Month: October 2019

Ever try remembering a fact or idea but not being able to remember where or who you heard it from? This has to do with the idea of source amnesia. With source amnesia, a person can remember a certain idea, but cannot remember the source of that idea, therefore it can cause them to believe that something false is true or vice-versa. Source amnesia affects one’s explicit memory (processed in the hippocampus), which is your long-term memory that can be recalled easily in contrast to your implicit memory which is your unconscious memory. It is normal for a person to experience source amnesia as when time passes it is hard to remember every detail of an event. Especially after a long period of time, it is easy to forget where or when you heard something. When someone experiences source amnesia on a more frequent basis that is when it can be pretty concerning and lead to disorders like schizophrenia where you hallucinate things that are not actually happening. An example of source amnesia is if your friend tells you something that is not necessarily true, and you recall this idea years later forgetting where you learned it from and therefore believe it to be true, just suspecting that you learned it from the news or a reputable source. It is necessary in cases like these to decipher properly between facts and imaginary ideas and not allow your mind to fabricate your past.

I have experienced source amnesia many times in my life, for example there have been times where one of my friends would tell me a story and then years later I would remember parts of that story but not everything. Therefore, I would make up parts of the story that didn’t actually happen or I would actually think that that story was a part of my past rather than my friends’. This is because over time parts of memories get lost and your mind tries to piece different parts of your past together, even when all of the information is not there. A more specific example in my life of source amnesia would be one time when I had a dream about myself having a test the next day and in my dream I was stressing out over studying for it. The next day I woke up in a panic because I believed that what I had dreamed was real life and I actually had a test the next day, when really it was just a dream. Although there was not a large time passing from when I first recalled this information, because it was while I was asleep, it affected my state of mind and caused me to inaccurately discern false memories. It’s crazy how the mind works sometimes!

https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/psychpedia/explicit-memory

https://study.com/academy/lesson/source-amnesia-definition-lesson.html

            Throughout the semester, I have recently begun to try to better my understanding of topics and concepts by seeing how I personally relate and have experienced them. A lecture previously covered in Psych 100 was memory storage and retrieval, a concept everyone has experiences in their life at one point or another. Memory storage and retrieval are processes in which your body is able to store many memories you have experienced in the past that are not actively occurring. Memory storage allows an individual to hold memories within their mind without continuously recalling and using the information they gained. When it comes time to gain access to the information involving these memories, the process of retrieval is activated.  

             A moment in which I experienced and acknowledged that use of my memory storage and retrieval was when was I finally rode a bike after not having rode one in a few years. When I was younger, I had a bicycle that I rode all the time. As I grew up, I became busy and never got a chance to just go outside and ride my bike or go on biking and hiking trails. On a random Saturday, I was given a day off from gymnastics practice and my dad and I took the day to go bike a hiking trail by my house that is several miles long.  

             As my dad and I began biking the trail, I wasn’t exactly confident in my biking abilities and if I was going to fall or be able to keep up with him. Within the first few minutes of riding, I was not comfortable but, I was successfully remembering the act of how to ride a bike without having to be retaught. Although this seems to be a very simple activity, this is where I recognized storage of this information and retrieval. The idea that I was proficient at biking when I was younger and commonly biked, allows myself to take the information of how to ride a bike with muscle memory and easily store it; having it ready to retrieval when I find it necessary.  

             Within the retrieval processes I experienced when riding a bike for the first time in a while involved 3 major steps; recall, recognition and relearning. The idea I know that I knew how to ride a bike and the basic idea of how it was done is an example of what is called recalling information. When sitting on the bike and beginning to pedal, my body needed to quickly begin to use recognition in order to recall the information of the processes of how to ride a bike. This was shown by how I knew that I needed to hold onto the handlebars and begin to pedal, one foot and then the other. Beginning the trail with my dad, it took me a little to feel confident in biking to casual enjoy the trail with my dad. Knowing and feeling confident as the trail went on, I was relearning this skill.  

            What sparked my memory and retrieval of how to ride a bike was when I started to get on the bike and get ready to start that trail. The feeling of doing this is something I had done years ago when riding a bike and reminded me what I was supposed to do with my body to ride the bike. This is called a retrieval cue. I was able to very easily retrieve how to ride a bike due to my encoding specificity. Encoding specificity is when memory is easily and best retrieval due to conditions being the same as when they were encoded, meaning the same as when they were processed into memory storage.  

A schema is a cognitive framework or concept that helps organize and interpret information. Schemas can be useful because they allow us to take shortcuts in interpreting the large amount of information that is available in our everyday environments. Theorist Jean Piaget introduced the term schema within his theory of cognitive development, which describes how children go through a series of stages of intellectual growth. He believed that people are constantly adapting to the environment as they take in new information and learn new things.

As experiences happen and new information is presented, new schemas are developed and old schemas are modified. When I was twelve, I went on my first missions trip to Haiti. One of my schemas as a young teen included a social schema. During one of the first days there, a group of us went into the village to evangelize. After about an hour, we came to one of our last stops, which was a small hut near the edge of the village. The poverty was immense, the hut consisted of one room for a family of 8, and only a fire-pit made of stones sat in the courtyard. The children stared up at us from behind their mother, some in tattered clothing, others naked. But this was all to be expected. Haiti is one of the most impoverished countries in the world. What happened during this visit is what really taught me something. We asked if there was anything we could pray for, and they said yes, their grandmother. We asked where she was, and the dad told us to wait while he went and got her from inside the hut. When she came out, it was obvious what the issue was- half of her nose was gone. The flesh underneath the skin was fully exposed, and slowing eating away at the right side of her face. My initial reaction was to gasp in horror, or cover my mouth and look away. But no one else did this so I kept my composure. I quickly realized this is the “norm” for the villagers here. They couldn’t afford to go to the hospital and get it fixed.  It is normal there for people to go about their day to day lives, while a sickness slowly destroys their grandmother (or neighbor, friend, sibling, etc).

The processes through which schemas are adjusted/changed are known as assimilation and accommodation. In assimilation, new information is incorporated into pre-existing schemas. In accommodation, existing schemas might be altered or new schemas might be formed. This is as a person learns new information and has new experiences. In my case this experience jolted me into forming a new schema. I now understand that in first world countries we say “oh no get that looked at” when it comes to illness and the problem is solved. But in third world countries this is rarely an option.

The topic I decided to cover for this blog post is under the lesson of “Retrieval: Getting Information Out” specifically on the concept of context affects. The concept of context effects says that the physical context of where you learn has a large impact of what you retain. It also covers the concept that when you learn a topic in a specific environment for an extended period of time, you can retain the information that you learned in that environment easier if you are there. For example, we examined the study in class where scuba divers studied in water and took a test in water then compared the results when they studied in the water but took the test on land. What we saw from the study is when the scuba divers studied and took their exam in the same environment their scores were significantly higher than when their surroundings changed.

I personally experienced the concept of context effects in many different ways but can relate to it the most when I took my SAT’s in high school. As I was preparing for the exam, I took a SAT prep course for 6 weeks in a local YMCA. The room where the prep course was held had many open tables where multiple people sat at and the room filled up to around 80-100 people at a time. In this prep course, there were multiple practice exams that were very similar to the SAT itself. When it came time to take the SAT, it was held in a high school a town over from me in a room that fit 15 students. While taking the exam, I felt closed in by the room and my anxiety levels raised dramatically since I was directed to sit in front of the classroom closest to the door. I truly believe the results of my true SAT did not reflect how I performed on the practice exams held in the YMCA due to the environment.

This personal experience that I had can be directly correlated to what we learned in class about context effects. Since I was placed in the front row of a small classroom, my environment was completely different to that of where I took the practice exams. This seating in front of the classroom elevated my anxiety levels that affected what I retained from the prep course. While taking the practice exams, I was placed at an open table with 8-10 people compared to the single desk I was placed in during the actual exam which also induced my anxiety levels and made me feel more uncomfortable since it felt like I was taking the exam alone. If I were placed in the same room at the same open tables as the prep exams, the environment would’ve been the same and I believe I would’ve performed at the same level as the practice exams.

The topic that I am going to focus on for this post is the idea of schemas. A schema is a pattern of knowledge in long-term memory that helps someone to remember, organize, and respond to information. Everyone has schemas about everything that they experience. These are constantly developed throughout life. When children experience something for the first time, they form a schema about it, and then they see the world through the lens of that schema.

Once we have schemas and we experience new things, 2 processes take place: assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation is the use of preexisting schemas to understand all new information. Accommodation occurs when we learn new information that changes a preexisting schema. These two processes work together to mold and shape the way that we view the world throughout our lives.

I am the oldest of five children (11 year age gap), so I can understand many of the topics that we have covered related to child development because I remember my siblings going through the stages. One misconception that all of my siblings had when they were very young was that all meat was called chicken. My family eats chicken more often than other types of meat, so my siblings all developed a schema that meat and chicken were synonymous.

My brother used to call salmon “pink chicken.” In this case, he used assimilation to connect his new experience (salmon) into his preexisting schema (chicken). Over time, he began to use accommodation as he realized that different kinds of meat were distinct foods. Later, he further accommodated his schema when he realized that it is not a coincidence that there is a food called chicken and an animal that is also called chicken.

By the time my siblings reached school-age, most of their schemas fit into society. However, we all still have our own schemas that may or may not match someone else. We all have things to learn from each other to help us interact with the world around us.

Declarative (explicit) memory is a type of memory that is encoded by our hippocampus, entorhinal cortex and perirhinal cortex but is stored in our temporal cortex. The declarative memory has two parts to it; episodic and semantic memory. The semantic memory is the act of remembering general facts or things from a young age. Episodic memory is more aimed towards personal facts. These personal facts are more based off of where we were at the time, who was there, the smell, or other senses we can recall from the specific time or place. An example of semantic memory would be recognizing that the grass is green or that the first President of the US was George Washington. These facts are not based off of personal experiences  but they are based off of common knowledge which was stored into our long term memory. An example of  episodic memory would be remembering move in day at college or your 16th birthday. A personal experience that I can talk about that relates to episodic memory would be the first day I moved into a dorm at Penn State. I can vividly remember the pit in my stomach the morning of, the smell of my last NJ bagel, the feel of the warm, damp, dorm room and the sight of the dark, boring, prison like dorm room walls. Even though this memory of mine was not common knowledge and was not stored into my brain at a young age, it is so vivid in my memory because it was so distinct, personal and the senses that I felt during this experience stored this memory for me. A personal experience of semantic memory for me would be remembering PEMDAS in my math class this week. Although, I have not used PEMDAS since early high school, I was able to recall that information instantly because it was stored in my brain from my teacher. I was able to think back to my teacher teaching it to us and it just instantly clicking because I had learned it and practiced it so much that it was programmed for me. Memory is a very interesting gift that us, humans are fortunate enough to have everyday. Being able to recall personal memories is a very sentimental thing that we can do while recalling general facts and common sense helps us live on a day to day basis.

Work Cited

“Declarative Memory & Procedural Memory: Explicit & Implicit.” The Human Memory, 27 Sept. 2019, human-memory.net/explicit-implicit-memory/.

Memorization & Encoding in Studying Lecture:

Throughout our past lectures, the information about memorization and encoding caught my eye. I’ve noticed throughout my 12 (now onto my 13th) year of schooling that some people are “good” at memorization and some people aren’t as able to fully memorize. However in our lectures, it became apparent to me that maybe the way in which people try to memorize is the issue. For me, memorizing has not actually helped me learn information. It only helped me know a definition. To further explain, I would wait until the last minute to create flashcards or quizlets. In doing so, I wrote a term on one side and a basic definition on the other. Yes, I would eventually be able to learn the terms and their definitions after practicing a couple of times, but I didn’t fully grasp or retain key information. Now, I know that turning what I learned into a story is more useful- it makes everything make sense. If I can’t do that, I try to create images out of information- whether that be drawn on paper or pictured in my head. The use of visual structure is key, at least for me, in learning and understanding material. I now know that in order to be truly successful in my studies, I need to apply more complex methods into studying; I can’t just make a Quizlet.

In three out of the six classes, I have taken at Penn State University I have learned about Piaget’s Theory of Development.  Piaget’s theory has 4 main stages of development that he based off of his children.  The four main stages are Sensorimotor, Preoperational, Concrete Operational, and Formal Operational.  In the sensorimotor stage, the child learns object permanence.  Object permanence is when one learns that when an object is out of sight like covered with a blanket, that the object still exists.  The following stage is the preoperational stage.  In this state, children learn the concept of conservation.  This is, for example, when there is the same amount of liquid in two cups but one is put into a different shaped cup, the child will still be able to acknowledge that there is the same amount of liquid in both cups.  Also in this stage, the theory of mind is solidified which is that if the water bottle becomes out of sight for me, I know that people in a different spot int he room can see it.  In the concrete operational stage which is from ages 7 – 11, the children gain different mental operations that help them think logically.  In this stage children also begin to understand mathematical operations and transformations.  In the final stage, the formal operational stage which is from ages 11 and up, children can begin to think logically about abstract situations and concepts.  Though Piaget believes this stage starts at around the age of 11, it is now believed that it starts a little earlier.

Now I chose to write about this because I babysit, a lot.  And one of my favorite things to do when I babysit very young kids is to play “peek-a-boo” or to hide a little toy under a blanket in front of them and have them look for it and then move the blanket away and show them the toy was right in front of them the whole time.  Before learning about the stages and when object permanence comes into play, I did not know why children did not understand that the toy was just under the blanket even though they watched it get covered.  Now I feel bad like I might have caused the child worry but they always smiled so I think it is okay.