Published on 08 May 2022

What is Echoic Memory?

General Psychology what-is-echoic-memory
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In our daily lives, we hear many sounds surrounding us, such as a car's horn, someone's chatting, etc. but have you ever remembered some situation after hearing a particular sound? Well, let's see a story that would be easy for you to understand echoic memory. 

Once a presentation occurred, a team member sitting at the front side of the conference table was yawning. The boss was in the swing of his new product presentation; everybody nodded and paid attention. The yawning person was having attention but not much.

The boss sometimes kept an eye on his reactions. Suddenly, the boss stopped his presentation and cross-questioned the team member. The yawning team member enters an active position with a chill in his spine and fumbles. The boss asks again to talk, and suddenly something happens in his mind, and the team member starts giving the answers clearly and correctly. Later the boss continues his work.

So what you observed from the above scene! Some of you might say a story or a corporate for starting content. Let it be; the main observation point from the above story is who helped the guy answer the question; here, you will say that another colleague prompted him. Yeah, that could be, but something happened in his mind. 

Yes, correct! His memory, his memory helped him to recollect all those things. But the question arises it is a memory, but what is it, or why it feels like a sound kept playing in mind while something happens? This memory is called Echoic memory. 

How Echoic Memory Helps To Remember Things

Echoic memory helps to remember things from the sound. In simple terms, echoic memory comes under sensory memory type, e.g., smells, touch, visuals, etc. In echoic memory, the sound is stored for a short period. It remains for about 2 to 4 seconds. 

In a period, the brain replicates it in an understanding format, and we hear or recall, understand it, and sometimes use it to relate. It's a continuous ongoing process and eternal, but it can decay over time due to aging, hearing problems, anxiety, anxiety, and long-term mental illness.

How Echoic Sensory Memory Works?

When you hear something, the auditory nerve sends that sound to your brain, making it easy to guess. This procedure does by transmitting electrical signals. Now at this point, this sound is raw and unprocessed audio information.

The echoic memory occurs when the brain receives this sound. Mainly it's kept it's the primary auditory cortex (PAS), seen in both brain hemispheres. Then the information is held in the PAC opposite the ear that heard the sound. After taking a few seconds, the echoic memory moves into short-term memory. This is the final procedure where the brain recollects all the information related to sound and gives meaning to it.

How Long Does Echoic Memory Lasts?

Every brain of the human body has a lot to grasp things and store them in a memory form. Some stays in for a few seconds, and some can be saved for a lifetime, depending on the mind's state. Regarding Echoic memory, it lasts about 2 to 4 seconds before the information disappears. Now you can imagine how the human brain is fast to catch things.

Factors Of Echoic Memory

Everyone has echoic memory, and various factors influence how well someone has this type of memory. The following possible factors are age, neurological disorders, such as AlzheimerAlzheimer'stric, disorders, schizophrenia, substance use, impairment, and Laughing disorders.

Besides all these factors, echoic memory depends upon sound characteristics, including Duration, intensity, frequency, volume, and language.

Why Do We Forget?

There are many reasons we forget things. The foremost something happens due to constant anxiety and burnout or sometimes getting depression. The other factors that depend are,

  • You hear more but listen less.
  • Focus on more than one thing.
  • Not getting sleep
  • Addiction to substances
  • Aging problems
  • Long-term mental illness
  • Overthinking

How Do Our Ears Work?

The ear is the source of surrounding information through sound. An organ that helps to identify what is happening in our surroundings. The echoic memory directly depends on the working of the ear. It's an iIt'sdible journey of sound till we understand it.

First, the soundwaves created by some object fall on the ears and later onto the eardrum in between the structure of the ear canal, helping to amplify the sound; the sound waves create vibrations in the eardrums, and the eardrum is connected with the cochlea, and as the sound flows the fluid also containing moves and hair present over there that is associated with auditory nerve helps to send signals to the brain, and thus we understand the sound. Hence echoic memory depends upon hearing. 

Different Types Of Memories

  • Short-term memory: Usually lasts for a short period
  • Long-term memory: Usually lasts long periods, like live events.
  • Implicit memory: Riding a car or bike and remembering that you replicate unconsciously.
  • Explicit memory: Facts and events of life or essential phases/moments of life
  • Sensory memory: it holds information from the senses. It has three parts: iconic memory, visual sensory memory, haptic memory, and echoic memory.

Echoic Memory: A Treatment For Mental Conditions

As discussed earlier, echoic memory can help treat mental conditions like anxiety, Anxietyloss, depression, stress, Schziropeniaanxietyof confidence, etc.

Echoic memory helps decrease the memory loss problem by replaying it in mind. You can identify an event by focusing on the sound of its surrounding. Just as we do in rehearsals of dance events and music events, let's try things to remember someone by their smell or scent.

Yeah !!! You got it right there! You can remember some person just by their scent or fragrance. The same goes with sound; also, you can recall the voice of the person or the object as it has been stored in your long-term memory with the help of echoic memory.

Echoic Memory Can Help With?

Anxiety creates fear, leading to overthinking, panic attacks, and many other things. Echoic memory can help treat anxiety-related problems. One can retrieve their cheerful and achievement moments to decrease anxiety aAnxietyease competition. 

  • Echoic memory can motivate the person's anxiety the motivational information from their physician, mentor, gurus, and other events.
  • Echoic memory plays a vital role in the perceptions of the human being as we tend to believe from hearing, and hence it indirectly affects the person's person's power.
  • Music can bring back memories and be used as a mark of events to retrieve things.
  • The fear of forgetting things also increases anxiety levels, so one can use echoic memory to remember things and decrease stress.
  • In schools, children have recited poems, lessons, and songs; hence constantly replaying memory can help to remember clearly and concisely.
  • Reading your things and reciting will help you remember as you listen to yourself.

Why Do We Listen To Songs Other Than For Entertainment Purposes?

There is a helpful fact when we are cheerful and don't feel the song's lysing when we are sad or down, we think the song's lysong'sHence is possible with echoic memory. When we achieve something that we were trying for it, after the achievement, many motivational songs or hyped-up song starts to play, or we can listen to the songs in mind and vice versa; when we are in a sad mood, the revised sounds changes that elicit emotions.

Echoic memory is a continuous process as our system is in the live stage. Echoic memory can be used to treat depression caused by memory loss diseases such as AlzheimerAlzheimer'sntia, which leads patients to serious memory issues. Memory exercises can help to recollect and be in the moment. Music therapy exercises can be used in memory loss treatment.

Role Of Echoic Memory In Children

Children who cannot remember things can be treated with echoic memory of themselves. That's whThat'sre made to read aloud early to remember things. The echoic memory thus helps to identify the words and their meanings. 

In echoic memory, the sound is perceived in bits, and therefore after, it creates a sentence in mind. Depression can be decreased by revising the patterns of self achievements. It leads to confidence and imagining new ways to solve problems; as it is a continuous process, we can find many ways to cope with depression.

Echoic memory helps increase imagination powers, sharpen memory, and exercise the mind, especially while listening to music.

Nostalgia - A Best Mental Exercise

If a song used to play in times of your life you cherished the most. After a long time in your busy schedule, it certainly pops up on your phone, and a whole scenario of your old times plays in front of your eyes and ears. You feel more confident and fill yourself with energy, and you continue your day with great confidence and new ways by dropping your anxiety levels. Sounds familiar, thou?

Yes! Nostalgia is the mental exercise you had yourself. Various sensory memory helps in feeling nostalgia. Forex: when you are feeling down, remember the first complex deal you cracked and the congratulations sounds of that time; play the match you just won on your first try, and you can hear the cheering noises. Hence the best feeling to start from feeling down and getting up hustle with great energy.

Echoic memory and nostalgia had close connections because a sound can help to travel too fast into past scenarios. Patients with memory loss problems can be helped by playing the things or sounds in various life phases. It can help bring back memories associated with it, leading to an increase in its remembrance power.

Things You Can Try Out

Before starting any vital work, plug in your earphone and play a song relatable to work, hence working as a bookmark. After completing work and passing days, try to remember the job by playing music. Therefore echoing memory can be used as a bookmark.

Remember, the more you recall the memories, the more the remembrance will be. Hence we should remember those memories which help us, not put us into depression. So the Echoic memory can relate to the saying while something wrong damages things you are listening do not recall it; otherwise, it will fuel your anxiety. It seems a practical approach. Always listen rather than hear to increase memory power.

Bottom Line From Practical Anxiety Solution

Echoic memory leads to remembering the sound, a continuous process. It's an uIt's-short-term memory that does not last long if not retrieved by the brain. It can be used to treat memory loss, fear of forgetting, anxiety, and depressioAnxietyaying the sound can elicit the nostalgia associated with it.

Nostalgia is used to improve the mood and morale of anxiety sed patients. The ear is yet the most complex organ in the human body, yet the capability is far reached. One can replay his loved ones' and imagine the whole scenario with them. It's the It'sener'listener'son and how he converts it into a joyous sound.