Month: October 2019

It would be mind boggling to find out that sometimes the memories that we think we experienced at a point in time never actually happened. We don’t actually know if our memories are true or not and discerning false memories is not easy at all. For example many theories like source amnesia where you connect an event to the wrong source, or implantation of memories. Something like this happened to me where I thought a memory that I had and would repeat multiple times was true, but later found out it was false. 

When I was younger I remember it was the anniversary of 9/11 and I was in 2nd grade. I had just learned and watched a movie on the horrific event and couldn’t wait to go home and tell my mom about everything I had just learned. I vividly remember my mom telling me that the day 9/11 happened that we were actually supposed to be in the city on that day. She told me my grandfather had a doctors appointment and me being only 4 months old she brought me too. But luckily, on our way there she had forgotten paperwork at home in Jersey and had to turn around and we never ended up going because when she was in the house she saw on the TV that the attack had occurred. I repeated this multiple times throughout my life until recently in High School I brought it up to my mom and she told me that my memory was false. 

I believe that my false memory was developed through either source amnesia and the implanting of memories. That I heard multiple stories from my classmates about their parents that were supposed to go into the city on that day but something resulted in them not having to and it implanted and I turned it into my own memory.

Our brain actively encodes, stores, and retrieves a lot of information throughout our lives. The memory is the repetition of learning through this process. It has three stages: sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory. The sensory memory is the brief storage of the sensory information, and the short-term memory holds few items that last longer than the sensory memory. The short-term memory becomes the long-term memory through elaborative rehearsal, which is making the information meaningful by making connections with prior knowledge or personal experience. These encoded and stored information are not always accurate. The memory is a constructive process, so we tend to fill or alternate the missing pieces of information to make it more understandable. Also, it can be modified by post-event information. Therefore, what we believe to be true in memory might be wrong. There was a case of a man who lived in prison for 17 years because of the misinformation of the brain.

In November 2001, Royal Clark Jr., who was 24 years old at that time, got convicted of an armed robbery at the Burger King in Terrytown, Louisiana. The fingerprints from the scene were unusable for DNA testing, and the only evidence was the witness by a 19 years old boy who was sure that Clark was the robber. With that one eyewitness, Clark was found guilty and sentenced to 49 and a half years. Then 17 years later, the Innocence Project New Orleans took his case and reinvestigated. They reanalyze the fingerprint that was unusable back in the day, and it matched to Jessie Perry, who has the history of several armed robberies in the same area. Clark was proven his innocence and released from prison. This case clearly shows the jeopardy of the misinformation of the eyewitnesses. Nancy Franklin, a psychology professor at Stony Brook University who is a specialist in memory, explains that the “mugshot exposure phenomenon” causes false eyewitness testimony. She said that eyewitnesses often think they recognize them from the crime scene, but in fact, they got familiarized with their faces from the mugshot. This case best illustrates the effect of the misinformation of the brain. 

This does not mean that all of our memories are untrue, but we should be aware that there are some alternated memories. 

Reference:

“How Faulty Eyewitness Testimony Can Lead to Wrongful Convictions.” CBS News, CBS Interactive, 9 Sept. 2019, www.cbsnews.com/news/faulty-eyewitness-testimony-can-lead-to-wrongful-convictions/. 

People study for tests in different ways. They tend to do whatever works for them. However, it wasn’t until this Psychology class that I realized that everyone stores information in the same way. According to the Three-Stage Model of Memory by Atkinson and Shiffrin, encoding information requires has three stages: sensory memory, short term memory, and long-term memory. In sensory memory, the sensory inputs, such as tastes, touch, and sights, are stored. Short term memory processes sensory memory and allows sensory memory to form connections with long term memory. Short term memory is also called working memory. Long term memory is similar to a hard drive. It stores information from short term memory for seemingly an infinite amount of time. When we are learning or studying for tests, we hop to get all of that information into the long-term memory, so that it can be remembered for the test. However, in order to get to long term memory, the transition between short term memory to long term memory must be made. This transition is called rehearsal or memory consolidation. Rehearsal is the constant repetition of information that allows short term memory to be converted to long term memory. There are two main types of rehearsal, elaborative and maintenance rehearsal. Elaborative rehearsal is when you form connections between new information and existing information, which enhances your ability to remember that new information. Maintenance rehearsal is when you keep repeating the same information to keep it in your working memory in hopes that enough repetition will encode the information into your long-term memory. However, in maintenance rehearsal, once you stop rehearsing the information, it goes away making it ineffective in remembering new information.

How does all of this memory information relate to my life? Well, in the past three days, I have had three midterms, all within one day of each other. While I tried to study by re-reading my notes the days before the exam, I could not remember much of what I read the very next day. Therefore, I used elaborative rehearsal to relate my notes to previous information that I had learned in older classes or back to the lectures themselves. This led me to form stronger connections between new and existing information. Relating new information to old allowed for the formation of retrieval cues, which are memories that are held in storage by a web of associations, which ultimately led me to remember the information more effectively for my tests.

Source:

“Chapter 5 – Memory.” Psychology, by Josh Wede,

https://psu.pb.unizin.org/intropsych/chapter/chapter-5-memory/

Often times forgetting is caused by a failure to retrieve information. This can happen due to interference. When retrieving information that is stored in our long term memory, interference is something that can makes information inaccessible. There are two types of interference that exist. They are known as proactive and retractive interference. Proactive interference is when old information learned in the past hinders the recall of newly learned information. Retroactive interference on the other hand is the opposite. This is when new information learned more recently hinders the recall of older information.

Both proactive and retroactive interference have affected my ability to retrieve information. When rushing the business fraternity I am now a part of, we were required to learn the names of all of the brothers and were verbally tested on it. One of the brothers looked very similar to another guy I knew in high school and this caused me to only be able to recall the name of the kid I knew that looked like this brother when tested on the matter. This is an example of proactive interference. This is because I had learned the name of this kid I went to high school with and when I was asked to remember the name of someone new I had met that looked similar, I could only remember the name I had learned before. An example of retroactive interference that I have experienced recently has been remembering the passwords and emails combinations needed to log into different websites. After Penn State required me to change my Canvas password, I started using that new password for everything instead of the password I would use for everything before. Now I have a hard time remembering which password I used to create an account on specific websites. I also created a new email that I have used to create some of these accounts which makes it even that much harder to remember. This is retroactive interference because the new passwords and emails I am learning are hindering my ability to remember which passwords and emails I used for accounts I had previously set up.

Have you ever had a memory of something then it turns out you weren’t even there? While this seems extremely impossible, it can actually happen! This is called implanting memories. Implanting memories is when individuals are given enough details and are reassured by another individual that the event occurred, people will believe they took part in that event. Or if somebody heard a story so many times, they can also believe they partook in that event also. I find this extremely interesting that you can implement a memory into somebody’s. This was tested by Hyman & Billings in 1998. They first obtained real memories about the individual, they then asked about five different memories. Four of those memories actually occurred and one had not occurred and was made up. They would then ask about the memory days later and usually the individual would remember the event which was made up. I find this very interesting that people can just create memories for others but, thinking back on it I have experienced it myself.

In high school my friend group would do everything together. Sometimes individuals who were busy would miss out because they were busy. As time would pass after events and stories of it would be told, I started to notice that people who weren’t there would be able to tell the story. Not just summarize the story either, they would be able to tell every detail that happened like they were there. I just assumed that they had FOMO and wanted to fit it. It wasn’t until the class covered the lesson on memory that I realized what was happening. I soon realized why this was occurring and that the individuals heard the story so much and that the passing of time lead them to remember the events even though they were there. By repeatedly telling the stories we were actually implanting memories into the individuals who didn’t attend. This wasn’t intentional and I now find this very fascinating. I thought it was just a rare occurrence but finding out its actually a common event really changed how I look at my friends now. I myself have had memories implanted into my head because I have heard about, they so much, I just knew they weren’t true because they occurred while I was participating in something else that I remembered. While it might not seem like it, this is how easy it is to implement a memory into somebody’s head.

During lecture 12, we discussed child development and more specifically child-rearing practices. Child development has a lot to do with parental guidance and influence. We learned that there are 3 main types of parenting styles: permissive, authoritative, and authoritarian. Permissive parenting is when a parent is submits to their child’s demands and needs. In this case, the child is usually not disciplined much and basically wears the pants in the relationship with his or her parents. For example, a permissive parent would be one to give in and buy the child something that is unnecessary with no argument. Authoritative parenting is the most common in todays day. This is when a parent is demanding but is still responsive to their children. They are able to see both sides of the situation and discipline when absolutely necessary. Lastly, there is authoritarian which is the most extreme type of parenting.  This type of parenting comes with many rules and they expect obedience from their child. These types of parents are extremely strict and expect a lot from their kids, they see only their vision and demand their ways from the child. Luckily, my parents are not the authoritarian type, yet I’ve dealt with this type of parenting from a middle school friend whose parents were extremely strict. It was 7^thgrade and I was meeting a bunch of new people who were also starting middle school. I became really good friends with a girl, and we decided we wanted to hang out. So, one day I went over to her house and by the end of the hangout, I was basically terrified of her parents, especially her mom. Automatically, there were many snappy comments towards my friend, which was her mom’s way of reinforcing the house rules. A vivid memory that I have from the hangout was when we were hanging in my friends room and out of the blue her mom reminded her that she hasn’t yet cleaned the kitchen or emptied the dish washer. I didn’t think much of it, but after my friend asked if she could do her chore after I left, the situation exploded. Her mom became furious very quickly, and there was no exception, the kitchen was being cleaned now. This was just one of the multiple situations that took place, but this one was a major shock to me because that was not how situations were handled in my house growing up. Her mom always expected a lot from her and expected it to be perfect. It was uncomfortable to see that her mom had no problem showing her authoritarian side to a new friend. Today, I am still friends with the same girl, and I now realize that her personality, which is a perfectionist who needs everything extremely organized 24/7, was most likely created by her authoritarian mom, who always needed everything to be done her way and in order all the time. This situation was definitely an odd, but good, eye opener for me because I was able to realize that every child is brought up differently, and parenting has a major impact on how the child grows up to be like.

We all know that when we were babies we experienced many events and when through various situations, but as adults today we may only be able to remember very few or not any at all. Do not worry this is a very normal phenomenon that all adults experience called infantile amnesia. Typically, we cannot remember things that we experienced before the age of about 2 or 3. As we are growing up, the memories from before that age begin to fade and begin to become more unclear until eventually those episodic memories completely go away for good.

Although our own memory of the events have disappeared, our brains can trick itself into believing that they remember a certain event from that time period if someone older who was there with us, quite possibly our parents, tell us the story about when we were taken to DisneyWorld for the first time when we were 1 year old. Many believe that the reasoning for this forgetting to take place is because of the lack of a sense “self” when we are children. When we are children we do not know who we are yet, so it may be hard to remember things that have actually happened to us. If we do remember things that have happened before that age, it is probably an event that was very traumatic.

The first memory that I remember from my childhood actually was a traumatic experience for me. I was about 2 or 3 years old and it was right when my family moved to a new home in Pennsylvania during the summer and we were about to go on vacation to the Jersey Shore. I was taking a bath the night before our departure for the beach and I was playing with my floating toy buoy. After playing with my buoy I stood up and immediately slipped and fell onto my chin. My chin started gushing blood and my parents rushed me to the nearby hospital for me to eventually get stitches. When we finally made it to the beach, I had to wear waterproof Band Aids all week whenever I wanted to go swimming in the ocean. Obviously, the reason I remember that story so well is because of the trauma I felt and the big impact that it had on me.