Scaffolding memory and thought … in the name of love!
One Friday, as my wife and I came home after a long work week, she asked me what I felt like doing that evening. We decided to order a pizza, crash on the couch, and watch a movie. Pulling up Netflix, we cued a comedy I hadn’t seen before: 50 First Dates, with Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore. I usually find Adam Sandler movies hilarious, and this one was no exception.
Sandler plays Henry, a veterinarian who aims to win the heart of Lucy, played by Drew Barrymore. However, Lucy has a condition known as amnestic disorder (a memory problem caused by brain damage). Although Henry and Lucy meet and fall for each other after a romantic date, Lucy wakes up the next day unable to remember Henry and their encounter.
Henry learns that Lucy wakes up every day thinking it’s October 13th, the date she suffered head injuries from a car accident. As a result, she can’t form new memories. Hence, Henry finds himself having to court her again and again throughout the course of fifty “first dates”!
Scaffolding the brain with technology
It really is a charming film. Without giving away the whole plot, I’ll simply say that Henry and Lucy figure out a clever trick to supplement her memory. (Technically, we can refer to this trick as ‘scaffolding,’ but more on that shortly.) Each morning, Lucy wakes up to a videotape labeled “Good Morning Lucy.” When she plays the videotape, she sees a home-made recording. Briefly, it recaps her accident, her 50+ dates with Henry, and their eventual wedding.
In addition to the videotape, Lucy learns to keep a diary and express her experiences in painting. In sum, she applies artistic reminders and cues using video and print media in place of her damaged brain. These techniques and technologies allows her to remember her life … and the man she loves.
Technologies that remember for us
There’s a revelation here about relationships, and I don’t just mean boyfriend-girlfriend relationships. I also mean the relationships between our minds and technologies. If you think about it, we all do what Lucy does to some extent. As a case in point, I keep a notebook and planner handy to track weekly tasks. My wife and I use an online calendar to remind us about upcoming appointments. Personal information managers (PIMs) are our best friends at work.
In the Information Age, we all use technology to support our memory, one way or another. Honestly, we have no choice, especially as data increase exponentially, exceeding our own brain storage capacity and presenting the problem of information overload.
Technologies that think for us
Technology not only supports our memory. It also does some of our thinking for us. For instance, we use calculators to calculate problems, in place of doing the math in our heads. We use GPS to map directions, as opposed to memorizing them ourselves. Many mental processes, from reminiscence to thinking, aren’t confined to the brain. Memory and thought are also in the technologies we use.
Scaffolding the brain to extend the mind
We might say that part of the mind is “extended” via technology. In fact, several cognitive scientists talk about our “extended mind” in this way. For example, Andy Clark, a philosopher, researcher, and writer of cognitive science, has noticed that technology acts as a sort of “scaffolding” around the brain.
It may sound a little convoluted at first, but here’s the idea. Just as a work crew uses scaffolding to support building construction, we use technology to support or extend mental processes, such as memory and thought. We can call the result our extended mind, in which mind involves both brain (the biological foundation of the mind) and technology (the scaffolding around it).
Note on the term scaffolding
As a quick aside, I should mention how the term “scaffolding” was inspired by psychologist Lev Vygotsky. In his book Thought and Language, Vygotsky coined the phrase “Zone of Proximal Development,” or ZPD (Vygotsky, 1986, p 187). ZPD refers to what students can’t yet recall by themselves without resorting to educational resources that support learning and memory—for example, dictionaries support language learning; multiplication tables support algebraic memory.
Educational psychologists call these resources “instructional scaffolding,” which may be removed after students commit lessons to memory. (It’s similar to how a building’s scaffolding may be removed, once construction is complete.)
Nevertheless, Clark uses the term a bit differently. In his book Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again, he uses the term “scaffolding” to describe a technological extension of the mind, which “offloads” information from the brain onto technology. In his words,
human reasoners are truly distributed cognitive engines: we call on external resources to perform specific computational tasks, much as a networked computer may call on other networked computers to perform specific jobs (Clark, 1997, p 68-69).
Mind isn’t just in the head!
So maybe, like Lucy in 50 First Dates, our minds aren’t confined to our heads!
To illustrate, try to remember how you remember, or try to think about how you think, both with and without scaffolding, or technological support. If you’re an artist or a scientist, you know lots of creative or critical thought processes aren’t possible without tools, machines, or media. Just as artistic and scientific thinking may not be entirely possible without those external resources, some types of memory and thought may not be possible without technology.
For instance, try to be a painter without a paintbrush. Imagine working as a biologist without a microscope. Or try being a writer without writing technologies, whether they be notebooks or computers.
To take that last example, I use notebooks and computers to put my thoughts together, not merely to write them down. In other words, these writing technologies not only let me record my thoughts. They also help me form and look over my thoughts while going through the writing process. Obviously, I couldn’t perform that process without such technologies.
I bet Shakespeare felt the same way about pen and paper. And yet, as Shakespeare might tell us, were he alive today, our mental reliance on technology may not be a bad thing—especially when we use it, as did Lucy, in the name of love.
References
Clark, Andy. (1997). Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Vygotsky, Lev. (1986). Thought and Language. (Alex Kozulin, Trans.). Cambridge: MIT Press. (Original work published 1934)