Remember What?

[KMK]

Charles Spurgeon:

\"This do in remembrance of me.\"—1 Corinthians 11:24.

It seems, then, that Christians may forget Christ. The text implies the possibility of forgetfulness concerning him whom gratitude and affection should constrain them to remember. There could be no need for this loving exhortation, if there were not a fearful supposition that our memories might prove treacherous, and our remembrance superficial in its character, or changing in its nature. Nor is this a bare supposition: it is, alas, too well confirmed in our experience, not as a possibility, but as a lamentable fact. It seems at first sight too gross a crime to lay at the door of converted men. It appears almost impossible that those who have been redeemed by the blood of the dying Lamb should ever forget their Ransomer; that those who have been loved with an everlasting love by the eternal Son of God, should ever forget that Son; but if startling to the ear, it is alas, too apparent to the eye to allow us to deny the fact. Forget him who ne'er forgot us! Forget him who poured his blood forth for our sins! Forget him who loved us even to the death! Can it be possible? Yes it is not only possible, but conscience confesses that it is too sadly a fault of all of us, that we can remember anything except Christ. The object which we should make the monarch of our hearts, is the very thing we are most inclined to forget. Where one would think that memory would linger, and unmindfulness would be an unknown intruder, that is the spot which is desecrated by the feet of forgetfulness, and that the place where memory too seldom looks. I appeal to the conscience of every Christian here: Can you deny the truth of what I utter? Do you not find yourselves forgetful of Jesus? Some creature steals away your heart, and you are unmindful of him upon whom your affection ought to be set. Some earthly business engrosses your attention when you should have your eye steadily fixed upon the cross. It is the incessant round of world, world, world; the constant din of earth, earth, earth, that takes away the soul from Christ. Oh! my friends, is it not too sadly true that we can recollect anything but Christ, and forget nothing so easy as him whom we ought to remember? While memory will preserve a poisoned weed, it suffereth the Rose of Sharon to wither.

Modern Science:

Chimps Smarter Than Humans in Memory Test

Tuesday , December 04, 2007

Young chimps apparently have an extraordinary ability to remember numerals, and recall them even better than human adults do.

Although researchers have extensively studied chimpanzee memory in the past, the general assumption has been that it is inferior to that of humans, as with many other mental functions.

\"There are still many people, including many biologists, who believe that humans are superior to chimpanzees in all cognitive functions,\" said researcher Tetsuro Matsuzawa, director of the Primate Research Institute of Kyoto University in Japan. \"No one can imagine that chimpanzees — young chimpanzees at the age of 5 — have a better performance in a memory task than humans.\"

Now Matsuzawa said he and his colleagues \"show for the first time that young chimpanzees have an extraordinary working memory capability for numerical recollection — better than that of human adults tested in the same apparatus, following the same procedure.\"

The scientists tested three pairs of mother and infant chimpanzees against nine university students in a memory task involving numerals. All of the chimps had already learned the ascending order of Arabic numerals, from 1 to 9.

The chimpanzees and humans were each briefly shown four to nine numerals at a time scattered across a touchscreen. Those numbers were then all simultaneously replaced with blank squares.

The volunteers then had to recall which numeral appeared in which place and touch the squares in ascending order, from lowest to highest. The chimps were rewarded with raisins or apple cubes for correct answers.

The scientists unsurprisingly found that people got worse the less time the numerals spent onscreen.

However, they discovered the three young chimps could remember many numerals with a glance, with virtually no change in performance even when the numbers were flashed for just 210 milliseconds — roughly twice as long as a blink of an eye and not enough time for human vision to wander across a screen.

In general, the young chimps performed better than their mothers and adult humans.

\"Young chimpanzees are superior to human adults in the immediate memory of details,\" Matsuzawa told LiveScience.

[\"It's amazing what this chimpanzee is able to do,\" Elizabeth Lonsdorf, director of the Lester E. Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, told the Associated Press. The center studies the mental abilities of apes, but Lonsdorf didn't participate in the new study.

She admired Ayumu's performance when the numbers flashed only briefly on the screen.

\"I just watched the video of that and I can tell you right now, there's no way I can do it,\" she said. \"It's unbelievable. I can't even get the first two [squares].\"]

Matsuzawa said the young chimps' ability resembled photographic memory, the ability in humans to retain a detailed and accurate picture of a complex scene or pattern.

This talent — also known as eidetic imagery — is also known to decline with age in humans, as it seems to do in chimps.

[Lonsdorf told the AP the next step would be to test the young chimps against human children, who would perform better than adults.]

A sharp memory could prove useful to chimps in the wild.

\"Suppose that a group of males met an adjacent group in the patrol of the territory. It is important to know how many enemies and where [they are] in the bush at a glance,\" Matsuzawa said. Or \"suppose that a chimpanzee arrived at a huge fig tree. It is important to know where the red ripe fruits are, against green ones. It is also important to know the positions of top-ranking males. You cannot eat fruits near the high-ranking males.\"

As to why chimpanzees — humanity's closest living relatives — have such a strong talent compared to most humans, Matsuzawa speculated there was an evolutionary tradeoff between this kind of sharp memory and the higher mental functions seen in humans, such as our advanced capability for language.

The research by Matsuzawa and his colleague Sana Inoue is detailed in the Dec. 4 issue of the journal Current Biology.

From Fox News: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,314681,00.html


Here's the video. (Turn the sound off if your easily offended by evolutionist presuppositions.)

[video=youtube;khe9bXT-OHE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khe9bXT-OHE[/video]