Rick Perry

Why Rick Perry's Gaffe Was More Than A Senior Moment

As part of an experimental psychology course, I had to memorize a series of nonsense words that were shown to me on flash cards. After a slight time of interruption I had to record as many of them as I could remember. I became increasingly frustrated as my classmates completed the experiment and left the lab, having successfully memorized the series of words. What really was annoying to me was that I had an excellent memory whenever I took tests, and was acing all of my courses. How could it be that I was the one left in the lab struggling to remember these simple meaningless words?

I later realized that meaningless was the key - the words were meaningless to me! If I had used the memory tricks of linking something meaningful to each word, I would have had an easier time. I was used to learning the content of my college courses by gaining a real understanding of the material, not by rote memorization of facts.

Memory is divided into three components - sensory information in which the brain holds sensory images for several tenths of a second after the sensory organs receive them, short term memory, where information is held for a few seconds or more, and long term memory where information is stored for future retrieval. Information can be maintained in short term memory by rehearsal - repeating the content over and over again. The trick to remembering things well is to get it from short term memory into long term memory. It used to be thought that learning depended on how long something was retained in short term memory, or how much repetition of the subject took place. Now it is thought that neither of these factors assure learning. Today's thinking says that content should be linked to an existing schema in your mind. Secondly, depth of processing must take place. Depth of processing refers to the amount of effort and cognitive capacity that is used to process information, and the number and strength of associations that are created between the content to be learned and preexisting knowledge.

What all of this tells me about Rick Perry's "senior moment" was that it was quite possibly the result of not being invested or interested enough in the subject matter to have committed it to long term memory. He simply rehearsed the material for the debate and had little real understanding(context) or caring and thought put into these three agencies (depth of processing) to create associations strong enough to be easily recalled. Notice that Ron Paul, in an effort to help the floundering Perry said "No, five - there are five" - and then offered "The EPA?". Ron Paul is passionate about his beliefs, and can rattle off information at the drop of the hat about agencies he would like to get rid of and he knows details of exactly why he thinks they should go away. I'll be willing to bet that Rick Perry can not say the same.

If Rick Perry had truly believed that the Department of Energy should be dismantled, I am certain that his mind would have been overflowing with explicit reasons why and exactly what energy policies the agency carried out that he was against. Certainly the word energy would have popped into his head at some point. I think that what Rick Perry showed us was worse than just a senior (whoops) moment. I think it showed us a frightening lack of understanding and belief in the very policies that he puts forth.