Studying techniques have changed over the years from when I went to school.  I will be discussing how I was taught to study when I was in school, a long time ago, and what I’ve discovered as the right ways to study now. There are changes and scientific data to support what I was taught wasn’t the right way.

I was taught to write information down, then copy it again, and again. I did lots of flash cards growing up, going over the same words repeatedly. I was told to highlight important information in my readings. Then re-read the information till I “got it”. These are examples of maintenance rehearsal which is being repetitive without thinking of the meaning or making links to other information. (Goldstein, 2014)

Now I know these are not the best ways to study. Re-reading gives the illusion of learning due to the information becoming more fluent and familiar. This doesn’t mean that you know the material. Highlighting the first time through starts to become automatic and not elaborative processing due to not making links to prior knowledge. Sarah Peterson did a survey in 1992, comparing students who highlighted and those that did not highlight. Ms. Peterson’s survey found no difference between the two groups on tested information. (Goldstein, 2014)

Then I read about elaboration, generate and test, organize, and take breaks as a better way to study. Elaboration or elaborative rehearsal involves processing information of material to be remembered by making links between information and prior knowledge. Generate and test is active involvement with the information, making up test questions and thinking of the questions or what the answers are to questions as you read the information. Organize is to take the information then put it into “trees” or use chunking to help maintain the information. Then there is taking breaks, which is very hard for me to do, but spacing effect has been proven to help with retaining the information by having short study sessions with breaks.  (Goldstein, 2014)

Then there Is my favorite study technique flash cards, the best way to utilize them is to have a second set of cards with questions like “Give a real-life example of this concept.” Which takes the cards to an elaborate rehearsal making the information easier to retain. (Adragna, 2016)

The last studying tip I’ve employed to help with tests, is to spend up to ten minutes writing down my thoughts, feelings and doubts about the test I am about to take. Worrying impairs performance on tests due to being a distraction as it increases the load on working memory. (Goldstein, 2014)

Now that I am in college, using these new study skills explained to me by cognitive psychology, I am seeing positive results. Many of the ideas are new to me but implementing the study techniques has been easier than I expected. I still have issues with taking breaks but I am working on that daily.

References

Adragna, R. (2016, 02 20). Be Your Own Teacher: How to Study with Flashcards. Retrieved from learningscientists: https://www.learningscientists.org/blog/2016/2/20-1?rq=flashcards

Goldstein, E. B. (2014). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research and Everyday Experience (4th Edition). In E. B. Goldstein, Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research and Everyday Experience (4th Edition). (pp. 146, 180, 201-203). Cengage Limited

Episodic memories are memories that are created from a personal experience of an event. These memories are considered episodic because they are stored temporally, allowing for one to mentally travel back in time to recall the moment these memories occurred. Episodic memories are easier to recall because of the personal experience that occurs, and they are recalled based on time of occurrence. In example, an episodic memory that I have is when I birthed my child in August of 2020. I recall this memory as I watch my son grow over time and I count the years as he grows with them. The memory of birthing my son was a very personal experience that I will never forget, and I feel as though it has just happened every single day. Another episodic memory that I have regarding my son is his first birthday that recently happened here in August of this year. I remember rushing around to make sure everything was perfect for his big day, and I remember how happy he was to be with so many people he knows and loves.

Semantic memories are memories of something that you have learned rather than something you have experienced. These memories can be learned in high school, college, and even just every day in the natural world. Semantic memories can range from facts about history to even mathematical equations and they are recalled using organizational mechanics in your brain. Regarding a semantic memory that I have regarding watching my son grow up throughout time, I think of when he began to eat solids around six months old and how I had to learn how to create foods for him based on how best to go about feeding him in a healthy way. I had to read many books and speak to many different people to learn the best recipes. Another semantic memory that I am currently working on is potty training my son, as I must learn different methods and facts that will help me potty train him.

Episodic and semantic memories can often go hand in hand with episodic memories being something that you experience at one point in time, and Semantic memories being something you learn. Each semantic memory was once an episodic memory because at one point you experienced learning that sematic memory, and that experience was episodic. In example of this, when I learned how to make food for my son I was experiencing that, so that experience was episodic at the point of learning but is now semantic as it was something I learned. Every day our episodic and semantic memories play a large role in our lives.

My Papa passed away a few months ago. His name was John Manuel and he was a great person. He was a talented musician, a family man, and an all around fun guy. I have a lot of awesome memories of us hanging out and enjoying time together. I bring him up because my post is about the Short term memory. He was the first example that came to mind when I learned about the different types of memory and how they are separate from each other. It is amazing how we can have great functionality with short term memory, and on the other hand have horrible functionality with long term memory, or vice versa.

In the last few years, he was diagnosed with dementia. As his condition progressed, so did his struggle with his short term memory. However, interesting enough, his long term memory was still spot on. He could recall life events from his childhood and still play the guitar and sing like he was 35 again. However, if I were at his house hanging out with him, he would ask me literally 20 times if I wanted something to eat or when I had arrived there even though I had been sitting and talking with him for an hour. I would always answer him, then start talking about something else with him.

Because of the key differences of brain functionality and how certain memories are stored and recalled, my Papa had a sharp and functioning long term memory, while his shirt term memory suffered. His working memory which processed and decided how to use his short term information is what was not functioning properly.

The brain is amazing with the way it works. It seems like I could be sad that my Papa lost his STM, and to an extent, I am. But I am grateful that his LTM and other areas of his brain still had great functionality up until his final days. I am glad that God, some mad scientist, or mother nature (whomever it may be) designed our brains in such away that we don’t have to lose all functionality when certain areas take irreparable damage.

-Clayton Munoz

In lesson eight we talked about long term memory encoding and retrieval, and the levels of processing. Me and my brother when we were younger we had to see a therapist but for different reasons, but his was more important than mine was. He had a small problem of needing to put everything in his mouth and had to put his hands over his ears when he heard something whether it was fireworks or someone yelling.

When the therapist came to the house to talk to my brother he would give my brother a new chewing plastic straw which seemed to help his addiction to eat everything on that. The therapist would check on his levels of processing by showing him a few words on a piece of paper or an image on the note card also known as a visual imagery since he was still young his self-reflecting effect was not that strong enough. We would have homework assignments with my brother to help strengthen his memories and his retrieval cues so could remember something faster with words and places.

The therapist would make little tests to see if there would be any process to what we were teaching him. While it was helping it was strengthening his hippocampus or the synapse in the brain. Which made his process more better because he was seeing the therapist he was able to experience new things and I am glad to say that my brother is no longer chewing and eating everything anymore but he has trouble still by chewing on his collar of his shirt which makes my mouth feel weird. It also made it seem like it was a synaptic consolidation with a small time frame and maybe that is just because it was the help of the therapist or maybe he was getting older and realized that he should not be eating everything .

Goldstein, E. B. (2011). Cognitive psychology: Connecting mind, research and everyday experience (4th ed.). Wadsworth, Inc.

Lesson 6
LTM Structure
Introduction
A Four-year-old Remembers an American Tragedy
Memory is an active experience of building a representation of your world. Long-term memory is not like hitting a “rewind” button on a video recorder and seeing what actually happened. When you revisit your memories, you see an approximation of what happened, depending on how you perceived what happened and what you registered as important (Penn State Lesson 6 Long-Term Memory: Structure: Introduction).
An example of a Long-Term Memory from my Life
Although now American, I was born a British citizen in Belgium. One of my first memories is of missing my Mother and seeing her in a white room, which was strange to me. She was not in our home. Many years later, my Mother told me she had been in a hospital of the Cliniques de l’Europe-Site St-Elisabeth, Uccle, in Belgium. I remember she left hospital in a chair on wheels – “Mummy’s home now”. I only learned what had happened years later – she had had an operation on a knee. Additional facts came to me in later years – that when we arrived in her hospital room post-surgery, my Father told my Mother he had just talked with my maternal Grandmother to tell her how my Mother’s surgery had gone. My Grandmother (living in England), in turn, told him about the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers of the Word Trade Center in New York, so thousands of people were dying horrific deaths as my Mother was regaining consciousness – (Central European Time is six hours ahead of New York).
Later that afternoon, my Father and I picked my Mother up from the Cliniques de l’Europe-Site St-Elisabeth in Uccle near Brussels, Belgium. Again, as I was growing up, I learned, as soon as we drove out of the hospital from Rue du Fré and onto the Chaussée de Waterloo, that there were uniformed police officers armed with rifles, and guns in their holsters, lining the Chaussée de Waterloo for fear of a similar attack in Brussels – possibly at the European Parliament or at NATO headquarters. Every time we visit our home in Couture St German, Lasne, Waterloo, I have a very strong memory of this event. One week after 9/11 my Father had to fly to New York on business. It was touch-and-go as to whether he could make the trip owing to whether or not my Mother would be able to walk and look after me following her surgery. In the event, he did go to New York and was able to witness first-hand the site of the destruction of the Twin Towers. Like so many people, the memory of this catastrophic event will stay with me for the rest of my life. Only eight years later we would emigrate to America and live in New York State, and the memory would resonate more than ever.
Analysis of my Long-Term Memory Remembrance
The incident I have related would be an episodic memory with semantic elements (Penn State L06 Episodic and Semantic Memories in the Brain). This is my earliest long-term memory – I added to this distinct memory. I was four years of age, but in subsequent years I learned more and more about what happened on 9/11 (Penn State Lesson 6 Long-Term Memory: Structure: Differences Between Long-Term Memory (LTM) and Short-Term Memory (STM); Penn State Lesson 6 Long-Term Memory: Structure: Different Types of Long-Term Memories).
Long-Term memories are preserved mainly by semantic coding in the hippocampus. Therefore, my awareness of the events on 9/11 is an example of semantic coding, because I know the date, what happened in New York on that date, and why it is important (Penn State Lesson 6 Long-Term Memory: Structure: Coding in LTM; Penn State Lesson 6: Long-Term Memory: Structure: STM and LTM Differences in the Brain).
My semantic memory of 9/11 is inextricably linked with my episodic memories of our experiences in the hospital in Belgium on that day – seeing my Mother in a very different place, and not at home with me, plus my Father’s absence soon after because of his subsequent trip to New York (Penn State Lesson 6 Long-Term Memory: Structure: Semantic Memories).
According to the Penn State notes, this would be an explicit episodic memory, because I was aware of processing a significant and personal event in my young life. I am comparing and contrasting my episodic memories of the event I lived through in Belgium with my semantic memories of the facts surrounding 9/11 (Penn State Lesson 6 Long-Term Memory: Structure: Different Types of Long-Term Memories).
Conclusion
This is an episodic memory – my Mother was missing and I was missing her and I remember how it affected me – “Mummy’s gone now” (Penn State Lesson 6 Long-Term Memory: Structure: Episodic Memories). I recall learning what happened in New York on 9/11, and how eager I was to learn more. More frequently than visiting Belgium, we go to New York City, and it always comes to my mind every single time.

Works Cited –
Goldstein, B. (2015). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research, and Everyday Experience (4th ed., pp. 152-166). Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning.
Lesson 6: Long-Term Memory: Structure: Coding in LTM. (n.d.). In Penn State World Campus. Retrieved October 16, 2021, from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2130474/modules/items/33027097
Lesson 6: Long-Term Memory: Structure: Differences between Long-Term Memory (LTM) and Short-Term Memory (STM). (n.d.). In Penn State World Campus. Retrieved October 16, 2021, from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2130474/modules/items/33027095
Lesson 6: Long-Term Memory: Structure: Different types of Long-Term Memories. (n.d.). In Penn State World Campus. Retrieved October 16, 2021, from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2130474/modules/items/33027099
Lesson 6: Long-Term Memory: Structure: Episodic and Semantic Memories in the brain. (n.d.). In Penn State World Campus. Retrieved October 16, 2021, from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2130474/modules/items/33027102
Lesson 6: Long-Term Memory: Structure: Episodic Memories. (n.d.). In Penn State World Campus. Retrieved October 16, 2021, from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2130474/modules/items/33027100
Lesson 6: Long-Term Memory: Structure: Introduction. (n.d.). In Penn State World Campus. Retrieved October 16, 2021, from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2130474/modules/items/33027094
Lesson 6: Long-Term Memory: Structure: Semantic Memories. (n.d.). In Penn State World Campus. Retrieved October 16, 2021, from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2130474/modules/items/33027101
Lesson 6: Long-Term Memory: Structure: STM and LTM differences in the brain. (n.d.). In Penn State World Campus. Retrieved October 16, 2021, from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2130474/modules/items/33027098

Everyone has been to a bar, a restaurant bar or probably knows a bartender. The fast pace drink making, different customers shouting a multitude of drink and shot orders at you, counting money and giving correct change back, and more, are all different things that pull our attention in different directions. How do we explain the shifts of attention that bartenders use on a daily basis?

Attention is the ability ro focus on specific stimuli or locations. There are differnt types of attention that are all used in bartendering. For example, Dee (our bartender) attempts to focus on remembering what goes in an Old Fashioned while ignoring two customers at the bar who are engaging in heated political talk (typial). This type of attention is called selective attention, which is attending to one thing while consciously ignoring all other stimuli. A type of attention that can negatively impact this is a distraction (a fellow co-worker coming over to ask a question about an item on the menu while Dee is making the cocktail).

Two common types of attention frequently used by bartenders are divided attention and attentional capture. Divided attention is used probably the most out of types of attention, which is defined as paying attention to more than one thing at a time. Dee, is making two different kind of cocktails, a margartia and an old fashioned, while holding a side conversation with a fellow co-worker, and mentally calculating the customers’ totals for their drinks. All of these activites are done simultaneously. Attentional capture is a common conscious and subconscious activity done by bartenders due to staying updated with their surroundings. Bars are normally loud and noisy by trade, but a sudden WOOHOO or a glass shatter, quickly shifts the bartender’s attention away from the task they are currently doing to whatever catches their ear/eye. Attentional capture is also a positive trait to have as a bartender, especially when it comes to being observant with customer activity.

Finally, the more obvious method of attention, visual scanning. This one can also go hand in hand with attentional capture. While a bartender is engaging in visual scanning, there could be something during that scan that halts the bartenders gaze and captures their attention to that moment, such as a drunk customer stumbling toward the door or another customer getting aggressive at the pool tables.

Bartending is one job that I feel engages the different aspects of attentional, consistently and sometimes simultaneously. If this job constantly engages the different levels of attention, wouldn’t it aid in sharpening and improving our attention in other areas of life as well?

Goldstein, E. B. (2010). Cognitive psychology: Connecting mind, research and everyday experience (4th ed.). Cengage Learning.

Memory is a process in which stimuli, images, events, ideas, and skills are retained, retrieved and used for information after the original information is no longer present. (Goldstein, 2011).  There are different types of memory, some of them including sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory. I will be focusing on sensory memory, which is defined as, “the retention, for brief periods of time, of the effects of sensory stimulation. (Goldstein, 2011).  Sensory memory is the first process in Atkinson and Shiffrin’s modal model of memory. It is where outside stimuli and information are first input into our memory. Whether the information is important or not will determine if the information will move into short-term memory or long-term memory.

Sensory memory is so brief lived it was George Sperling who concluded that the information received will then decay in less than a second. I can recall moments that would fall under my own sensory memory, one being the smell of perfume. I went to Macy’s to go and shop for new makeup and perfume. When I walked up and sprayed a perfume that looked nice, I my sense of smell was flooded by the scent of the perfume. I know in that moment I could smell the notes of the perfume, however as the mist faded and the droplets in my nose evaporated so did the memory of what the perfume smelled like and the notes I could once recall. Now, just like in those moments after the scent faded, I cannot tell you what that perfume smelled like.

Now this example shows how even though the smell of the perfume was strong, and I could instantly recall notes that I smelt in the perfume, the memory of the smell and notes inside, only lasts less than a second after the original stimulus is gone. Now, looking back I remember picking up the perfume and smelling it but the smell is gone from my mind. The retention of the stimuli is brief and fleeting. However, if I was to smell a perfume and be taken back to an old memory of a person or place that would mean that introduction of stimuli to my memory retrieved a long-term memory I had.  Without the memory retention or connection to a place or person that memory fades from my memory almost instantly when the original information is taken away.

Goldstein, E. B. (2011). Cognitive Psychology (4th ed.).

Most women can recall being a young girl, thinking of and planning out her wedding day. Looking through magazines or online for the “perfect dress”, deciding what flowers she would hold, what colors her bridal party would wear, etc. Now, by the time our wedding day comes, some of us remember a few of those memories and try to include our childhood dreams into our big day. Did we have that horse and carriage or did we opt for a limousine? Did our bridesmaids wear pink? Did we have that ice cream bar at our reception? At the conclusion of your wedding day things shift from mere desires on a list, and instead becomes a part of your long term memory in which we can visualize almost every aspect of what most call the most important day of your life.

My husband and I just celebrated our sixth year wedding anniversary on the tenth of October and as we ate dinner, we reflected on the day we said “I do”. I remembered the nerves, the overwhelming joy, and even the fear that many don’t speak of that comes with beginning a new journey. I recalled what it felt like to walk down the aisle towards my now husband. We even laughed as we spoke on the things that fell apart on that memorable day and made mention of all the family and friends that surrounded us six years prior. We were able to recall this experience because of what Endel Tulving (1985) coined as episodic memory; which is the ability to “travel back in time” to reconnect with events that happened in the past. More specifically, it’s the ability to recall and mentally re-experience specific details about a personal event.

A lot of us unknowingly rely on this type of long term memory as it helps us “hold onto” the details of important events in life. Whether it’s the day your children were born, the day you received your degree after many years of schooling, or your wedding day- because of episodic memory, it is a day to remember.

References:

Tulving, E. (1985). Memory and consciousness. Canadian Psychology/Psychologie Canadienne, 26(1), 1

For this blog post, I will discuss short-term memory and how it pertains to my short term memory loss due to an accident as a kid. While on a car ride home from cheerleading practice with my parents we were hit b a truck. Because of this I had suffered some damage to my brain which affected my short term memory. Now as an adult I am given specific orders at work that pertain to numbers and am constantly told to use excel. I am also required to receive and reports on events that had happened during the day. Depending on the length of the report and numbers, they could be difficult to report accurately. The capacity and duration of short-term memory and the use of chunking to expand the capacity did have an effect on my job performance.

Short term memory is person’s performance on a particular type of task that involves the retention of small amounts of information for a brief time (Lewis, 2019). For example following an excel spread sheet with numbers then having to report it drove me insane, because I could not remember how to do it in a short amount of time. There would be times that there were 10 different cells used in excel for numbers and formulas, and I had to reference one half then go back and reference the other so I could remember all the digits and formula. It was the same with reports. I have to look at it multiple times to remember the task at hand.

I also noticed that chunking was very helpful if the number and formulas held any significance, . This is because different numbers and formulas became only two separate items instead of multiple separate items, but the numbers and formulas in excel hold no significance for me, so I would have to recall each number individually.

Even if a group of  numbers and formulas are memorized, that memory may flourish over a very short period of time. I definitely experienced this. While it was simple to recall certain numbers and formulas during the few seconds, it was much more difficult to recall the same numbers and formulas only a minute or two later when attempting to finish the excel spreadsheet and send the report to my supervisor.

The use of short-term memory was consistent throughout my childhood all the way through my adulthood. Short-term memory can be crucial when dealing with important tasks, such as numbers and formulas. Tests have been conducted in order to study the processes of memory in humans. I believe that they are accurate, and I have gained a more knowledge and understanding of the cognitive processes involved with memory.

Lewis. (2019, July 31). Why is working memory important in note-taking? Glean. Retrieved October 18, 2021, from https://glean.co/blog/why-is-working-memory-important-in-note-taking/.