INFORMATION PROCESSING

[Music] so [Music] [Music] i am welcome to psychology today or psychology after dark this is a very real party this is a real person hello hi how are you is that your real voice now what this party is we feel that at a party people do a lot of numbers and a lot of informational processing does go down now there are 10 improvisational actors who are friends of mine who are here somewhere yeah i bet you don't remember me booker bradshaw my name's corey fisher oh i'm julian recorder nice to meet you my name is dale morris amos uh john amos hi have you seen my boyfriend i'm always losing track of them oh i'm ushi daigo and we feel that through them we can isolate and analyze certain situations i haven't seen in such a long time don't you remember venice beach july 4th 1964. yeah oh but since then i moved i've got a brand new telephone number let's see uh four one five five five one two with let's give one two do you have a pencil oh wait a second are you interested in doing some work i got you i have a really easy gig for you if you call me on tuesday okay all right call me tuesday at six o'clock make that 6 30. are you 3 6 30 in the morning yeah 6 30 8 00 am yeah okay yeah and it's push push hwap open op oh operator oh letter push and but which one hello i think she likes me i have a friend up in the booth he's what we call the anchorman it's dr donald a norman i'm going to wave him now and i'm for you greg hiya excuse me for showering but it's that loud out there today we're going to take a look at some of the incidents that we see in the party and try to see whether we can explain what's going on we're going to look at the memory system we're going to look at the sensory systems we're going to look at attention we're going to piece them all together to tell you the story of information processing anything happening down there david there seems to be something going on over here is that i know you have a brain and i mean that's very nice and a sexual object is a nice place to put a finger in 20 united concept of states is all the way yeah they could go all the way but i wouldn't think that they would go and uh right now i want to know wait i had a hamburger sure i understand what i understand yeah real what is this who's done that's chaos that's what we call information overload it's what happens when two months goes on at once you can only attend to about one thing at a time you can give the pretense of attending us several things but it's only a pretense hi dave hi it's fun yeah quite a party well but what exactly is going on like what was that that's the process of attention that's an interesting problem did you see him in the middle there he was trying to code three or four conversations at the very same time right can't do that why it's very difficult let's take a look at these two guys on the monitor to show to show what we have two people both talking about very similar concepts in much the same voice concerning the descriptions i would say without even thinking nothing you see they're both talking about very similar concepts in much the same voice it's very hard to separate out either of them or to listen to both right but now take a look at this one of the first still can't listen to both of them but you can listen to either one at will characteristics of maturation was conducted by an englishman it's a little easier right you have to separate from the physical cues and the separation of meaning if they're the same frequencies and the same topics you're out of luck if they're different frequencies and different topics then the context helps and the sound frequencies that means that if if one man is talking and the other man is wayne newton i would be able to hear what wayne newton is saying because he has a very high-pitched voice right if you're listening actively when i speak the sound waves come into the ears right they are interpreted by the centering system you must match them up with the meanings that each sound conveys it's a difficult task an active test you have to attempt there are usually many things that compete for your attention some are ignored others are not the question of what attracts your attention has been studied a great deal um david uh david no no i'm i'm missing i just all right um once you are actually attending to one set of events only two kinds of things would attract your attention one is a simple event such as a tone loud voice or a bright image the other is something that has meaning for you your name or a phrase fits into the conversation you are actually attending to you're not a reader what is meaningful to you depends on what you are doing at that moment for example an obscure restaurant sign will seize the attention of a hungry man his hunger makes the sign stand out it's that simple simple is um a b d e f david david you weren't paying attention where are you no no i i was uh no i heard i i really i heard every word that you said what letters i said what letters uh watch this look at the monitors a b d e f david when you're right don you're right i i wasn't listening well i can understand it some things stand out more than others no question about that take a look at the floor the stage magician takes full advantage of that fact okay now watch closely i'm going to explain one of the oldest tricks in the world using three cups and three balls this is cut number one goes here cup number two on this end and watch cup number three just goes here one two but we have three but look actually i never place it in the pocket i pretend to and i put the empty hand i lift the cup like this that's actually what happened but if i get rid of all three watch the only explanation is i must have another ball which cup is it under this one well if you said this one doesn't matter you see look we've got one here another [Applause] now let's back up and see what he's really doing magician stock and trade is forcing your attention to what he wants you to see while his left hand is taking the orange from the pocket he's manipulating the right now watch what he's doing he makes the ball roll towards you everybody is looking at that ball the movement attracts their attention no one notices what he's doing in his left hand we have a volunteer now read this chart left to right talk about as best you can colors on it as fast as you can the colors only blue red blue no no colors only sir stay inside you there young lady step up the colors only blue green yellow red orange blue gold oh you there young man blue green yellow red gold now why is that so difficult it's troop effect the meaning gets in the way you can't avoid it no matter how hard you try well it looks very easy to me i'd like to try it okay blue green yellow red orange blue what if you lose interest in the middle of the game black that's not black that's just says black blue he's gonna do a green yellow yellow blue orange fact raises the whole question of meaning [Applause] by the way have you seen the new display what new display the tennessee will you is there a new display that's an example of ambiguous speech um you interpreted that from the theater but new display can mean other things how about a shop window where um you ever see a nudist play baseball in the streets that's the kind of problem the marx brothers used to have well i don't know it's all right that's in every contract that's that's what they call a sanity clause [Laughter] you can't fool me there ain't no sanity claws the sounds are the same yes they are the problem is you don't know how to divide them up until you understand the context ice cream right ice cream yes we do that as a kid ice cream for ice cream and all that what i i thought what i've got wait wait a minute wait a minute very very school oh fantastic eight 100. here you go two one three two seven six eight one hundred three that's three three and they'll know it's like a service okay okay so thank you thank you two two seven two seven six uh two seven six four six seven yeah over here this is just i can't believe all these things everybody is is coming up it's my night i just found out uh hey you still looking for a place oh yeah yeah you know my place is really a drag friend of mine there's a friend of mine who's going back to teach school for about six months or so yeah and he's got it's a villa and pacific palisades that clark gable used to used to live in yeah five one six six six five nine five six six five nine high-end i am the right nine fine i i gotta get a pencil uh thank you really thank you now that is confusion i mean he is really he is confused enough to be president of a major english-speaking country his problem is he's trying to remember numbers numbers have no meaning the number is an abstract idea hard to connect with things hard to understand hard to remember five six six five nine five one six in fact you know this takes us right to the problem of memory and it turns out that memory is the most important part of human information processing it's really the seed of the soul if you will that's where we make contact with all the all the things that we've learned in our whole history we interpret everything through our memories right and you can't interpret it unless you have some some information in memory i want you to meet some friends of mine this is um stuart and this is felicia and um malcolm uh nancy and um gary this is this is julie i'm johnny hey look i got a split man so like introduce yourself around and have a ball i know girls aren't supposed to shake hands i never know what to do with myself at a party do you have that truth really no well if there's anybody i see that looks pretty goofy i just walk up and say hi i'm felicia what's your name it and then they they'll tell me and then we started conversation and it's really great and i meet a lot of friends that way gosh i guess i should have corners too much what was your name again now i personally i'm very good at names how about you frank at dawn i'm sorry are you i can't remember what now you've met all of my actor friends right um yeah okay now now you look at the monitor and i'm going to test you oh no no no just try it no you can do it now you just see how you do with these names here i just talk about memory i can't do it what i can sense a lot of energy happening all around here i guess that's cause i'm a pisces my name's oh yeah that's um rick corey hi have you seen my boyfriend i'm always losing track of him oh i never heard um um ushi ushi yeah how could you forget her name like ushi yes what you're supposed to do in fact is form a mnemonic an image yes i have it i can just take her name and relate that to ushi i bet you don't remember me don amos wrong well you're right i don't remember booker bradshaw you know what the problem is there are two kinds of memory short term and long term what do you mean exactly by shorter like how short well normal use information stays there about 30 seconds and oh it's big enough to hold a telephone number about seven items okay if you fill it up too much you you start losing material in fact that's short-term memory it's a real bottleneck in the system good evening may i take your order here yes uh scotch on the rocks with a splash of soda um singapore she wants a arse let me have a tram buoy huh and i want a black russian uh is that blind all right [Applause] i like a margarita martini all right collins with two green all right you gotta write it down you can't remember all of this her problem is that she has to get the material the drink orders from short-term memory to long-term mentally and you can't do that unless you have special techniques now david tonight we have here parker bernstein he's president of the arthur bernstein's school of memory training he's written a book about his techniques hello mr bernstein nice to meet you dave that's bernstein yeah bornstein you might picture me with a little baby in my arms and just born and i'm feeding the baby with a stein get the picture the man who eats baby beer lauren stein right because i i get it um now what we saw was the waitress right and she had to she had to make all of that into long-term memory right we needed some association to make that work all right now this uh lady let's say she's ordering margarita a margarita she looks like a margarita i just projected she looks just like a margarita get the picture yes right now this man martini i look at his forehead notice a big m inscribed in his hairline so as soon as you look at it m for martini college collins with uh two green olives i see now look at her laugh marks there's a v and i pictured a big c in her hairline big fluffy hair and those eyeglasses are the two green olives did you feel the stimulus are the associations working with them i mean that it's kind of like it's very nice and you're creating the images in your own memory actually it's how you program the information into your mind that really counts fine thank you very much now let's see how the waitress is doing [Applause] hey [Music] we store enormous amounts of material in long-term memory the problem is retrieving the material we want when we want it fortunately we usually have some idea where to begin looking hi i remember you from the isle of wight music festival you know in 1966 66 uh wait wait that was a funny year i i because i remember i was doing something in a hotel room but i can't remember exactly what it was it was that wasn't you no no this was a guy me yeah oh really well no it wasn't what you think we were uh it's a story we were we were trying to take uh well we were trying to call up this uh uh cigarette [Music] 1965 new york let's see i came in from the middle east i was training israeli jet pilots now that girl looks familiar to me i mean i i know her from somewhere i just can't quite place it you're just going to have to search your memory for her you want me to search my memory memory is organized with landmarks you can sort of go back did you see what we saw here questions where were you in 1966 well in 1965 i was over here in 1968 i was over there thank you memory seems to be organized this way around clusters of things that we know well let me see how you do um where were you on say january 15 1963 january 15th 1963 business do you really know oh i really know do you know january 15. well if i can talk about it i was in chicago i was at the second city working at the second city not chicago it wasn't chicago it wasn't chicago 1963 january january what might you have been doing was i in gary indiana ah gary indiana is that gary how did you find out about that where were you i was teaching now what about january 15th okay at um 6 30. evening tuesday evening on january 15th and it was gary indiana i was uh well i would have been coming home now about that time wouldn't i do you remember that or are you making it up i knowingly i would assume that i'm making up yeah you're making it up logically right yeah that's very interesting let's come back to that later okay okay but now what was i doing you know that that isn't what i was doing right not not this particular day well you helped me out a little bit oh you remember a girl named judy yes i do she used to um do things together she was my girlfriend on of course oh i know what you're referring to we used to sing together yes judy and i were we singing in gary indiana at the temple bethel the temple bethel would you do me a great favor don't tell anyone about it we'll keep it quiet this picture was so clever i couldn't believe it it was it was called the night walker and it was written by the man who wrote psycho his name is uh robert flock i think anyway it was about this woman who was eventually going to be uh bumped off do you think she's going there the major plot is that she's just going to be bumped off because you've often got an incomplete image in your memory system and what you do is try to piece it together logically much as you did when you said that at 6 30 you must have been coming home we can illustrate this with our magician again let's go back and take a look at the magician here we have a simple action he's passing the ball from one hand to the other [Music] here it is again and here we have a partial image we fill in what we can't see the red ball that he's holding but it's not there the same thing happens in memory we fill in a partial image of a past event the way we know it should be logically the process is called refabrication you know remembering something from long-term memory is a lot like solving a problem in both instances you're looking for an organizing pattern like many problems this one requires making sense out of what appears to be randomly collected information interesting question now you got one two two four one four i'm just trying to look for a pattern here's another problem here you have to alter a pattern a pattern of eye-hand coordination that's already habitual what am i doing wrong tell me you're doing it upside down you'll never you're never going to make it in the mirror image world i mean all these people have been laying phone numbers on me all over the place and i couldn't i can't give them yourself he should have thought of that but people develop set strategies for solving problems they hang on to them even after they've outlived their usefulness this girl's working with an inappropriate strategy she thinks she's on the beach playing with wet sand the answer is z goes on the top line with all the other letters made of straight lines he got it david wouldn't you like to get back down to the party before everyone goes home i would love it uh for the place the house and mount there was six six five nine five one six uh and his name was i am trying nine miller okay then uh let's call david at uh p push one uh at 6 30 a.m and then what uh her number was 4.5 uh five five oh here let me get you a refill no thank you i don't it makes me too animalistic sam of course we have would you like to dance do you remember where it was no i just know i know don't you remember the scene and talk like this before [Music] we looked at each other in the same way then what i can't remember always the shows you're wearing a smile you are smiling you were smiling then but i can't remember where or when [Music] some things that happen for the first time [Music] seem to be happening so get out of here this place gives me the willies [Music] who knows where or when you