Consequences

So travelling uneventfully this morning when after the penultimate junction on the M25 traffic begins to slow. Check SatNav (on to check ETA and traffic issues rather than to remind me of the all-too-familiar journey) - road showing clear.  Round a bend and see up ahead there are lights on the big overhead motorway sign.  Too far away to read, but a traffic message none the less.  This particular sign is rarely lit to indicate distance to junction - something like 'Junction 21: 23 miles 36 minutes" - and anyway the pattern of letters doesn't match. It's definitely a warning of some kind.  The usual at this point is "Queue on slip road" but there are two many words for this.

We crawl towards the sign.  Then it comes into view: "Take your litter with you like other people do"  WTF?? Someone bored this morning, thought that they would put some irrelevant message up in the middle of the rush hour??  As we pass the sign, traffic speeds up.  I get to the slip and find there is no queue at all, unusual at this time of day.  So the congestion has occurred because of the sign, nothing else... Consequences.

This of course starts me musing.  There can be consequences every day for the small decisions that we make - many that we will never know anything about.  Of course all traffic accidents are due to consequences, if you think of it that way.  Presenting the key assumptions of the normal distribution to statistics students today my slide displays the claim: "80% of drivers believe they are above average."  Of course with the majority of any distribution scoring average (around 68% within a normal curve) this is an impossibility.  If you think you're good you're probably average.

So why do 80% of people think they are better than everyone else I ask?  Some blank looks, then one girl offers "because they are over-confident".  Yes, I respond - but why might drivers be overconfident of their road skills?  More blank looks.  Okay, well this may be a consequence of a psychological principle known as the fundamental attribution error (or correspondence bias or attribution error).  This is the tendency of all of us to confer dispositional-related reasons for the observed behaviour of others, whilst recognising situational influences relative to ours.  How might this apply to driving?  When we observe erratic behaviour in other road users we think they are useless drivers.  When we run into difficulties ourselves we blame it on the weather, the road, or anything other than our abilities.  So basically we think in comparison to others we're better drivers ;-)  A consequence of course of this way of thinking can be over-confidence...

Back to musing.  Today I'm rejecting Radio 4 in preference to sing along with my mixed tracks on a USB key. The music prompts me to think about Jon going out singing last night, a rehearsal for Don Giovanni.  He knows the opera well, he's sung the role several times but he still has trouble remembering the words.  Ah, I hear you say, but men are not as good as learning words as women; it's a man thing.  Well that may be, but not all men have problems learning words.  And another thing - I can't remember the words to many things I've learnt over the years, even though I practiced long and hard; but the words in a popular song, heard 10 or 20 years ago, can come back to me to such an extent that I can sing along with delight.  Now I know enough to realise this can't be random.  There has to be a reason why I find some songs etched in my mind and others totally elusive - and it isn't just the genre - there are snatches of other things that are similarly never far from recall...

I pass the Sterling corner roundabout.  There is Morrison's (where I enjoy shopping on my way home - been there a couple of years now) and a couple of other distinctive places I can't recall now (even though it was only earlier today) and a BMW car showroom (which I don't think I noticed ever before!).  So why, when mentioning to Jon about the roundabout yesterday did I say, "You know, the Truprint roundabout".  Truprint, Bonusprint, a series of photographic print services that have been gone for years - a consequence no doubt of digital printing and less need for large premises.  So why would I have associated the roundabout in that instance with the old shops instead of the new one I visit often?  A throwback?  What is a throwback anyway?

A throwback as I understand it is an occurrence which is linked to a previous state of being - so a throwback in terms of gene expression is a characteristic which reappears having supposedly been filtered out of the current species profile; or a person or thing having the appearance of something from a previous time - hence 'throwback to the 50's' in terms of home decor.  So something returning or alluding to a more primitive expression or type.  For memory then?  Neuropsychologists now tell us that the most primitive form of memory is emotional memory - basic emotional responses to meaningful (even prelinguistic) stimuli or events. So maybe an old memory replacing a more recent one may occur as a consequence of the previous memory holding some emotional significance.

Back to Truprint then - why the Truprint roundabout?  Well I recall now the first time we travelled down the A1 and I noticed the photographic development centres.  It gave me a strange emotional feeling.  For years Truprint, Bonusprint and others were an important part of my life; all the photos I took of the children were sent for developing in those gaily coloured envelopes.  There was a lot of emotional significance associated with those envelopes; precious memories, attempts to freeze in time happy moments all too transient as your children grow. My precious children, for whom I invested so much emotional energy over so many years.  No wonder it's the Truprint roundabout!

Now I think back to the music issue - and it strikes me of course that the reason why I remember some songs so well is because they hold emotional significance.  Other words are such a struggle to learn because they mean nothing to me.  It's a technical exercise, no more.  And of course, now I think of it, it's a well know psychological fact that emotional significance can enhance memory recall in many areas. We remember emotionally charged events more immediately and with more clarity than non-emotionally charged.  Where the music has meant something to me or stirred my emotions it is much more likely to be etched in my memory.

So perhaps part of why Jon has such trouble with words as opposed to the music itself is that it's the tunes he finds emotionally meaningful, not the words.  In contrast my popular music is a deliberate blend of music and lyrics which I like to listen to because together they hold some emotional significance for me.  It's no surprise really that I find them easier to remember.