Month: October 2019

           Preparing for the second exam in psych 100, I seem to have a clear understanding of retrieval failure, which is basically when you know something, but you can’t retrieve the information to describe it. While I understand this topic, I want to learn more about retrieval interference. Pro-active interference is when information learned at an earlier time interferes with information learned later. On the other hand, retro-active interference is when information learned later interferes with prior knowledge. To elaborate on real life experiences with this concept I can apply these terms to real life experiences in my first year of high school marching band. 

          Admittedly, my first example is kind of silly, but it’s about my freshman year in marching band where the mellophone section leader was exchanging phone numbers. Prior to this experience I had a TracFone that I used, but I recently acquired a real cellphone with a new number. Every single time the section leader asked for my phone number, I gave him my old TracFone number. When I got home from band practice, I finally figured out how to find my phone number in settings. Only then did I realize the number I gave the section leader did not match my new phone number. The reason I told the mellophone section leader my old phone number even I was using my new phone is because of pro-active interference. In this example the early information of my old TracFone number was interfering with my brand-new cell phone number. This unfortunately is what caused me to give the mellophone section leader the wrong phone number. 

          Another real-life example that helps explain interference is when I switched from playing French horn to mellophone. Before high school my primary instrument was the horn and I had studied playing it diligently. When I joined my high school marching band, I was required to learn mellophone which requires the use of different fingerings to play the instrument. A few weeks after band camp I noticed that when I went back to horn sometimes, I would use mellophone fingerings and it would mess with my horn playing. This experience is an example of retroactive interference because the prior knowledge of knowing how to play the horn, was interfered by learning to play mellophone. 

 

When I was around 7 or 8 years old my uncle got into an accident. He was riding his motorcycle when a car, that made a wrongful turn, hit him. He got a few scratches and a cut on his pulse that was not too serious but he also hit his head pretty hard causing a concussion. He was brought to the hospital and the doctors said he was fine. The only bad thing was that my uncle could not remember the accident at all. His memory (persistence of learning over time, through active encoding, storage, and retrieval of information), which was perfect before the accident, was not working at all.

My uncle could remember very vividly moments before the car hit him but he could not remember the exact moment he actually got hit. He could not recall or retrive the information that happened to him. What happened was that his brain did not encode the event of the accident. It happened, but as soon as he hit his head, that memory got wiped away because he did not encode it. Therefore, he could not remember what he did not encode. The term encoding failure is used to describe this trauma.

A few months later he could remember some things from the accident, but could never fully explain those things or name them. This is called a retrieval failure. For example, my uncle wanted to talk about something from the accident but he could not describe what he wanted to say as if he almost knew what it was but he could explain what it was. He just could not say the specific word or phrase to describe what happened. This failure happens when people can say things about the word or phrase/sentence but cannot retrieve it to fully remember it.

His memory was slightly damaged for a while and his declarative memory, in which it stores things that happened to a person and events, was damaged as well. Therefore, his hippocampus was also damaged because it is a neural center in the limbic system that processes explicit (declarative) memories.

Hippocampus:

It might also have been some sort of retrograde amnesia. One that only happened during that one event on his life because of the concussion he suffered instants after the car hit his motorcycle. Retrograde amnesia is a loss of memory-access to events that occurred or information that was learned, before an injury. The severity will depend on the extent of damage and, for my uncle it was not as severe as it could have been since he only can’t remember that one event.

Have you ever previously learned something in school that interfered with a lesson you are learning currently or learned something new that made you forget what you learned before? This is called proactive interference in psychology, and I have personally experienced this through exceptions to the rules in chemistry and math. 

Proactive interference is the form of interference where old memories restrain the capacity to remember new information. Proactive interference occurs when past memories hold back an individual from retaining new memories. Proactive interference is very common when learning something in school. Many times when taking a test a person will remember something they learned in a previous lesson, but they cannot simply remember the new material they learned in that specific lesson. This is an example of proactive interference. Another example would be if an individual is trying to learn a new language like spanish, and they speak french already; the french language that is already known might interfere with the comprehension of spanish because they can be similar. The competition between the two memories prevents the new material from encoding into the individual’s memory. Proactive interference causes past memories to block the encoding of new memories typically because the memories might correlate or be similar in some way.

Retroactive interference is the form of interference where new memories restrain the capacity to old information; thus, the new material being added into an individual’s memory will make the individual forget some of the old memories. Even though there is competition between the two memories and the new material will win, there is no unlearning involved in retroactive interference. Something that affects retroactive interference is sleep or rest. If a person learns something new than rests or sleeps afterwards there is less of a chance that any new information will be retained; therefore, minimizing the possibility of retroactive interference to happen. An example would be if a dancer learned a series of steps or moves, and then only can remember the last move that was taught. Because the dancer forgot the previously learned information and could only remember the most recent information taught, the dancer experienced retroactive interference. Another example would be if someone speaks spanish, but then moves to France. Then they end up spending so much time learning and speaking french they forget how to correctly speak spanish. The newly learned information trumps the previous memories causing retroactive interference to occur. 

In highschool I took Honors Chemistry and AP Chemistry, so coming to college I had a pretty decent background in chemistry. During my Chemistry 110B class we learned about how there are exceptions to the octet rule in Lewis Structures. While studying for my recent exam I could not remember to apply the exceptions to the octet rule because the old information was blocking the encoding of the new material. This is a representation of proactive interference because the old memories interfered with the comprehension of the new information. 

My schedule this year has my Chemistry 110B class right after my Math 140B class every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. After both of my classes are done I try to review what I learned in both lessons that day. I was always confused at how I was able to forget what I learned in my math class in such a short amount of time; however, I realized that this is an example of retroactive interference. The new information I learned in chemistry interfered with my memory of the lesson I learned in math causing me to forget the math lesson because chemistry and math can overlap making retroactive interference stronger. 

 

Works Cited

Mcleod, Saul. “Proactive and Retroactive Interference.” Proactive and Retroactive Interference | Simply Psychology, 1 Jan. 1970, www.simplypsychology.org/proactive-and-retroactive-interference.html.

Shrestha, Praveen. “Proactive Interference.” Psychestudy, 16 June 2019, www.psychestudy.com/cognitive/memory/proactive-interference.

Shrestha, Praveen. “Proactive and Retroactive Interference.” Psychestudy, 16 June 2019, www.psychestudy.com/cognitive/memory/proactive-retroactive-interference.

Origins of Attachment:

Beginning at birth, children develop a deep attachment with their caregiver, whoever that may be. Attachment is not always two sided, where one living being can attach to another with it being reciprocated, such as a duck. As soon as a duck is born, it develops a deep attachment to the first thing it sees practically. The first thing it sees is usually it’s mother, which explains why it is common to see ducklings following their mother so closely.

Humans take longer than an instant to attach so deeply to something. Once they are cared for and raised by their parents for a period of time, they begin to develop this trust and attachment to the caregiver. In the past, societal standards would lead to a stronger attachment with the mother and child, rather than the father. This is because men were expected to leave the house and work, while women were more in charge of taking care of the children and household chores. Once this bond to the caregiver(s) is strong, the child has a hard time being separated from them, and they become distressed. Though the children attach to their caregiver, not all styles of parenting are healthy for the children. Parenting styles are categorized into three main categories, which are known as authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive. The ideal parenting style is authoritative, where the caregiver sets rules and has expectations for their children, but they will listen to their child and can understand and make exceptions when appropriate. Authoritarian is stricter, where the caregiver will set certain rules that are expected to be met no matter the circumstance. This style of parenting is known to cause negative effects on the child, such as severe anxiety as they get older, as well as issues with self-confidence. On the other hand, permissive parenting is too under controlling with little rules that are usually easy to get around, which also leads to poor effects on a child. These effects can range from things like academically unmotivated, and a lack of personal responsibility.

The topic I chose for this blog post is Procedural Long-term memory. Procedural long-term memory is part of encoding, memory, and the duration of memory. In general, procedural long term memory is the encoded part of our skills that we acquire through years of experience. This could be riding a bike, simple math, or typing on a keyboard. It is anything that someone does that doesn’t require thinking through the act. These procedural memories are usually hard to describe in depth; it is difficult for us to explain to someone else how to ride a bike. One saying that describes this could be “you just do it”; it is not easy to explain, one day, a person will just acquire a skill. In my experience, I have procedural memories in the form of playing an instrument. I have been playing the trombone since fourth grade, starting in 2010. Over the course of almost ten years, I have adapted various time to different settings with different people. Over that time, I have generated some procedural long-term memory relating to the notes I play often. It has also come out of the basic ways to hold the trombone, how to create sound, and how to make sure I have enough breath during each part of the song. Obviously, I have not mastered, or even come close to mastering, the trombone yet. I still have plenty of short-term memories and working memories that must become long-term memories before I even try to become any better at trombone. But, all of my procedural long-term memories will be in my brain forever. That is because long term memory essentially lasts forever, unless there is issues or problems will getting that info out, retrieval errors. Playing an instrument is just one of the examples of the ways that procedural long-term memories exist in our brain.

Retrograde amnesia is loss of all or some of memories due either injury or a possible disease.  A sufficing head injury to inflict retrograde amnesia would be a concussion.  It is believed to be related to the consolidation process, in which memories are stored in the long-term memory.  Depending on the severity of the concussion, the patient could have full lost or partial loss of memories.  In concussions though, the patients’ memories almost always come back to them after a certain amount of time.  A disease that is associated with retrograde amnesia is Alzheimer’s.  The cause for the disease is yet to be determined however it is thought to be genetic.   Once a certain age is reached the patient’s memory begins to slowly dissipate until they almost all their memories are gone.  Korsakoff syndrome is also associated with retrograde amnesia.  This disease occurs due to excessive alcohol consumption because of a deficiency in thiamine.  Thiamine deficiency is seen in almost all diseases relating to memory loss, including Alzheimer’s.  Losing memories is an awful occurrence and seems quite scary especially when present in family members.  Nevertheless, it is much more awful when experienced first person.

Last year I was skiing with a close friend at a local ski resort.  It had just snowed, and school was cancelled so we decided it would be a perfect day to go.  For the most part it was the perfect day until the last few runs.  We were going down a trail when I caught an edge and face-planted.  It almost didn’t hurt at all except for my lining goggles hitting my eyes quite hard.  When I got back up I noticed a massive gap in the middle of my visual field.  I thought it would go away soon, somewhat like the stars that one sees when standing up too fast.  I finished my run and got on the lift with my friend.  I started to tell him about the fall when I noticed the gap in my vision begin to gradually increase.  After that I don’t recall the next thirty minutes and only know what my friend told me.  Apparently, I started asking him various questions such as “Where are we?”, “How did we get here”, and many other questions along those lines.  When we got to the top of the mountain, he decided I need to go to ski patrol to get checked out.  I remembered how to ski perfectly fine, but I couldn’t recall any events prior.  During our ride down the mountain I kept asking him the exact same questions repeatedly.  Once we got to the bottom, we walked to his car to drop off our equipment.  When we arrived at his car my memory came back and I could recall everything except past thirty minutes.  It was evident I had a severe concussion and had to make sure I rested my brain for the next few weeks.  This event was quite frightening especially actually feeling yourself start to forget everything and then all of the sudden you’re somewhere completely different.  Although this was only a brief loss of memory, it gave me insight as to what losing your actual memory could be like, and hopefully it something I won’t be experiencing again.

Memory construction can be broken up into three stages: sensory, short term, long term. Sensory memory is the immediate recording of information that disappears quickly. Some sensory information will be kept in short term memory, which holds a few items for a short time. Lastly, some of the short term memory can be transferred into long term memory which is relatively permanent. The process of turning sensory and short term memory into long term memory is one that can be effected by many outside factors. For example, maintenance rehearsal is the process of repeating information to keep in working memory, increasing the chance of it going into long term memory. Visual imagery is another powerful aid to effortful processing. This is because visuals allow a person to create mental pictures. When a long term memory is achieved, it’s either procedural (implicit) or declarative (explicit). I will be focusing on the explicit memories, which include semantic and episodic. Semantic is general facts with no timeline, while episodic involves things that happen to you with a timeframe.

I recall a vivid reoccurring nightmare I would have as a kid in which I would fall into an endless dark pit after falling over the railing of the upstairs level in my house. This would always wake me up in a panic and sometimes off my bed. I would have this nightmare probably 2-3 times a week, which activates maintenance rehearsal. This is one of the reasons why I feel I can remember the vivid details of this nightmare. Another reason I can remember it so well is the fact that I have a mental image of the nightmare in my head. As this memory has been established as long term, it’s an explicit episodic memory. It’s explicit because I have to think about it to remember it and episodic because I have to travel back in time to recreate this memory. While I feel like I remember each and every detail of this nightmare, I know I’m a victim of the misinformation effect. This effect is caused by filling in missing pieces of information to make our recall more coherent.

There was another instance when I was just two years old where I experienced trauma and have a vivid memory of the situation. I remember I was standing on the edge of the open door of the non-moving mini van when I fell and hit my head on rocks, cracking my head open. I remember the action of falling down, followed by my cousin racing outside after he heard my screams. While I feel like I remember the exact situation, I know I’m experiencing infantile amnesia. Infantile amnesia occurs because until a baby turn around three and a half years old, they don’t have a conscious memory. However, I believe I have some recollection of the memory because it was trauma that caused it, therefore it has a special allocation in my brain.

Memory construction is a process that can be easily manipulated. Through techniques like maintenance rehearsal, or through acts of trauma, short term memory thoughts can be turned into long term which last relatively permanent.

 

 

Types of Memory