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
Hello! I really enjoyed your story and what memories were involved. I too think of 9/11 every time I go into Washington, DC, which I live close too, and was also effected that day. I had friends working in the Pentagon at the time and one earned a Purple Heart for his deeds that day helping others while he was severely burned.
I also am amazed that you have such a vivid memory from being four and what a day for your four year old self. Those memories are LTM and the detail you have amazes me.
Thanks for sharing!
Hello! I really enjoyed reading your blog post and hearing about how 9/11 was experienced from the perspective of people who weren’t currently living in the United States. I was too young to be able to recall my experience of 9/11, but I do have memories where I pieced together details after the fact. I remember a couple of years ago when my uncle died. I was in high school, and I remember my mother not being home when I left for school in the morning which I thought was odd. She was home later in the day to take my brother and I to karate, and just about as soon as we got there, she was back out the door. I asked my father why she left and he told me that my uncle had passed away. I immediately went outside to sit in my car and cry until it was time to leave. My uncle John had cancer, and I knew he was sick. What I found out later was that he was sick for much longer than I had thought. He was sick for 4 years, but I only knew he was sick for the last year, when things took a turn for the worse. I also learned after the fact that he had stopped receiving treatment because it wasn’t working, and he was tired of feeling so awful from the side effects. I also learned that my mother was gone that entire day because she was spending it with my uncle because everyone knew that things weren’t going well. This is similar to the experience that you described as we both filled in details after the initial event happened. Every time I recall that memory, I am adding to it and changing it because I have gained new information from when it first happened. As a child, I remember what I personally experienced, but family often withholds the entire story (and for good reasons sometimes). As I have gotten older, I have altered many memories similar to the one I described above. I have my own, personal episodic memory, but I learn more semantic components about what actually occurred after the event.