Long-Term Memory

Importance of Long-Term Memory

The importance of long-term memory to thought cannot be overemphasized. One of the earliest examples of its significance is still one of the best. In the 1930s, Sir Frederic Bartlett had people listen to folktales from foreign countries and later asked them to recount the stories. Not surprisingly, he found that these unfamiliar stories were not remembers very accurately. What was surprising was that the errors of recall were not random but were quite systematic. The subjects often rewrote the stories in their own minds, espcially parts that were particularly foreign to them, revising the plot to the point where it resembled a more familiar Western narrative.

To explain his findings, Bartlett proposed that “Remembering is... an imaginative reconstruction, or construction, built out of the relation of our attitude towards a whole active mass of past experiences.” He concluded that when we face a problem, we draw upon mental schemata, organized bundles of stored knowledge. For example, if you are asked a question about how baseball is played, you would draw upon a baseball schema, your collective knowledge of baseball obtained from specific direct experiences you've heard or read about baseball. Barlett's findings do not just concern the personal, idiosyncratic, and fallible nature of memory, but also emphasize how long-term memories, when retrieved into the temporary workspace of working memory, can guide our thoughts and actions, as well.

It has been known for centuries that we can only keep a few things active in our minds (in working memory) at once. George Miller, one of the pioneers in cognitive psychology, figured out, through psychological experiments, that the magic number is about seven pieces of information. Some people can hang on to eight or nine, whereas others manage only five, but, on average, temporary storage can hold about seven times. (It's probably no coincidence that telephone numbers within an area code were designed to have seven digits). But, as Miller noted, we can effectively expand that capacity by chunking or grouping information – it's about as easy to remember seven letters as seven words or ideas. No doubt one of the reasons human cognition is so powerful is because we have language in our brains, which exponentially increases the ability to categorize information, to chunk. A whole culture, for instance, can be implied by a name.

Damage to the frontal lobe interferes with the ability to plan and execute goal-directed behavior. Frontal lobes are involved in executive functions (planning, problem-solving, and behavioral control), as well as in short-term or temporary memory. Illustration by Elena.

The concept of working memory subsumes what used to be called short-term memory. But as the term workspace implies, working memory is more than just an area for temporary storage. It underlies mental work. As Minsky noted, thinking involves juggling of mental items – comparing, contrasting, judging, predicting. It is the job of the executive functions of working memory to do the juggling.

In the spirit of viewing the mind in terms of computer-like operations, some cognitive scientists like Time Shallice and Phillip Johnson-Laird have referred to executive functions as supervisory or operating system functions. A computer operation system is responsible for controlling the flow of information processing, moving information from permanent memory (ROM) to a central processing unit with active memory (RAM), scheduling tasks to performed using the active memory, and so on. Similarly, executive functions are involved in the constant updating of temporary memory, selecting which specialized systems to work with (pay attention to) at the moment, and then moving relevant information into the workspace from long term storage by retrieving specific memories or activating schemata pertinent to the immediate situation. Through executive functions, specialized systems are also directed to attend to certain specific stimuli and to ignore others, depending on what working memory is working on. In complex tasks involving multiple kinds of mental activities, executive functions plan the sequence of mental steps and schedule the participation of the different activities, switching the focus of attention between activities as needed.” Executive functions are crucially involved in decision-making, allowing you to choose between different courses of action given what is happening in the present, what you know about such situations, and what you can expect to happen if you do different things in this particular situation. Executive functions, in short, make practical thinking and reasoning possible.

The executive represents a powerful mental capacity, but is not all-powerful. Like the workspace, it has its limits. It basically can do one or at most a few things at a time, this is why you forget a phone number if you are distracted while dialing. With practice and training, we can learn to divide our attention between two mental tasks simultaneously, but only with difficulty. In this sense, the executive is more like an old-fashioned DOS operation system that can only run one program at a time than like a multitasking Windows operation system that can concurrently run word processing, spreadsheet, e-mail, calendar and other programs.

But there's also a sort of chunking that takes place in executive functions. As we've seen, the executive is involved in scheduling the sequence of steps in a complex task. Here, the executive is doing more than one thing at a time, but the things are all related to the overall goal. If the executive has to work on multiple unrelated goals at the same time, however, the system begins to fall apart, especially if the goals conflict with one another. An easy way to stress people is to make them do too much at once. Planning, decision-making, and other aspects of mental life suffer when the executive is overloaded. Working memory has come to be thought of as a function of neural circuits in the frontal lobes. 

(From Synaptic Self. How Our Brains Become Who We Are. Joseph LeDoux (author of The Emotional Brain).

Neural activity, as measured with devices such as PET and MRI scans, increases in the frontal cortex when humans perform tasks that require temporary storage and executive functions. Photograph by Elena.

Answers to Queries

Queries and Answers

Google prioritize short and concise answers to users' queries, no more than 30 words long.

1. Answer questions
2. Be readable
3. Provide for featured snippets
4. Implement local SEO if you are focusing on local business or or local public.
5. Use schema markup
6. Improve page speed and security.
7. Try to build your content in a conversational manner, asking and answering questions.
8. Structurize your copy in short easy-to-read paragraphs with a question form subheading.
9. Create a how-to part on your page.
10. Use different lists with numbers or bullet points, tables, steps, etc.

The most common types of featured snippets are:

• Paragraphs (WHAT questions);
• Lists/ Steps (HOW questions);
• Tables;
• Images;
• Charts.

Start with the most important information to answer the question; transit to more details beyond the direct answer and add visual support; wrap up with examples or case studies.

First of all, to think of the best answer, you have to identify a simple question that users may ask when searching for something related to your area of expertise. 

When you ask a question and understand that the answer is a matter of a simple fact, like somebody's birth date, then it is a so called factoid, and it will be shown as Knowledge Graph. Thus, your question should be more complicated and require a more substantial answer.

Once you have separated more comprehensive questions from the ones that summon factoids, check the techniques that are able to trigger the use of a featured snippet.

Why everything happens? Photo by Elena.

Ws (Who, What, When, Where, Why) + How questions

Here the Why and How questions attract snippets best of all, as they require more explanation and cannot be easily answered with factoids.

Why-questions usually produce a paragraph-like snippet, like here when I asked "Why are clouds grey?"

How-questions, as a rule, trigger some practical advice, usually showing a list. Here I asked "How to watch a solar eclipse?"

Moreover, snippets for why- and how-questions usually serve as teasers and provoke the users to explore further by clicking the link.

Implied questions

Users usually do not type in the query with a question word but they surely imply it. For example, you may just type "CTR", however, in your head the query sounds like "What is CTR?" Google will also recognize it as an implied question.

Beware, common words will trigger a dictionary entry instead of a featured snippet. So the question that you devise should ask for more specialized knowledge that cannot be reduced to a simple dictionary definition.

A good way to get more ideas on search queries is by consulting "People also ask" box in the SERP.

Now you know what kind of questions trigger featured snippets. You can efficiently build your content around them. 

An easy way to find all possible queries is to use Rank Tracker:

1. Launch Rank Tracker (if you don't have it, you can download SEO PowerSuite's free version here) and create a project for your site.
2. Go to the Keyword Research module and click Suggest Keywords .
3. Pick the Google Autocomplete suggestion method from the list.

By typing or pasting your questions with wildcards to the tool (i.e., what *seo*, how *seo*, etc.) you will receive tons of suggestions related to your keywords.

You can filter your results by the important metrics, like Number of Searches and KEI, and comprise a list of questions that cover your niche.

You can check then that long-tail keywords return the featured snippets, for example, I Googled "why SEO is important":

Research answers

Well, by now you have in mind the variety of the questions that should cover the content that you want to compete with for a featured snippet. The content optimization in this case calls for good old keyword search.

Ahrefs analyzed 2 million featured snippets and extracted top 30 frequently met words in the search queries that trigger featured snippets (stop words excluded). I compiled the most common ones in a list that you can copy right away to the Rank Tracker (Keyword Research -> Suggest Keywords -> Google Autocomplete). Take the ones that are related to your niche and replace with your actual keywords:

Top keywords list takeaway

Rank Tracker is also a good tool to get the ideas for higher volume keywords and, what's more important, long-tail keywords. By pressing the Suggest Keywords button in the Keyword Research module in the app, you will get an array of options that will allow you to highly diversify your search for keywords. You may explore:

• Keywords related to your niche of the market;
• Keywords related to your site and competitors;
• Keywords from other search engines and services;
• Keywords building via word combinations and typos.

Optimize the format

Why this is important? Great content deserves decent wrapping to let Google efficiently pick up the information for the featured snippet. By wise HTML formatting, you can guide Google to the necessary spots to retrieve the data for the answer box.

Moreover, the suitable format may help you either to steal position zero from the page with weaker formatting, or to keep your page on this position — any moment you may lose your snippet to a site coming from nowhere. In case of any of these scenarios, try to check whether everything is in order according to our guidelines below. If your snippet is stolen, try to analyze why Google considered this intruder to be better than your page is and apply the changes to your page accordingly.

Here is what you should pay attention to:

1. Type-wise format: Try to format your target page according to the major types of the featured snippets:

• Paragraphs: Think of the short summary to answer a potential query — Google has a tendency to prefer the answers that begin logically as an answer would do; This single answer paragraph should be about 40-50 words to fit in the answer box. Format this paragraph in a paragraph HTML tag <p>; Put this paragraph right under the heading for the question.
• Tables: Google loves to include tables into the featured snippets, as they are much easier to understand for computers, unlike natural language paragraphs. So when it makes sense, add the tabular data or reformat suitable paragraphs into tables. Mark up the table on your page using the <table> tag. Lists/ Steps: Use a heading tag above the list on your page; Give this list a title that matches the targeted keyword. As Google can make its own lists out of the text instead of snipping the paragraph, you can format your text with subheadings (H2) where it is logical to do so. Then Google will take your subheadings and list them chronologically. Featured snippets of a list type can be tricky in a way that by giving all the steps in the answer box, you discourage users to click the link to your page — they have already got all the necessary information!

Thus, try not to lay all the cards on the table — format the text the way to save some no less important steps from the users' view. In this case Google will give "More items" link. And that is a call to click!

Clear-cut answers

If the content on your page is too long to fit in the answer box, you can chop it up to paragraphs, lists, or tables.

In case you have quite a few target questions, you can add a Q&A Section where all the related questions will be put together with ideally formatted answers.

If your page's content updates regularly, use a "last updated" tag. In this case Google and users understand how current you post is.

Request indexing by Google

Why this is important? We recommend to use Google Search Console to re-crawl your pages. Apparently, this request almost instantly updates Google's index of the page. It means that your page can gain a featured snippet the same day you did re-indexing.

If you feel that your page is well-armed for position 0, follow the procedure:

1. Log in to Google Search Console.
2. Expand the "Crawl" menu and click "Fetch as Google."
3. Put in your page address and click "Fetch":
4. It will be added to the table. Click "Request Indexing":

Useful links:

• link-assistant.com/news/voice-search-guide.html - among other things
• https://www.link-assistant.com/rank-tracker/keyword-research-tool.html - kewword research tool.

Above all, try to stay positive. Photo by Elena: View from the Toronto CN Tower.

Crystallized Vs. Fluid Intelligence

Crystallized versus Fluid Intelligence

The brain is a sophisticated survival organ. And, according to variable selection theory, we survived because we could adapt to rapidly changing circumstances – we adapted to change itself. What cognitive gadgets in the grain best aided our ability to survive the ever-changing environment of Northeast Africa?

A model that answers this question best is an old one, first championed by researchers Raymond Cattell and John Horn in the middle years of the 20th century. The idea that you use previous knowledge to improvise solutions to present problems lies at the heart of the ideas of Cattell and Horn.

The first category is called crystallized intelligence, which is the ability to learn from experience, constructing a database retrievable on demand. You got scorched when you put your hand on an orange-colored burner on a stove. You recall this experience the next time and see a hot stove – using your crystallized intelligence – and move away.

Crystallized intelligence is that suite of gadgets that allows you to memorize and recall. Those who could remember prior experience best might have distinct survival advantages over those who could not. Crystallized intelligence skills tend to get better as you get older.

The second category is called fluid intelligence, which is roughly the ability to improvise off the database established with your crystallized talents. You got scorched on an orange-colored burner on a stove. Now you see an orange-colored fire in a fire pit. That's not a stove, but still you stay away from it.

That's improvising: coming to conclusions in reaction to situations with which you have no direct experience. You create unique combinations from the database – in this case, solving a pattern-matching problem. Such creative, inductive problem-solving ability is the hallmark of fluid intelligence. Fluid intelligence skills do not improve with age; the skills reach their maximum in your early twenties and then begin a long, slow decline. 

We obviously used both types of intelligence to survive the wild, woolly world of the meteorologically unstable Serengeti. Those people who had them working in concert, quickly absorbing the knowledge the world had to offer and then improvising off it, could adapt to changes much more quickly than those who could not.

(From Your Best Brain, Course Guidebook, by Professor John J. Medina).

Interpersonal intelligence is a social skill. It is the ability to understand and be sensitive to the emotions and feeling of others.

Understanding of Working Memory

Understanding of Working Memory

Our understanding of working memory owes much to the pioneering work of Alan Baddeley in the early 1970s. On the basis of his studies of short-term memory, he came to view the mind in terms of two kinds of cognitive systems: a set of specialized systems dedicated to specific mental tasks, and a general-purpose system utilized in all active thing processes.

Specialized systems come in two flavors. Verbal systems, like systems involved in speech comprehension, are mainly present in the human brain, whereas nonverbal systems are present in all brains. Nonverbal specialized systems are epitomized by sensory systems. Each is involved in processing unique kinds of stimuli (sights, sounds, smells, and so on). As part of their operation, the verbal and nonverbal specialized systems are able to retain what they've just processed for brief amounts of time (seconds.) This capacity aids in perception, allowing the system to compare what it is seeing or hearing now to what it saw or heard a moment ago. For example, when listening to a lecture, you have to hold the subject of each sentence in your mind until the verb appears, and sometimes you have to refer back to your memory of earlier sentences to figure out the referent of a pronoun.

The general-purpose system consists of a workspace and a set of mental operations called executive functions that are carried our on information held in the workspace. Although only a limited amount of information can be retained at any one time, the workspace can hold on to and interrelate information of different types from different specialized systems *the way something looks, sounds, and   smells can be associated with its location in external space and with its name). This ability to integrate information across systems allows for abstract representation of objects and events. It is especially well-developed in humans, and is likely to contribute to the uniqueness of human cognition.

The information in your working memory is what you are currently thing about or paying attention to. And because working memory is not a pure product of the here and now. It also depends on what we know and what kinds of experiences we've had in the past. In other words, it depends on long-term memory.

Synaptic Self. How Our Brains Become Who We Are. Joseph LeDoux (author of The Emotional Brain).

We forget too much and too often. Illustration by Elena.

The Mental Trilogy

The Mental Trilogy

Throughout much of history, the mind has been viewed as a trilogy, a tripartite amalgam that includes cognition, emotion, and motivation. For some, the trilogy was a description of different aspects of a single mental faculty, whereas for others, it represented three distinct, separate capacities. During most of the twentieth century. Both versions of the mental trilogy were out of favor. When the behaviorists reigned, psychology ignored the mind altogether, making the mental trilogy moot.

Later, the cognitive revolution brought the mind back to psychology, but thinking and related cognitive processes were (and for the most part still are) emphasized at the expense of emotion and motivation. Clearly, however, it is important to understand not just how we attend to, remember, or reason, but also why we attend to, remember or reason about some things rather than others. Thinking cannot be fully comprehended if emotions and motivations are ignored.

Mental Juggling

An idea, an image, a sensation, a feeling: each is an example of what psychologists call mental content – stuff that is in the mind. Mental content was the subject matter of experimental psychology when it first emerged as a discipline in the late nineteenth century. But John Watson and fellow behaviorists replaced this focus on subjective states with a mind-less psychology of objectively measurable events (stimuli and responses). When the cognitive revolution later made the mind fair game again, it did not do so by reviving subjective psychology. The thinking process itself, rather than the conscious content that results from thinking, became, and largely remains, the subject matter of cognitive science.

Working memory is our inherent capacity to think. Photo by Elena.

“In order for a mind to think, it has to juggle fragments of its mental states.” This simple statement by Marvin Minsky, one of the architects of the branch of cognitive science known as artificial intelligence, gets right to the heart of the matter. Imagine, as Minsky suggests, rearranging the furniture in a room familiar to you. You shift your attention back and forth between locations. Different ideas and images come into focus, and some interrupt others. You compare and contrast alternate arrangements. You may concentrate your entire mind on a small detail one moment, and on the whole room the next. How does the mind do this juggling, and how does it keep track of the imaginary changes? The answer is that the mind uses something called working memory.

How many times have you looked up a phone number and then forgotten it after being momentarily distracted? The reason for this is that you put the number into working memory, a mental workshop that accommodates one task at a time. As soon as a new task engages working memory, the content of the old task in bumped out. For that reason, unless you keep rehearsing the phone number and manage to ignore other things that compete for your attention, it will not remain in your mind.

Working memory is one of the brain's most sophisticated capacities and is involved in all aspects of thinking and problem-solving. It allows you to read a menu and keep its various options in mind while also considering the specials announced by the waiter and the return to the thought you were having before the waiter appeared. It underlies your ability to hold a conversation, play board games like chess, or direct yourself to an unfamiliar destination on the basis of having just looked at a map. In addition to being used in such routine daily activities, working memory also contributes to special human endeavors, like composing music or solving complex mathematical problems, or any other situation in which information has to be held in mind in order to complete a task.

We must explore broad aspects of mental function, that is, to begin to assemble a neurobiological view of the self. Illustration by Elena.

Synaptic Self. How Our Brains Become Who We Are. By Joseph LeDoux (author of The Emotional Brain).