Author Archives: Allison Lynne Cipriani

Depression

1 Reply

Major Depressive Disorder, more commonly known as depression, can usually be attributed to a major loss, past or current. People with depression tend to move slowly, feel worthless, and lose interest in everything around them (Wede Lecture 17).  According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, in the United States alone, 1 in 10 adults suffers from depression. That means that out of over 300 million people living in the U.S., at least 30 million are suffering from this debilitating disorder—including one of my best friends.

For the purposes of this post, I am going to refer to my friend as Jane. Jane grew up in a great home, surrounded by plenty of friends and family. Jane played soccer, volleyball, and basketball and never had any trouble making friends or finding activities to do. She was actively involved in school and church, and no one ever thought anything would be wrong with such a bubbly, bright young girl. When Jane reached middle school, things changed. She started to gain some weight, and people didn’t treat her the same way they used to. As she started to realize this, she began to turn to food to cope with the hurtful things she “knew” everyone, including her friends, was thinking about her—most of which was nowhere near true. Jane began gaining more and more weight, and quit volleyball and basketball. The only reason she didn’t quit soccer was because we as a team refused to let her. Even though we were somewhat forcing her to participate, it was keeping her from being completely inactive and alone all the time. We thought if we kept her involved in soccer, she’d start to realize how much we all cared about her and wanted her around. By our sophomore year of high school, Jane had gained around 70 pounds, and was considered overweight. She had been on antidepressants for two years now, and she wasn’t afraid to voice how she felt to a few others and myself. She told us how worthless she felt all the time and how she never wanted to do anything. She even went as far as to tell us she wanted to commit suicide. This isn’t something you can ever prepare to hear. One of my best friends was telling me they think suicide is their only way out, while I’m sitting right next to her trying to help her. She went on to say how she had stopped taking her medication, which was the last straw. We told her parents how serious her depression had gotten, and the doctors responded by changing her medication. Her parents made sure she took it every single day, like she was a child. I think this is ultimately what drove her to recovery. As depressed and worthless as Jane felt, she didn’t want help—especially theirs. All of her friends (including myself) did our best to be supportive, and she continued to play on the soccer team with us, which I also think was a great help. Every single girl on the team went out of their way to include her and make her feel a part of the group. Since then, she has gotten a lot better, but every once in a while she still feels depressed.

As far as I know, there were no triggers for her original depression other than her weight gain, though over the years each episode has been triggered by various other events. Watching Jane go through this has taught me a lot about depression, how it works, and people who suffer from it. Speaking out of my own personal experience, I can honestly say depression is an incredibly awful disorder that not only affects those suffering from it, but all those around them.

“An Estimated 1 in 10 U.S. Adults Report Depression.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 31 Mar. 2011. Web. 02 Apr. 2014. <http://www.cdc.gov/features/dsdepression/>.

Studying and Maintenance Rehearsal

Leave a reply

Prior to taking an exam, I, along with maybe 30 other classmates, can almost always be found sitting outside the classroom studying for the hour up until the exam begins. All of the students sit around and repeat to themselves small bits of information over and over and over again until they cannot bear it anymore, a process called maintenance rehearsal. Some might call this detrimental habit a form of last-minute “studying,” although in reality it is more like a contest of who can squeeze the most information into their brains right before the exam, and who can remember the most of the crammed information once they are actually given the exam to take. While this rapid memorization may be a method that works well for some people, it is extremely risky and less reliable for most than actually studying in advance and learning the material well. We all do it sometimes, but admittedly, my grades are always better if I take my time in studying.

When cramming for an exam just before taking it, such as in this example, the information we are racing to memorize is only being placed into our short-term (working) memory. Short-term memory is exactly what it sounds like: a temporary holding ground for information we will surely forget later (somewhere between 12-30 seconds later, in fact). Our short-term memory has, on average, a maximum capacity of seven items it can hold at once, so in the hour spent cramming right before an exam, most of the information “learned” in this time frame will most likely disappear when taking the exam (except maybe seven things, if that). We can sit there and rehearse the information as much as we want, but as soon as something interrupts our rehearsal, such as a talking professor, other students, or especially the other questions on the exam itself, all of that information we thought we learned an hour ago will be completely gone from our memory. Granted, something on the exam or in the environment may also help you to remember what you crammed, but it is likely that this information will be completely gone (Wede Lecture 10).

The time delay between our maintenance rehearsal and when we are asked to recall this information can also significantly affect what and how much we remember. The longer you wait to take the exam, the less likely you are to remember what you so carelessly memorized and stored in your short-term memory. Sometimes, I experience what is known as the Tip of the Tongue Phenomena, where I can recall various things about the word I am trying to remember (ie. number of letters, starting letter of the word, etc.) but I cannot for the life of me recall the word itself (Wede Lecture 10). This type of memory loss is likely to occur when I cram just before taking an exam. Why? Because I used maintenance rehearsals to “learn” the information instead of spreading out my studying over days before the exam to actually learn the material. Our behavior as students using maintenance rehearsals to study is not very surprising, as many college students don’t always have enough time to study as much as they’d like for each exam they are required to take. Even then, avoiding this type of studying is definitely in our best interest, as it is widely known that maintenance rehearsals are not effective ways to retain information because the information rehearsed is stored in working memory, where not much can be remembered at one time.

Illusory Correlation

1 Reply

Illusory correlation can be defined as “the perception of a relationship where none exists” (Wede Psych 100 Lecture 3). In my life, illusory correlation exists primarily in superstitions that I have held onto as I’ve gotten older, though in general, it is prominent in other circumstances such as prejudice, stereotypes, and seeing order in random events when there is, in fact, no order whatsoever.

I have been superstitious since I was about nine years old. At this age, I had just begun competing in dance competitions, where everyone would discuss their “lucky shoes” or how they hadn’t sat in this spot last time they performed well, so they had to move to the same area as before or they would perform poorly. It was at this point in my life that I realized I didn’t have any objects I considered “lucky,” nor did I have any ritual to ensure a good performance. So, of course, I looked for “lucky” things as soon as I got home. It was only a few weeks later that I bought a small rubber frog from a coin machine at the movie theater. His name became “Lucky Frog,” and from that point on I made sure he was at every soccer game, every dance competition, and of course he was always at school with me whenever I had a test. At first I didn’t really think of him as an actual lucky charm, but as time went on, I depended on him more and more. About six months after I bought him, there was a math test at school. Unfortunately, the night before the test, my dog ate “Lucky Frog,” swallowing him whole. There was no time to buy a new one (not that I believed a new one would be lucky like the original) and I had to take a test the next day without him for the first time in what felt like years. As it turned out, I did fine on the test, in fact, I got an A. I then realized he was never lucky at all, but that I had just believed he was so I would feel better about whatever it was I wanted to do well in—soccer, school, or dance. This is the first experience I can recall of ever having illusory correlation present in my life. Even being so young, I realized the frog was never lucky; he was always just a frog. However, since I believed so wholeheartedly that he was lucky, I believed I was going to perform well while he was there, and so I did do well, but because I was confident in myself, not because of “Lucky Frog.” Though I realized this a long time ago, to this day I still hold onto some superstitions like wearing my “lucky” socks on exam day and eating certain things at certain times before an important event. I know they are just illusory correlations, but for some reason they still help me feel confident in myself when I need it.