We hear in one ear and out the other

我听, 我忘记; 我看, 我记得; 我做, 我学到; 我教, 我掌握 -孙子-

I listen, I forget; I see, I remember; I do, I learn; I teach, I master  - Confucius –

You might have experienced many times that you could read and understand a sentence but not remember the exact sound to pronounce it a few minutes after you have heard it. We have assumed that many parts of the brain might be wired all together when we learn something.

To quote Confucius, you easily forget the sound very quickly. Don’t be surprised. The time span to be able to remember could be on average 3-4 seconds. Researchers at the University of Iowa have said that we don’t remember things we hear as much as we see or touch.

The paper is available online at dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0089914.

The associate professor of psychology and neuroscience Amy Poremba and graduate student James Bigelow asked a hundred undergraduates to participate in two related experiments.

In the first experiment, they listened to sounds, looked at images and held objects and then they were asked whether various stimuli were the same or different from the originals at 1 second to 32 seconds.

In the second experiment, they recalled sounds, images and objects after an hour, a day and then a week.

The graduate students did well at the tactile and visual memories but not at audial memories. The longer time goes by, the greater the audial memories weaken. The results suggest that the brain processes tactile and visual memories through a similar path, but the auditory memories separately.