Author: kaj5560

A topic we discussed during this unit that stuck out to me was taste aversion, as it reminded me of a story a family member had shared with me. Taste aversion occurs when we associate the taste of certain foods with symptoms of an illness. In class we discussed an example of farms that used taste aversion to scare off wolves, from eating chickens. The taste aversion resulted in wolves fearing the chickens, because they associated them with the nauseous feeling and bad taste. This reminded me of a story that my aunt had shared with me a few years ago. During her third pregnancy she experienced nausea almost daily, and she began to associate this nausea with banana pudding. We had a Christmas dinner one year in which my sister made a banana pudding dessert with vanilla wafer cookies and my aunt did not want to eat any. We were all confused at it used to be what she called her “pregnancy craving”.

My aunt shared that although she used to love the dessert, one day she ate it and began feeling extremely nauseous and this resulted in her vomiting. She claimed that since that experience she feels extremely nauseous even just at the thought of the dessert. Although we all joked around after hearing this story, after learning about taste aversion in class it all made sense to me. She had begun associating banana pudding with the feeling of nausea, hence why she can no longer eat it because she fears she will become ill.

This experience reminds me of an experience I had as a child, and the reason that I can no longer eat rocky-road ice cream. Growing up my sister was obsessed with rocky-road ice cream and one day she had a bowl and walked away for a little bit. As a small child I decided to eat her bowl of ice cream as fast as I could before she got back. As you can probably imagine it made me feel extremely nauseous and still to this day I never choose rocky road for this reason.

A term from unit three that relates to a personal experience of mine is source amnesia. Source amnesia is when a person attributes an event to the wrong source; usually something we have either experienced, heard, read, or imagined. Source amnesia is related to the misinformation effect, incorporating misleading information into one’s memory of an event. An experience I had this past Thanksgiving with my grandmother came to mind when learning about source amnesia. Every Thanksgiving it is a tradition to sit at the table for hours talking and reminiscing on our favorite memories together. When it was my grandmas turn to share, she said that her favorite memory from this past year was when we watched fireworks on the beach in Outer Banks during our summer trip. She did indeed have a memory of watching fireworks, however we never watched fireworks on the beach, nor in Outer Banks.

Originally my family just thought that my grandma was confused, as she was almost 80 years old and people often say that your memory fades with age. My grandma usually had a very accurate memory, despite her age and could recall memories from when my mother was a small child and even when she herself was a child. It was not until this lesson that I realized that she may have been experiencing source amnesia. My grandma did indeed watch a firework show during the summer she was referring to; however, it was at her state fair in Missouri on the Fourth of July. Our trip to the Outer Banks was the week following that firework show so it is likely that she attributed the firework show to the wrong memory.

Basically, what we originally believed was caused by her being confused based on her age, could have potentially been source amnesia and not related to her age at all. Many of us have experienced source amnesia in some way and likely blamed it on something different. Ultimately this lesson has opened my eyes to the idea of source amnesia, rather than just pure confusion of an event.