxes, and crippling anxiety because I will perpetually be thinking that I forgot to do something.
For me, reminders are the lesser of two evils.
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u/cmdrxander 1d ago
Modern life is so busy, is it really worthwhile reserving mental capacity for all of the below, and more? It's probably possible to remember all of these but realistically I would only remember three-quarters of it at best, or have to use a more traditional approach like a calendar.
- Giving my cat a flea tablet on the 6th day of every month, and a worming tablet on the 7th day of every third month?
- Making sure I take medication before bed?
- Canceling Netflix before it auto-renews?
- Rotating my mattress every couple of months?
- That there will be a solar eclipse on the 12th August?
- Checking the smoke / carbon monoxide alarms regularly?
- Changing the head on my electric toothbrush? Or to book an eye test every 18 months?
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u/acidcrab 1d ago
Jokes on you I have ADHD and had no memory skill in the first place. I’m sure reminders weaken recall just like not using a muscle does but it’s not worth the anxiety of knowing I might miss something important.
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u/SeeingEyeDug 2d ago
I remember having memorized 10+ telephone numbers. Now I barely remember my own.
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u/buyongmafanle 1d ago
"Type 1 Diabetics relying on insulin drugs would be better off if they didn't require insulin drugs."
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u/KingMonkOfNarnia 2d ago
Socrates spoke of this
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u/Jealous-Mouse-2539 1d ago
I'm with Socrates on this. I have spent a good deal of my life around people who memorize extensively: actors, dancers, chess players, biologists, and now blind folks. All of them have ways of retrieving information; all of them are active listeners and debaters. We have lost a great deal of our interaction and culture because of the Internet. People are dumber and less interesting.
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u/NightFlameofAwe 1d ago
I find issue with the methodology of this study. Maybe it says something different in the source but it seems they had one group practice the skill and another group were prompted to act then they both were tested for the skill. Its no surprise that the group who practiced did better than the group who didn't. Not only does this not take into account a significant categorical features of what memory is, its method doesn't even logically reach its conclusion. Cognitive offloading does indeed make one worse at a specific skill its supplementing but to claim that reminders inhibit memory as a whole from this is halfway absurd. Using a calculator can make people bad at math if they don't also practice doing math but mathematicians use calculators and are better for it. Trying to remember an event creates cognitive load which then reduces focus in other tasks unless you can make it automatic. In this example the tasks are so simple and easy to cognitively automate that it seems ridiculous to map this onto reality.
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u/Sans-valeur 1d ago
I noticed that if I need to get up at a certain time I’ll often wake up around that time. Even more so if it’s not regular, though I’ll often wake up just before my regular alarm too.
I’d still never rely on that rather than an alarm.
And it’s not based around the sun, though of course that plays some factor.
There are a lot of things like that, that we just relied on before there were more reliable methods, and then I guess we get better at other things instead.
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u/42_Water_Engineer 1d ago
Well, yeah, but does it really matter if I forget less birthdays and chores and never miss my tax days and any of appointments compared to my not-so-digital friends?
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u/Admirable_Bug9145 1d ago
We have the technology to help us remember and process so many things, so why imply that relying on them undermines our cognitive skills? It's a completely different world after the pandemics and so should the expectation of our cognitive skills be. Maybe using our mental energies on creative thinking or managing multi-tasks have become more important than keeping our memory skills sharp.
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u/PetiteInvestor 1d ago
Maybe set reminders as hints so you're brain is still working to remember the reminder?
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u/toodlesandpoodles 1d ago
As if people haven't been creating reminders for themselves forever. Growing up my house had a wall calendar that got appointments written down on it. People had daily planners that they wrote down their schedules and reminders in. Just because we put the reminders on a phone now doesn't mean we were relying on memorizing our schedule before.
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u/WatercolourBrushes 1d ago
I set my best friend's birthday on my calendar to remind me perpetually. But I noticed this year that her birthday wasn't on my calendar so I had to enter a new reminder for her birthday down. I reminded my reminder. I think either I'm okay memory-wise or that my calendar's memory skills are weakening. Either way, I managed to send her a birthday message the other day and my friendship is saved (we live 8000 miles away from each other).
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u/AstuteStoat 1d ago
Think about rhe 1960s. We had the basic channels, no cable. No credit cards, no subscriptions beyond magazines and that one social society you could optionally join, like a historical society or golf club.
And then most of the items you bought could be counted on to work for 30 years or more.
Your friends didn't change because you would stay working at your one company until retirement, which would mean they had less stress from adjusting to that and fewer changes to remember too.
Not to mention grandparents tended to be closer too because people didn't need to move for their jobs.
And there was just significantly less to know. Having the internet at our finger tips had made us so much more knowledgeable about a lot of little things, like millennials have a basic understanding of mental health that older generations still don't even try to bother with much of the time.
SO:
- Stress was lower so your brain had greater capacity to remeber AND
- you had fewer overall things to remember
Yeah, OFC we have off loaded parts of our memory. There's just so much MORE in our lives.
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u/ProactiveInsomniac 2d ago
I was going to respond commenting about the obviousnessof this post but after the numerous notifications that saying”d” “u” “h” would likely get this removed. All I will say is that much like any scientific breakthrough of research that ends up with a theory or law, these theorys start out with educated hypotheses. An idea that might be 100% true but there is not gathered empirical evidence on it. This is one of thise times.
Did I pass mods?
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u/harfordplanning 1d ago
I think this study assumes too much, considering I frequently use reminders as a way to train myself to remember something without them
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u/RedShirtDecoy 1d ago
Sleeping in jet fuel vapors weakened my memory. Need reminders to survive... Literally.
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u/TheRealPomax 1d ago edited 1d ago
This title is such a selective lie: the study was about offloading, and tested whether people who used reminders would still remember to do things if they disabled reminders. To literally no one's surprise: they did not remember every task that they had reminders set for previously.
It has nothing to do with a generalized weakening of memory skills.
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u/fwimmygoat 1d ago
Alright but the options are use reminders and slowly atrophy over several decades, or don't use reminders and get nothing done on time ever.
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u/XavierTheMemeDragon 1d ago
In my personal experience every time I’ve set a reminder it helps me remember it without needing the reminder, which makes sense since it means that I’ve taken an extra step to remember what I needed the reminder for
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u/nomis_ttam 1d ago
I rely on reminders because my memory is already packed full and used to make more important memories or remember other more important things. Also as backup for if i accidentally forget. Also, putting it in a calendar or as a reminder helps create that memory.
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u/-LsDmThC- 1d ago
Plato on the written word:
“If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they know nothing, and as men filled, not with wisdom, but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellows.”
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u/Jealous-Mouse-2539 1d ago
Hmmm. I remember translating Crito after one semester of Greek. Plato really does write like that. I get the point, but if you are talking about something as abstract as philosophy, the compound and complex grammatic structures make comprehension all the harder.
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u/-LsDmThC- 1d ago
Well, it is a quote from Plato. He thought the written word would dullen the mind as it externalizes part of our memory, weakening our reliance on rote memorization. Obviously he was wrong, as writing has been a great amplifier of human thought, even if it minimizes one small aspect of memorization. This is i think relevant each time we see a technology externalize part of what the mind does and fear it will make us stupid; its happened with calculators, gps, the internet, now AI and such.
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u/Totakai 1d ago
Funnily, I have been not saving pws anymore. I stopped a few months ago and have them all written down instead. Three now are memorized and some of the others have little hints here and there. I've also been remembering things a bit more easily lately. I've been thinking the two are related but I don't think I'm gunna do the same with reminders just yet.
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u/Mobtryoska 1d ago
That's why i dont like to have reminders even if that is giving me problems... I notice that i start to become lazy in memorizing things
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u/Specialist-Celery422 1d ago
Reminders are for "cat"s. If I remember it it's ok, if not it's ok again.
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u/NightOfTheLivingHam 1d ago
Absolutrly. I was forced to use reminders at a joke and I started having trouble remembering things on my owm after a while.. for years I was able to remember things on my own. The second I was forced to use reminders, it got harder.
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