The memory is a fascinating thing. There’s an interesting breakdown of how memories work at www.tbiguide.com/memory.html if you have the time and interest to read it, and if you don’t, we’ll break down the article’s key points:
The Different Types of Memory
The brain is not a tape recorder, it’s more like an oral history. Even in your own mind, stories are passed down through time, changing shape with each retelling. A memory has several stages, listed below:
– Immediate Memory.
Immediate memory is sort of like playing the shell game, and trying to remember which cup initially held the rubber ball. Here, your memories are, if not quite perfect, not embellished, not filtered through guesswork or “I suppose what must have happened next was…” thinking. This is the type of memory that is engaged when you’re right in the middle of something, like fixing your morning coffee for instance, and remembering that you already put in one spoonful of sugar before you put in the second.
– Short Term Memory.
Short term memory could be defined as a thirty-minute span of time wherein a memory a memory is still fresh, but fading.
– Long Term Memory.
We recall long term memories after a day or a few weeks or even a decade. Long term memories involve some detective work. When you look at a brick wall, you’re not seeing every brick, you’re seeing maybe five or six of them, and your brain is telling you “I don’t have time to look at all of these, but we can safely assume that there are hundreds of bricks here, so just take my word for it.” Long term memory works a little like that. Your brain fills in the gaps in order to make sense of the story.
Now here’s what all of this has to do with the subjects of safety and insurance: You’re going to need an accurate report following any accident, but if you wait a day or two before writing anything down, you’re going to wind up with a version of the story that isn’t very precise, because your brain is telling you “Well Jerry tells me that he slipped on the stairs, so someone must have dropped some food, and his ankle got twisted so I suppose he landed on his foot…” Your brain can’t help it, it’s just trying to make sense of what happened, because that’s the nature of the human brain, but you don’t need to tell a story, you only need to record what happened as you experienced it, first hand. So taking notes while your short term memory is still fresh is absolutely vital.
