High and Low
The direction of the 25 ms sound sweeps are much easier to detect, I find, when the gap between each one is longer. When the sounds are close together I can easily detect the last one, but I have to rehearse the two sweeps in my memory to try to recall the first one….and I can still get it wrong! That’s the limit of my immediate memory storage currently: it is an obvious bottleneck!
There must be interference from the second sound, masking retrieval of the first sound. Of course they get closer together as I progress, (making it difficult again) and back I go to a lower level! But I also found I was drifting away thinking of other things as I have done High and Low so often. It gets harder to concentrate due to familiarity…. but my histogram is consistent, which is more than in some of the other exercises!
Retrieving something from memory (a word perhaps) can often be difficult. That’s the typical “tip of the tongue” phenomenon. Yet if you were given a written list to choose from you would immediately recognise which word you could not remember. Recognition is so much easier than recall! Multiple choice answers are easier than free-recall answers when being tested, (depending on the variation in the multiple choices). If you are talking to someone and can’t remember a word and the right word is given to you, you can recognise that that is what you meant to say! Why can’t we remember it (retreive it), if it is in memory storage?
Is this why we need clear sound models as suggested by the BFP? My “fuzzy” signal-to-noise auditory system may be in for a tune up, I hope! I shall watch with interest.
” B.F.A. Editor Note: Are you currently doing the Brain Fitness Program Classic or InSight? Pass Margaret your tips and encouragement! ”
