Why is it so hard to remember something when you’re put on the spot?
The teacher calls on you and asks you about last night’s assigned reading. You did the reading, but now you can’t remember anything about it. It’s like your brain has just erased everything from your mind.
One of our readers asked: Why does this happen?
It’s an excellent question. It often comes down to three things.
Stress. Whenever you get stressed, your brain starts to focus on the “right now.” You become aware of the fact your heart is racing or your teaching is looking at you. This makes it harder for your brain to be in the mode it needs to be in to remember things that happened in the past. So, that book chapter you read last night gets even harder to recall.
Lack of retrieval cues. Memory prompts that are vague can make it really hard to come up with the information. Your brain has to do a lot more work to figure out out what to retrieve if a question is vague (“What happened in the chapter you read last night?”) versus specific (“What was James thinking or feeling when found the mysterious animal?”).
Trying hard to remember can get in the way. Sometimes, the more you try to remember, the more irrelevant information you bring to mind. Maybe you start thinking about a chapter you read last week, or even a totally different book. Having a bunch of irrelevant information in mind can make it even harder for your brain to find the right information.
In many cases, you have a memory for the information, you just can’t remember it right now. In the moment, it can help to try to relax (try taking some deep breaths). It also can help if you can recall anything specific that can give you a better retrieval cue (Do you remember anything that happened in last night’s reading? Any thoughts or feelings you had while reading it?).