Memories Are Not Impaired by Silence

A paper published in the latest issue of the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science suggests that not talking about a memory does nothing in terms of helping people forget that it ever existed. In other words, ignoring it will not make it go away.

If this discovery turns out to be true, then certain therapies used on victims of traumatic experiences may need to be reevaluated, and slightly tweaked. Getting people back on their feet after such an event is no easy feat, but experts say that the new finding is very timely.

The idea that being silent about a particular memory will eventually make it fade and disappear has been a staple in psychology for quite some time, even though no empirical evidences existed to support this claim in its entirety, PsychCentral reports.

The author of the new paper, Charles B. Stone, says that most psychologists tend to view this connection from a Freudian perspective, in which every person has a series of issues located deep within their subconscious minds, from where they need to be brought into the light, and talked about.

What the new investigation discovered was that silence and memory are bound together through much more complex mechanisms. “We are trying to understand how people remember the past in a very basic way. Silence is everywhere,” Stone explains.

For starters, there are several ways in which a person can keep quiet about a memory. They can choose not to talk about, or try to actively forget it. On the other hand, the issue may simply not come to their minds at any particular time.

“Silence has important implications for how we remember the past beyond just forgetting. In terms of memory, not all silence is equal,” the leader of the research team explains. He adds that not all types of silence encourage people to forget certain memories.

In some cases, however, silence is entirely unnecessary. If traumas, for example, leave behind deep scars, the brain can sometimes protect itself from the damage. This can be achieved through multiple mechanisms, such as for example the onset of permanent or semi-permanent amnesia.