Here is an article on Human Memory that supports your point of view
Greater Paramus News and Lifestyle Magazine - A pair of top memory experts discuss an emerging science of the mind
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Humans have language, which is such an important part of encoding and retrieving memories. So the human brain is just richer from that point of view.
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and an interesting comment on evolution:-
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The other thing is that language gives rise to parallel evolution, which is important to memory storage. We can write things down, record them. We have a culture that develops around us based on our memory, and we have access to that. We can read about things. We have a whole surround of previous events that we can recall at any time, but that didn't actually happen to us. So language introduces an enormous dimension.
You could say that the human brain has evolved relatively little in the last 20,000 years, but that there's been enormous evolution in people and the culture around them. We drive cars. There's the Internet. This is a cultural evolution that works in parallel with biological evolution, but moves infinitely more rapidly. So our memories are constantly interacting with the culture around us, and evolving.
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However I fell that i must disagree with you (heaven help me).
When I was young I was considered retarded at school. I spent my days quietly day-dreaming down the back of the class (of 60 boys). I was a 'nice'. well-mannered kid who didn't get into trouble and often got fun jobs like giving out the milk or doing the gardening.
Unfortunately my life came to a terrifying crash when the Health Department came to my school gave out IQ tests and tested eyesight. It was discovered that I was almost blind and intelligent. (No way I could see the board from the back of the class.)
From that day on my life was miserable, I was constantly told I was "lazy", moved to the front of the class and picked on by the teachers (who had been my 'friends') relentlessly.
I found it very difficult to write words "compositions" and to spell.
I discovered at University that the reason for this was that I thought in pictures. Thinking in pictures is much faster than words.
My arguments often jumped to conclusions that no-one else could see because I had not put them down in a logical sequence of words. I was angry & frustrated because I could literally SEE the answer and I thought everyone else was just being pig-headed or stupid.
Fortunately I met m,y too be, wife (in a Tragedy Tutorial !-another story) -an English major- who would read my essays and say-"You can't say that! It doesn't follow." and we would have furious arguments. That's went I started to write down my mind- pictures in great, boring detail and started getting good grades.
Eventually I have learnt to use words and have written two books (With the aid of the greatest of all twentieth century inventions The Spell Checker) and thousand of submissions and reports whilst working for the government & many magazine artivcle on herbs & gardening. Strangely, my wife, who is a much better writer than me, has done little writing
I feel, that now, I have all but lost the intuitive, picture-thinking ability..
My eldest daughter also thinks in pictures. She found learning Japanese- a pictorial script- at school boringly simple.
She also has her mother's writing skills and is now working as a journalist.
I fear, she too, is now losing the picture-thinking-making skill as her life is all words.
I think, she just may, see pictures-of-words,(?!) as she has a memory I am in awe of (Knows all the
Monty Python, Goon Show, scripts off by heart and a goodly amount of Terry Pratchett too).
So, does this exception disprove the rule?
Do Japanese/Chinese think in pictures?
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