1.2 What you think you know about your memory

This is not true. When trying to remember information over a very short period, such as a phone number, it may be true that trying to add in new information will mean you forget other information – trying to remember another phone number might cause you to forget the first, for example. In general, and over longer periods, there is no evidence that our memory is limited – learning new things does not cause you to forget other things.

This is not true – for example, I bet you could remember this phone number: 01234 5678910 11121314. Although it can be very hard to remember a set of numbers containing more than seven to nine figures, it is not impossible and there are procedures for remembering (known as ‘mnemonics’ that can be used to remember very long numbers.

Well done! This is a process you have undoubtedly experienced. Hearing a piece of information makes our minds activate links to similar pieces of information, allowing us to recall something we previously could not remember.

This is not correct – the way we see colour is actually very subjective. Differences in the physical construction of our eyes lead us to see colours differently from one another, and the way we experience colour is dependent upon many psychological factors. Our memories for colour can also be quite bad and we can confuse colours as different as red and green.