Memory and Your Senses

Did you know that the impressions received from your five senses of sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell have a significant role in the retention of information in your mind? These are called Memory of Sense Impressions. However, when you come down to a systematic analysis of sense impressions retained in the memory, you’ll find that the majority of such impressions are those acquired through the two respective senses: sight and hearing.

Sight Impressions

We are constantly exercising our sense of sight, and receiving thousands of different sight impressions every hour. But most of these impressions are insignificantly recorded upon the memory, because we give them little attention or interest.

Before the memory can be stored with sight impressions, before the mind can recollect or remember such impressions, the eye must be used under the direction of the attention. We think that we see things when we look at them, but in reality we see only a few aspects, in the sense of registering clear and unique impressions of them upon the depths of the subconscious mind. We look at them as a whole rather than see them in detail.

For example, there was a man who was attacked by a robber. The man had a close view of the thief’s face. When the victim went to the nearby police station to report the unfortunate incident, he was asked by the police officer to describe the criminal in details. The victim, although having a close view of the man’s face, was unable to give an accurate description to the police. He was unable to perceive well because he’s in a state of nervousness and shock while the thief was assaulting him.

This is a case of “looking without seeing.” The way to train the mind to receive clear sight-impressions, and therefore to retain them in the memory, is simply to concentrate the will and attention upon objects of sight, endeavoring to see them plainly and distinctly, and then to practice recalling the details of the object some time afterward.

Will and attention would not be effective if not combined with interest. You must have the desire or passion to really accomplish the task at hand. Shift your mental focus, by means of will and attention coupled with interest, to overcome the mere “seeing and observing” phenomena. In order to remember the things that pass before your sight, you must begin to see with your mind, instead of just looking with your eyes. Let the impression get beyond your retina and into your mind. If you will do this, you will find that memory will “do it’s thing.”

Hearing Impressions

Many sounds reach the ear but are not retained by the mind. We may pass along a noisy street, the waves of many sounds reaching the nerves of the ear, and yet the mind accepts the sounds of only a few things, particularly when the novelty of the sounds has passed away. It is again a matter of interest and attention in this case.