Memory and Categorization

An interesting study by researchers at Ohio State University finds that there is a direct inverse relationship between "lack of knowledge" and recognition memory:

"Verbatim memory is often a property of being a novice," said Sloutsky, who is also associate dean of research at the university's College of Human Ecology . "As people become smarter, they start to put things into categories, and one of the costs they pay is lower memory accuracy for individual differences."

I can't help but think of Ramus and his classification diagrams and Ong's original title for his dissertation: "The Clunch Fist of Method: Ramus, Topical Logic, and the Hollows of the Mind." The "hollows of the mind" refers to a shift in thinking about the mind, one in which the mind is thought of as a container to be filled with knowledge in the same way a book is filled with knowledge. Ong discusses this in "System, Space, and Intelect in Renaissance Symbolism."

Link found at hyperguru.com

Crossposted at Notes from the Walter J Ong Archive.

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