Learning and Memory

The monks seemed to be especially interested to learn the western science perspective of memory and learning.  I started this discussion by talking about classical and operant conditioning and the different types of memory (sensory memory, short term memory, long term memory).  When I mention the famous case of “HM”, the man who suffered from anterograde amnesia after bilateral surgery that removed his hippocampus and some surrounding brain tissue, the monks had many questions.  The first question they asked was whether HM could remember new procedural memories.  I explained that HM could learn new procedures, but he could not remember how he was taught these new procedures.

We had a lot of fun with some games to illustrate how memory worked.  I had Karma, one of the five excellent Tibetan translators, translate lists of concrete words and abstract words.  I also had him make up some nonsense words in Tibetan.  Karma read each list and had the monks memorize what they heard.  As expected, the concrete words were much easier to remember than the nonsense words.  Surprisingly, the abstract words (e.g., honor, truth, anger) were remembered about the same as the concrete words.  Usually, abstract words, which are difficult to visualize, are more difficult to remember than concrete words.

We also played a number memory game by getting into a large circle.  One monk started by saying a number (they wanted to use English rather than Tibetan) and then the next monk in line had to repeat the number and then add a new number.  The third monk had to repeat the first two numbers and add another number, and so on down the line.  The game started fine, but then the monks started to add numbers sequentially such as “8, 6, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6” and I had to stop them because what they were doing was not really memorizing numbers.  I made a new rule:  numbers had to be random.   So we started again.  We got to only 2 or 3 numbers, when someone started counting in sequence again and the next person followed.  When everyone realized what had happened we all started laughing.

The next game we played was “Who’s Missing.”   One monk was chosen to memorize all of the other monks sitting in a circle.  The chosen monk then had to turn around and another monk then left the room.  The chosen monk had to decide which monk was missing.  The first few times we tried it, the monks had trouble identifying who was missing.  One of the Tibetan translators whispered to me that one monk thought that the game was easy and that he could tell who was missing without a problem.

I announced to the group that one monk thought the game was easy and that we would test him.  Sure enough he was able to name the monk who left the room two times in a row.  To make the game more difficult for him, when he turned around, the other monks changed their positions in the circle.  But sure enough, the monk was still able to name the missing monk.  Finally, we decided to play a trick on the monk.  This time, when he turned around, no one left the room.  When he opened his eyes, he looked about the room a bit before sighing a little, but he did not give up trying.  I came over to him and told him no one was missing and everyone gave him a round of applause.