It’s very common to be forgetful, and it is even more common to be worried about being forgetful. Do you remember the details of the story you read last night? Or the name of the minister who took over CM’s position in a particular state?
These day-to-day life examples may seem quite routine to you. A lot of people around us are suffering from slight memory loss, where they tend to forget the easiest of the details of our daily lives.
But then there’s this weird kind of memory loss which happens to you only when someone asks you something ubiquitous, and you suddenly forget everything about it. For example, who is your favourite author? Or your favourite fiction novel? Suddenly, everything you’ve ever known about novels or authors just vanishes.
You cannot think of anything, and it’s just a plain blank image of absolutely nothing. If you can relate to this, then sadly you are also deficient of performance memory.
What is performance memory:
The term loosely refers to the process of retrieving data or information while answering a question. Though there are no scientific studies on it as such still there’s a very large number of people who can relate to it.
Few people cannot cope with the spontaneity, or their reflexes don’t work well. In such cases, they take some time to think of an answer and then they might recall the whole information. But in some case, the whole data seems to be formatted out of the brains.
We might have this tendency of blaming the distractions or lack of attention being the reason behind forgetfulness. However, the truth is that divided attention typically has a very little effect on the accuracy of memories.
It could be slightly related to stage fright:
Stage fright is a very common and very serious phenomenon which even occurs to the biggest of the names you could think of. Stage fear is also a kind of anxiety, and it’s a very broad term, but performance memory could slightly be related to it. The anxiety and performance pressure could be one of the few reasons why people are more forgetful during interviews or viva.
Although, few people also face it when there’s absolutely no pressure at all, like while talking to a close friend. The efficiency of it may vary from person to person, but for most of the people, it’s very tough to cope up with it.
How performance memory could affect your day-to-day life:
The more you stress about being forgetful, the worse it gets. Especially when people face this kind of forgetfulness during interviews or exams, their self-esteem because let’s all face it, this is one of the major reasons why people are rejected.
“I completely forgot” won’t come up as a very efficient or sharp response to a question. The worst part of performance memory is that it makes you look dumb. No matter how much a person might know, but if they fumble or sit dumbstruck on being asked something, they lose it.
How to enhance performance memory
Context hints are one of the most prominent parts when helping recall. When it comes to performance memory, maybe trying to talk about the topic, a bit more can help you recall information. For example, on being asked about your favourite author, you can first try and ask their preferences. Discuss a bit about it, throw in names whatever comes to your mind. Probably after some time, the exact name will strike you.
There are slight chances of improving it by talking more about certain topics because it’s always better to come out extrovert than being considered dumb!