Why do we forget phone numbers but not how to ride a bike?

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imported_Nora

New member
I'm doing a report on human memory. I have found plenty of information on why we never forget how to ride a bike, but I need to know why it is we forget simple things like phone numbers, but never forget skills like riding a bike. Is it as simple as the fact that phone numbers are kept in your short-term memory and they eventually escape after time? If so, why doesn't it carry over into your long-term memory? Thanks in advance!
 
I think it depends on person to person. Almost everyone can remember to ride a bike because they have to constantly rehearse the episodic memory to recall how to do it, and then by doing so they are constantly refreshing their memory. Nowadays, people can just store a number in their phone and forget about it. They can just click a name now instead of a number.
 
You answered your own question really but let me clarify. Phone numbers like addresses or prices or information we don't use constantly, does get placed in the short-term memory banks and will only transfer to long term (if our phones don't have a redial or set program hit a number call a person etc) memory after that info has been accessed over and over. It gets discarded if we don't ever call that number again or use that info for anything other than a one-time shot.

I hope I have helped a bit but you seem like a smart person as you were able to ask and decipher your position of doubt.

sharing the light,
miss erica hidvegi
the Enlightenment Advisor
 
You did not remember how to ride a bike the first time you were handed one. In fact it probably took weeks of practice, maybe even months to get to the point you could ride a bike. You cannot compare the 50 hours or so learning to ride the bike, and 15 years of intermittent practice with having a phone number for a few minutes. I guarantee if you put as much time and effort in learning a phone number as you did in learning to ride your bike you would remember it fifty years from now.

You could do an experiment and try memorizing a phone number for two hours every day for the next month, and then review the number frequently throughout childhood and into adulthood, and then be asked the phone number and you could repeat it without problems. Please perform this experiment, I would love to hear the results.
 
I worked in telecommunications for the Government from '69 until '93. Sixteen years later, I can recall phone numbers (dozens of them) as 'short dial codes' of 4 digits, to that of 13 digit numbers ~ and all unused in all that time too.

Forget how to ride a bike, and you fall over and get hurt. Forget a phone number....! And you have to go search / research it. A lesser pain, but still can be a pain.


Some phone numbers (although difficult to explain it / how), they form a sort of inner-logic 'pattern' which seemingly (for me at least), do get retained in ones memory banks.

Sash.
 
You answered your own question really but let me clarify. Phone numbers like addresses or prices or information we don't use constantly, does get placed in the short-term memory banks and will only transfer to long term (if our phones don't have a redial or set program hit a number call a person etc) memory after that info has been accessed over and over. It gets discarded if we don't ever call that number again or use that info for anything other than a one-time shot.

I hope I have helped a bit but you seem like a smart person as you were able to ask and decipher your position of doubt.

sharing the light,
miss erica hidvegi
the Enlightenment Advisor
 
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