A Big Ranting Post about Affective Context

There are generally a huge number of things I would like to talk about on any given day, which would be fine if it weren’t for the fact that they are often all connected. This means that when I come to writing my blog, I’m never quite sure where to start. The problem is that whilst I could simply pick one small area and discuss that, it would make for an exceptionally short post; and writing about everything would make for a very long, albeit engrossing, book. For that reason, you may find that I’ll often discuss many things in detail whilst skimming over others rather quickly, so I’d just like to extend an invitation to anyone reading this blog (I know you’re out there, the stats page tells me so) to question me on any of the subjects I’ve been writing about. You might want me to elaborate on something I’ve written, or perhaps cover something I connected to past subject that I’ve neglected to mention. As always, general comments are welcome and if you’d like to debate any of the points made in my blog feel free to say something in the comments section.

Something I’ve mentioned in previous posts is the affective context model. I have explained parts of this in relation to the effect of emotions on memory, but haven’t fully explained all aspects of how it is seen to work. In my defence, I have told you to watch this video on affective context before now, and if you haven’t it’s your own fault for being lazy (it’s less than ten minutes long and really is quite interesting), but I won’t hold it against you. One thing discussed in the video is the difference between ‘push learning’ and ‘pull learning’.

Push learning is the kind of learning we’re used to experiencing in formal education and is based on the idea of providing a student with the necessary theory to perform a certain task so that they might be less likely to fail at said task. This is a tried and tested form of teaching that has been proven time and again to be almost invariably worthless. Think how often you might tell a child not to touch a hot oven or pan and then find them almost immediately going to do just that. You can say don’t go in there, or don’t do that, or don’t eat those, or don’t poke that; but in the end people need to understand why. I recall a story about my brother who, whilst on a school trip to a farm, was warned about the electric fences around the farm and told not to touch them or he would be electrocuted. He then proceeded to run straight for the nearest fence, arms outstretched, to discover what this ‘electrocuted’ felt like. He didn’t like it. Admittedly he was very young at the time (4 or 5 years old maybe) but that’s not to say adults don’t do the same thing.

As an adult we have a better understanding of the world, but that comes from our experiences throughout life. I know not to stick my finger in a plug socket because I’ll be electrocuted, and although I’ve never experienced that level of electrocution, I have experienced smaller electric shocks that allow me to imagine the possible magnitude of such a shock. Let me pose his hypothetical situation: If Ricky Hatton walked up to you in the street and punched you in the face, what would you do? Hit him back? Run away? Cry? Well I can’t say this with any authority but I’m not ashamed to admit that, were I in that situation, I imagine I would most likely to be struggling to regain consciousness. Maybe you’ve been punched before, maybe you’ve been punched really hard, but have you ever had a world class boxer smash his bare fist into your head? I doubt it. You would have no frame of reference and so my advice of “Don’t go out there, Ricky Hatton will punch you in the head” could well be ignored with the thought that you might just be able to walk away with a bit of a bruise.

So push learning is when we’re taught, in school, how to work out the length of one side of scalene triangle before we even know what we’ll need that information for. The only place this form of learning takes place is in schools and is a result of a system in which a learning establishment is expected to churn out students to specification. Like a production line. And not even a Six Sigma production line.

Pull learning on the other hand is the way in which we naturally learn. This is about providing the affective context or reason for something before you teach the method. As a baby you see food, you want food, but you don’t have the necessary language to communicate that. You reach for your food and mum says “do you want your food?” before giving you what you want. This process is repeated and with each variation of the sentence one word is consistently used until you learn that ‘food’ means that tasty stuff you put in your mouth to fuel the poop machine. This is something that is observable and proves the value of affective context. In fact, this is such an effective method of learning language that it is the basis of the Rosetta Stone series of language software. You can see their explanation of this on their website here. This way of learning is constant throughout our lives and we will always remember things better if we can understand why we need to know them. A common example of this is when you are introduced to a new person. How often have you found yourself in a situation where you have just been introduced to someone only to forget their name almost immediately? This is most likely down to the fact that your brain basically doesn’t know why it needs to remember that information, and you might find yourself thinking the same thing. “Who is this guy? What is he talking about? I don’t care about the mating habits of the common earth worm. Maybe I can fake a heart attack and he’ll just get bored and leave.” On the other hand if your friend came to you and said “I know a guy who is a [insert your dream job here]. He might be able to give you some pointers on how to get a job in the industry” You suddenly have an affective context, a reason to remember this person. In this case you may learn the person’s name before you’ve even met them.

In the past the pull method has been used to teach in the form of apprenticeships where an apprentice would be expected to perform and observe, first hand, different aspects of a job. It was only after performing and observing this job for some time (and failing in the process) that they would gain an affective context for the theory that would then be taught to them. People need to know why they are learning something for them to be able to take it on board.

One last example: When I was 9 years old, I found an enthusiasm for playing the piano. I played a few irritating and repetitive little ditties that I’d made up by pressing random keys, and a couple of short tunes that other members of my family had been willing to show me, including the first few bars of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. My mum, wanting to encourage this, asked her friend to give me a few lessons (about half a dozen). She was a qualified piano teacher and, as I suppose she might have always done, she began by teaching me the scales. Fair enough, when you’ve never played a piano properly before, you can appreciate the value of knowing the scales at least. Plus they sounded very melodic compared to most of what I’d been playing. Despite this, my favourite piece was still the Moonlight Sonata and I was keen to learn how to play it. I noticed that my mum’s friend had the sheet music for this and I asked her if she would teach me how to play it. I was told that it was too complex for me and that my hands wouldn’t be able to stretch enough to reach all the notes. I argued that I could already play the first few bars, but it wasn’t good enough and, despite all my attempts to increase my hand span to be able to play the piece (my left hand span is still over a centimetre larger than my right), she ultimately never taught me to play the Moonlight Sonata. I know, boo hoo me. I got bored of the simple beginner tunes I was playing and eventually gave up.

Some years later, when I was about sixteen, I saw a boy playing the piano. He was playing a boogie song and it sounded awesome. I wished that I could play that and felt like I’d made a big mistake by giving up my piano playing. When I got home I decided to see what I could remember. I could remember my scales at least. Armed with that base and a renewed sense of enthusiasm I began playing again. This time I taught myself. I learned to play by ear, listening to music and simply figuring out how to play it myself. I realised how to construct chords from the scales I’d learned and suddenly I was almost playing proper tunes. After a little bit of encouragement from my mum, I was convinced to take up some more lessons, but this time I took a different route. I was terrible at reading music and found that side of the whole thing very boring, but I had a knack for improvisation. So I took up Jazz piano lessons. The Jazz exams involved playing the beginning and ends of songs as written in the book, but the middle section was improvised. Now I was playing things I wanted to play. This teacher was much more open to my musical choices and allowed me to play whatever I wanted, including the Moonlight Sonata. It took some time, since I had to learn the sheet music off by heart (I still couldn’t read it fast enough), but I did learn to play the first movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. My teacher noted the fact that for someone who hadn’t even completed their grade 1 exam yet, it was pretty impressive to see me play at a grade 5 level. I eventually got my jazz piano grade 1 certificate with a distinction but gave up the lessons when I had to move away.

Over the years, I may have forgotten how to play specific pieces, but I’ve never forgotten how to play the piano, I’ve never forgotten how to play my scales, or find chords, or play a tune I’ve heard. That, to me, is the power of affective context.

Welcome to The Memory Palace: The Place Where People Come To Dream

Before I start, I’d like to just refer back to my previous posts on the value of emotions in learning. After reading my ‘Self-Taught Teacher’ post, a friend of mine recommended that I look up something called the affective context model; which I Googled and immediately recognised. To be more specific, it was this video that I recognised. I had seen this video on memory a while back, but I forgot (does that count as situational irony?); anyway, credit where credit’s due, this guy gives a slightly more scientific explanation of what I've been discussing. Thanks to Chris as well, for reminding me of it.

Today, I want to continue with my little series on memory by passing on a memory retention technique I first read about in Derren Brown’s book ‘Tricks of the Mind’. Just for the purpose of testing, and to give you a way of judging exactly how well the method I am about to teach you works, I’d like you to take thirty seconds to try and memorise as many things as possible from the list below. Please don’t just skip over them and keep reading, actually read them and try to remember them. It won’t take long and it really will help you to appreciate the method I’m about to discuss.

1. Camera
2. Mug
3. Birthday
4. Book
5. Guitar
6. Cat
7. Pencil
8. Anniversary
9. Apple
10. Toilet roll
11. Hammer
12. Newspaper
13. Milk carton
14. Donkey
15. Snow globe
16. Easter
17. Ninja
18. Dinosaur
19. Duster
20. Paper

Now you’ve had your thirty seconds or so to memorise the list, put it out of view (turn away or minimise the window for a minute) and try to remember as many things as you can without looking at the list. It might help here to write the items down on a piece of paper or in a word processing program if you don’t have paper and pen to hand. Go ahead; I’ll still be here when you get back.

So how did you do (write down how many you got; you’ll want it later)? I suspect you didn’t remember many, and almost certainly not all of them; if you did, you must be either some kind of autistic savant, or a liar. Or you already know a similar method to the one I am about to impart.

Today, I want to continue with my little series on memory by talking about the loci system of remembering things, often referred to as the memory palace. The loci system is a way of remembering things by placing them into a mental projection of an environment, or ‘loci’. For example: You might try remembering a shopping list by picturing the items placed around a room; Cheese on the armchair, celery on the bookshelf, and so on. Once you have sufficiently locked in these images in your mind, you can then return to that image at a later date to recall the information.

The trick to this system is really the locking in of the images, and there are a few tricks that will help in this respect. As I’ve mentioned before, emotions are a great aid in remembering things and, by making your images emotionally striking, you can improve your recall of items in an environment. You might, for example, imagine a large cheese cartoon character sitting in the armchair, smoking a pipe, and reading War and Peace (funny enough?); or a giant stick of celery being used as a bookmark in one of the books on the bookshelf. Try to make the images vivid in your mind; imagine colours as being very bright, and try to add smells or sounds. Try to make the object large, not so large it takes over the room and interferes with other items being remembered, but large enough to fill a chair, cupboard, or window for example. The image also really needs to be interacting environment in a memorable way for it to be attached (such as the cheese being in the armchair and the celery being in the book).

It’s also a good idea to try and stick to existing places. The problem with inventing rooms yourself is that it can be hard to create a solid consistent image, meaning that something you use as an anchor in that room might be there on one occasion but not there the next time you imagine it, because you haven’t set it as a definite feature. That’s not to say you can’t invent your own rooms, but you need to really lock down the contents and layout before you can use it as a loci. For the same reason, you should also avoid attaching things to features that are inconsistent in the real environment. Generally large furniture isn’t moved around too much, so things like sofas, bookcases, and fridges tend to be safe bets. Don’t attach the image to something like a book or a lamp (unless you know that that lamp always is, and will be, there) since these things can be easily moved or even taken out of the room. It might be worth pointing out something mentioned in the video on affective context that I linked at the top of the page. In the video it mentions the idea that something like the train journey to work will essentially be averaged out over time so that we end up mostly remembering the things we see consistently. This rule could be applied to a room you see often. If you’re asked to recall the layout of a room you will most easily recall objects and features that are always there. This is a good thing to consider when picking your locations.

So where do you start? Well I’d say start with your home. This tends to be the place most people have a strong mental image of simply because they’ve spent a lot of time there over the years. You can also use any other particularly memorable place such as the house you grew up in, the school you went to, or even just an especially impressive or interesting building that you‘ve visited. All that matters is that you have strong memories of the location. I play a lot of video games numerous times and, whilst I haven’t personally tried it, it should be theoretically possible to use virtual spaces such as these to aid in memory. In fact, the neurochemical reactions that games can create could help to provide a rich environment for planting your information. You could also be certain that the environment, in most games at least, would not change over time and could be revisited as often as required. Anyway, that all just sounds like an excuse to play videogames, but it would be an interesting experiment.

So now you have an idea of what kind of rooms to use, and images to create; let’s put your memory to the test. Look back up at the list you tried to remember before and, as you go down the list, imagine yourself actually standing in your loci, and begin anchoring the different items around you. Be sure to make the item and it’s interaction with the environment memorable. It may help to start with the feature immediately to your left and work clockwise around the room attaching items to each memorable feature. If the item isn’t really an item but something like an event, you should try and come up with a memorable image which represents that event to you. If you find you start to run out of features in a location, don’t strain to remember extra ones. Remember: the whole point of this is to make memorising things easier; if you have to struggle to remember the thing that is supposed to remind you, it’s not going to be any use. Instead, simply walk to the next room. It doesn’t have to be real-life adjoining room, just the next memorable location. You could even step out into the street or into a park. Continue doing this until you have placed all of the items from the list. I’m intentionally avoiding any specifics here because only you will know the most effective places and images for you. Now grab another piece of paper and test yourself again.

How did you do? If you find that there were any things you couldn’t remember, you may need to come up with a more memorable image. If you forgot a location, don’t use it again, it’s not memorable enough for this purpose. Compare your new score with the number you memorised before. How do they match up? Is there a big difference? There should be. The first time I did this I found I was able to easily remember every item on the list whereas before I could only remember about a handful. The images do fade over time and if the information isn’t important you can just allow this to happen; but I found you should be able to remember your list for maybe a week or so depending on how often you think about it. On the other hand, if it is information you will need often, you will find it gets locked in deeper every time you remember it. The biggest problem with this method is that it can still be difficult to remember numbers. You might be able to attach an emotional reaction to a giant number 2 (brings a tear to my eye actually) but what’s funny about 45,768? There is a relatively simple way to deal with this issue but I’ve gone on long enough for today, so I’ll leave that for a future post.

Feel free to post your before and after scores in the comments below; it would be interesting to see how this worked for different people. And be warned: I will be coming around to your house and testing you soon, so don’t forget or you’ll have me to answer to.