Cognitive Psychology Blog Post 3
Lesson 11: Language
Flemish and Walloon – Vlaams/Français

Language is vital – it is the only way we can communicate with others, and there are many thousands of languages in the world that we can use for communication (Penn State Lesson 11: Language: Introduction; Lesson 11: Language: Introduction to language; Goldstein 298-299). Without the ability to use language, our ability to develop as a species would likely have been in serious doubt (Penn State Lesson 11: Language: Introduction to language; Goldstein 298-299).

My own relationship with language is personal, intricate, and life-long. I was born in Belgium and spent my childhood there with my parents, who had experienced living in Belgium twice prior to my birth. Belgium has three official languages. Whilst we all have English as our mother-tongue, we can also speak French (Walloon) and Dutch (Flemish) and my Father can speak some German. However, you have to practice otherwise you can get rusty!

I remember my Mother attending a ‘Commune’ language school eight hours per week for years and years – learning how to speak and write Dutch, French, and German (both my parents lived and worked in Belgium for seventeen years). When we lived in our house in a Dutch-speaking commune at weekends, we had to speak Dutch when needing to do identity card business etc. in the “Gemeentehuis” or town hall, because employees refused to speak English in this official office. During the week, when at our home in a French “Commune”, we had to speak French in that town hall. My Mum found the Dutch language challenging – as I know from my own experience, Dutch has a reputation for being illogical (although it is very close to German). French and German were easier for my parents because both she and my Father had studied these two languages from the age of eleven in school in the United Kingdom. Interestingly, my Mother told me that the Scots with their Scottish accent could pronounce the Dutch “guttural” words much more easily than the English. My Mother’s experience with new languages has a scientific basis in cognitive psychology – learning to speak a new language becomes more complicated with age (Penn State Lesson 11: Language: Speech Perception).

Children who are eight years of age or younger tend to pick up new languages more easily than older children, teenagers, and adults (Penn State Lesson 11: Language: Speech Perception). I was consciously exposed to Dutch and French since kindergarten. I studied these languages – with an emphasis on French – at an international school in Belgium throughout my elementary and middle school years, alongside students who had varying cultural backgrounds and who had been exposed to dual languages from birth (many of us were “third-culture kids”). However, English was the dominant language at my school, and I can recall some students learning English as a second language and picking it up easily (Penn State Lesson 11: Language: Speech Perception). In high school, I learned Spanish and resumed my French studies with a personal tutor – a native French speaker from Belgium. I am still fluent in French, and I have been told by my French tutor that I speak the language with a Belgian accent that I have apparently retained from my childhood!

I can relate my own experiences with language to this course. When I was learning Spanish in high school, I had difficulty telling where one word stopped and another started. According to the Penn State notes, speech is continuous, and breaks in words are auditory illusions, yet native speakers of a language can perceive words stopping and starting, while those new to a certain language struggle to distinguish the start and finish of words (Penn State Lesson 11: Language: Speech Perception).

Scientific experiments over the past twenty years have indicated that the structure of both white and gray matter in the brain can continue their plasticity during adulthood. Testing methods have been carried out by trials of a group of adults studying a challenging foreign language, for example, Chinese, and scanning (“… longitudinal diffusion tensor imaging …”) their brains and comparing them to a group of participants who did not learn a foreign language (Rudelson, Schlegel, Tse 2012). Those conducting the trials found that there were significant alterations in white brain matter.

Looking at gray matter changes, a similar experiment to assess gray matter volume has been carried out during a trial period when participants studied a foreign language. Changes in gray matter volume, identified by magnetic resonance images and cognitive testing, showed those who studied the foreign language had increased gray matter afterwards. However, this result was only predictable when tested on post short-term memory tasks.
The above experiments could overturn the long-held theory that “… plastic reorganization …” of the brain is not limited to children alone (Rudelson, Schlegel, Tse 2012).

Works Cited –
Bellander, Martin, et al. “Behavioral correlates of changes in hippocampal gray matter structure during acquisition of foreign vocabulary.” NIH National Library of Medicine: National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Institutes of Health, 1 May 2016, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26477659/. Accessed 19 Nov. 2021.
Goldstein, B. (2015). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting mind, research, and everyday experience (4th ed., pp. 298-299). Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning.
Lesson 11: Language: Creativity of language. (n.d.). In Penn State World Campus. Retrieved November 19, 2021, from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2130474/modules/items/33027147
Lesson 11: Language: Introduction. (n.d.). In Penn State World Campus. Retrieved November 19, 2021, from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2130474/modules/items/33027145
Lesson 11: Language: Introduction to language. (n.d.). In Penn State World Campus. Retrieved November 19, 2021, from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2130474/modules/items/33027146
Lesson 11: Language: Speech perception. (n.d.). In Penn State World Campus. Retrieved November 19, 2021, from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2130474/modules/items/33027150
Rudelson, Justin J., et al. “White matter structure changes as adults learn a second language.” NIH National Library of Medicine: National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Institutes of Health, 24 Aug. 2012, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22571459/. Accessed 19 Nov. 2021.

When you get sick and it is more than the common cold or flu you usually go to the doctor and have them try and find out what is going on. They are more likely to solve the problem or refer you to someone that can help more, compared to you yourself trying to figure out what is going on. I would consider doctors to be experts in their field. Medicine is always changing and advancing, doctors are always learning more about how they help people get better. I know the doctors I work with are always reading and learning as much as they can. 

Experts are considered to be people who have devoted a large amount of time to learning a field, practicing, and applying that learning. They have become acknowledged as being extremely knowledgeable or skilled in a particular field (Goldstein 2015). I am a medical assistant and work with cardiologists everyday.  These people are extremely knowledgeable in their field and are some of the smartest people I know. To become a cardiologist you have to go through many years of schooling, rotations, and residency. Cardiologists have put in many hours and lots of hard work to become “experts” at what they do. Sometimes at work when patients come with certain problems, our cardiologists are able to help them in many ways. People sometimes feel better just because they hear the news or the explanation is coming from a doctor’s mouth and they are looked at as experts. 

I have a younger sister that is in medical school currently and to me she is on her way to becoming an expert in whichever field of medicine she picks. She has been through four years of undergraduate studies at Penn State, she then went on to medical school at the Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine, and she is currently on her fourth rotation. My sister still has a lot more hours to put in, a lot more studying, and a lot more practice until she becomes an expert. 

Experts in their particular field usually can solve problems faster and with a higher success rate compared to novice people who are just starting out in that field and have not had the extensive training of experts. (Goldstein 2015). In the book he compared how a chess grandmaster can reproduce the positions of pieces with only looking at them for five seconds compared to someone who just started playing chess. I do not know much about chess, that is why  the experts I thought of were doctors. I know that when I am at work and some patients tell me their problems, I have no idea how to help them without doing some research first. Whereas the doctor that goes in the room after me can help the patient right there in that visit. 

Goldstein, E. B. (2015). Cognitive psychology: Connecting mind, research and everyday experience. Cengage Learning.

It has been a while since masks were introduced to protect against Covid19, and recently I began to experience its bizarre result.  Mask mandates encompass the lower half of the face – nose, mouth, cheeks and chin, leaving only expressive eyes.  Yet my memory of mask-wearing strangers would consist of their complete face, without ever having seen it.  Recent studies explain how masks affect our perception of faces (Freud et al., 2020), but I could find no research on “phantom face” application to those already masked.  To compensate, I invoked cognitive psychology concepts to explain.

First is the Phonemic Restoration Effect, a language perception skill of filling in missing phonemes – the smallest unit of speech denoting meaning such as a letter, and morphemes – units of phonemes comprising words and phrases – against a backdrop of atmospheric noise, based on phrase context.  Our minds are so good at deciphering linguistic elements in the midst of clamor that if the same were to be heard among silence we would understand it less (Wede, 2021).  Similarly, visual perception may complete the missing parts of a face among the obscuring visual “noise” of its mask, per visible portions.  Visualizing demands Mental Imagery – the sensing of stimuli in its physical absence, such as an object via visual, music via auditory or scent via olfactory images (Goldstein, 2015, p. 276).  Mental Imagery uses Prior Knowledge – environmental items we have encountered, in order to make the kind of Inferences – assumptions about new information based on past experience (Goldstein, 2015, p. 222), that we would need to create a phantom face.  Environmental knowledge can consist of semantic and physical regularities – usual details in scenes or repetitive contours in nature, we have come across, respectively (Goldstein, 2015, p. 67-68), like that of facial qualities seen since birth.

Reminiscence of “phantom” visual imagery requires Constructive Memory, a function of long-term memory to which stimuli over 20 seconds is shunted (Goldstein, 2015, p. 127).  Contrary to popular belief, memory is not like playing back a video, but a delicate medium built using extraneous data, subject to change (upon reenactment with alternate data) (Goldstein, 2015, p. 199).  Thus we can infuse facial ingredient facts as we assemble retrieved memory of our masked individual.  Which type of face to apply?  A Prototype:  The system we use to organize information, a median of the most typical items in the category of faces we know of, to exemplify a most appropriate match for the gender, body shape, height and even voice of this masked stranger.  Or better yet, the more exacting Exemplar – a specific or unusual prototype we have seen before (Goldstein, 2015, p. 253) such as the face of a friend, to construct upon this envisioned outsider.

None of this facial perception or imagery would be possible without gift of the Fusiform Face Area (FFA) Imagery Neurons, a location of brain cells to which only the viewing of faces excites.  The FFA receives help from other areas of our brain such as the frontal cortex, to evaluate the attractiveness, gaze direction and emotional expression of the face in question (Goldstein, 2015, p. 73).  Neurons responding to live faces also do the same toward facial visual imagery (Goldstein, 2015, p. 287), just as they would to our phantom face.

So, in a symphony of the above concepts perchance inventing the phantom face, the brain’s FFA uses mental visual imagery to construct a memory, which then restores missing facial features based on the prototype or exemplar of its prior knowledge of facial regularities, in order to place a freshly crafted face upon our newly met, masked individual.

References:

_______________________

Freud, E., Stajduhar, A., Rosenbaum, R.S., Avidan, G., Ganel, T.  (2020).  The COVID-19 pandemic masks the way people perceive faces.  Scientific Reports, 10, Article 22344.  https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-78986-9

Wede, J.  (2021).  Temporal induction of speech: multiple phonemic restoration by noise [Video].  Pennsylvania State University World Campus.  https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2130474/modules/items/33027149

Goldstein, E. B.  (2015).  Cognitive psychology: Connecting mind, research, and everyday experience (4th ; student ed.).  Cengage Learning

Eyewitnesses are used in criminal cases across the country every single day. An eyewitness testimony is an individual who was present at the crime and is giving their rendition of what happened in court before the judge, jury, and lawyers. They are questioned and made to retell their experiences of what happened. Their eyewitness accounts can be used to identify criminals as well as provide details of a crime.  However, how accurate are these memories?

Since 2012, there have been 341 people exonerated in the US through the use of DNA evidence. 75% of these cases had involved an eyewitness testimony in their conviction (Goldstein p. 231). The worrisome part of this fact is that there are so many misconceptions about how memory works and it is leading to wrongful convictions and innocent people spending years in prison. Several studies have been conducted where individuals watch videos of crimes or staged crimes and are asked to identify the criminal from a photo line up. One of the studies involved participants watching a security camera footage where the gunman was in frame for approximately eight seconds. The participants were then given several photos and asked to select the perpetrator. They all chose a photo of who they thought the gunman was even though none of the photos were actually of him (Goldstein p  232). This shows how difficult it can be to be able to accurately and correctly identify someone that you see very quickly in recorded footage. This also does not even take into account the emotions that one would experience when witnessing a crime happen in real time in front of them. Fear, adrenaline, anxiety, and any other emotion could cloud someone’s judgement and make it more difficult for them to recount what they saw at a later time when they are removed from the situation.

Another factor that could tamper with the validity of an eyewitness testimony is familiarity. In a case of robbery described in the textbook, a railroad employee incorrectly identified a bystander as the robber simply because he said he ‘looked familiar’ (Goldstein p. 232). This could have led to the arrest of someone who was innocent simply because someone associated the familiarity of an individuals face with them being the perpetrator of a crime. Finally, another factor is error due to suggestion. There could be holes in an eyewitnesses memory and certain phrasing of questions or comments could persuade an eyewitness to fill in those gaps with potentially fabricated details. This is often why we hear objections to ‘leading questions’ in the courtroom meaning that the question could be leading the witness to convey information that would benefit the prosecution or defense, and is not entirely accurate.

A tragic example of how eyewitness testimonies cannot always be trusted is the case of Troy Davis. Troy was sentenced to death in Georgia and charged with the murder of an off duty police officer named Mark MacPhail. Troy claimed he was innocent for two decades while he awaited execution on death row. His trial was determined solely by eyewitness accounts and testimony, however in the time between his sentencing and his execution there were seven of the nine eyewitnesses who recanted their testimonies. Their testimonies claimed that they had witnessed Davis as the gunman, however they later stated that their testimony was coerced by police. This unfortunate occurrence resulted in the death of an innocent man and is just one of hundreds examples of false eyewitness memories and testimonies (FacingSouth).

References:

Sturgis, Sue, and Sue Sturgis @sue_sturgis Sue is the editorial director of Facing South and the Institute for Southern Studies. Email Sue. “Troy Davis Case Shows Need for Eyewitness Identification Reform.” Facing South, 9 June 2016, https://www.facingsouth.org/2011/09/troy-davis-case-shows-need-for-eyewitness-identification-reform.html.

Goldstein, E. B. (2011). Cognitive psychology: connecting mind, research, and everyday experience. Cengage Learning.

As defined in Cognitive Psychology article, “a problem occurs when there is an obstacle between a present state and a goal and it is not immediately obvious how to get around the obstacle” (Duncker, 1945; Lovett. 2002). We looked at how Gestalt psychologists would resolve a problem. They would analyze (1) how people represent a problem in their mind, and (2) how solving a problem involves reorganization or restructuring of this representation (Goldstein, 2011). We will explore how problems arise in everyday life, and how they can be represented and solved. In essence, there are many ways that problems can be represented and multiple ways to achieve results.

Perception is important in organizing the problem into an understandable conception. Many people perceive problems in different ways. In the example from the article, a crossword puzzle, has many ways to perceive it, and restructure it into manageable and solvable portions. In a real-life example, I had to arrange to set up the Christmas decorations this weekend. While this may sound undaunting and simple, as many know, it is almost never the case. In this example, I knew that the solution was to create manageable portions to complete to solve the larger problem. This insight did not come without practice. Being faced with daunting tasks before, this strategy has worked many times and has been proven to be effective.

Moving forward, I identified the problem to be addressed, setting up the Christmas decorations. I perceived the problem and setup a strategy to solve the problem. I wrote down what needed to be done in a checklist. I gathered the decorations and placed them where they would eventually go. I then began to set up and make sure everything worked and looked nice. I checked off each task as it was completed. Once done, the problem of setting up the Christmas decorations had been solved.

We can also address at the same problem, setting up Christmas decorations using a different approach, the Newell and Simon’s Approach. For this approach there are things that can be done and things that cannot. The initial state is an undecorated room, and the goal state is a decorated room. The operators were the sets of tasks which must be completed to bring the room from a state of undecorated to decorated. The various intermediate states are the states which exist between the undecorated and decorated state. Each intermediate state is a product of subgoals. The various subgoals include: setting up the lights, setting up garland on the mantle, hanging up stockings and placing the tree and decorating the tree. No subgoal can be skipped, or else the goal state will not be achieved.

In short, there are multiple avenues which can be used to solve a problem, but the most important step is to first identify the problem and then represent it in an easily understandable way. The way in which the problem is presented will likely influence the way that it is approached and solved. While various methods have different steps, the goal is ultimately the same. I feel that in addressing the problem above, the Newell and Simon’s approach works best. It helped resolve the problem in the most straightforward, efficient and understandable way.

References

Goldstein, E. B. (2011). Cognitive psychology: connecting mind, research, and everyday experience. Cengage Learning.

A lot of different things factor into our perception of speech and language. For this post, I will be focusing on how each language has different rules for combining phonemes to create words, which is why it can be so difficult to pronounce words from unfamiliar languages. In addition, I will be focusing on how it is difficult to know where words begin and end when listening to native speakers and how visual information from the movement of the mouth when talking plays a role in what we hear.

I grew up speaking only English, but I picked up on Spanish later in life. By no means would I say I speak perfect Spanish, but I know enough to be able to handle myself in a Spanish speaking country. I can read Spanish, I can write in Spanish, I can speak Spanish (not perfectly with some of the more advanced grammatical concepts), and I can understand Spanish. However, I have always found the area that I struggled most to be understanding Spanish, specifically native Spanish speakers. Spanish and English have different rules for phonemes together because they are different languages. Since I didn’t grow up speaking Spanish, it was more difficult for me to understand these rules and is more difficult for me to understand native Spanish speakers. When native speakers rattle off sentences, I tend to get lost in what they are saying and find it difficult to pick up when one word ends and another begins. This could be because of the fact that I am not as familiar with the phonemic rules as native speakers would be and could also be a result of my lack of familiarity with different slang words and lingo. When native speakers slow down their speech for me, it is much easier to pick up on the different words they say, possibly because they are making an effort to annunciate and pronounce each word more clearly.

I also remember experiencing the effects of the role of visual information in processing speech first hand while taking different Spanish courses in school. We would have “listening” sections on exams where an audio recording was played and we had to answer questions about it based on what we heard. This was always the more difficult part of exams for me. The speakers didn’t speak too quickly, so I never understood why it was so difficult. Now I understand that it could be due to the lack of visual stimuli. I wasn’t able to watch the speaker’s mouth move while listening to them, so determining the context of what they were saying while being unable to see the mouth move made it much more difficult to grasp the conversation.

The idea of language, speech, comprehending sentences, and the ability to learn not only one language, but many has always been very interesting to me. The idea that there are roughly 7,100 languages worldwide blows my mind. It raises questions about was there ever a universal language, what factors played a part in creating such a diverse linguistic society, and will more or less languages come to light over the coming years.

While reviewing and reading the lesson 11 material, I found Grices four conversational rules interesting. The rules of maximums of quantity, quality, relation and manner. Knowing that if one of the rules are violated, we unconsciously pick up on during conversations with others. Other violations of these rules can also be a cue to end the conversation. This is relevant to my life because I work fulltime in a retail related job and have many many conversations during the day with people. I did not know about Grices rules before this class, but I can vouch that now I will be more aware of them while others talk to me. I can also say that they are also very accurate, meaning that I think all conversations should follow those four rules. Something else that I enjoyed learning about was the McGurk effect. In the video, the sound did not change, but the motion of their mouth change so we heard a different sound. It pairs auditory and visual comprehension, and it seems like what we see is what we hear, even though sometimes the actual sound does not change. The McGurk effect plays a huge part in our language, sentence comprehension, and the ability to learn a language that we do not know…

This is relevant to my life, because I have three younger brothers and I remember when they were learning to talk. While watching the McGurk video, I found it funny with how he was slowly pronouncing words as if we were toddlers trying to learn a language. That is exactly how I talked to my brothers while they were young in order for them to comprehend and learn what I was saying. I remember when they reached the level of kindergarten and early elementary just how important learning English was. They had homework almost every night in regards to speech, the alphabet, and learning how to read. This makes sense because if we do not learn it early in life while we are developing there is a risk that later in life we will not be as strong in that given area.

Overall, I found this lesson to be intriguing and even made me want to do more research on my own about language, comprehension, and sentence formations to where they are understandable. I will also most likely use this information moving forward with my college career and with life in general.

The topic I chose was problem solving, because problem solving has been something I have struggled with since I was a kid. I have  trouble with well-defined problems which are problems that usually have a correct answer and certain procedures or rules that will lead to this answer. The problems I have trouble with are math related. Some would  think that a well-defined problem may be easier to solve because you know there will be a specific answer but that is not always the case.

I have had a few periods from middle school to college where I needed tutoring for math . I can remember being in 6th grade and staying after to work on math problems and writing the steps out on paper while I tried to solved them. I had trouble with this because I had trouble setting the problem up. I was seeing the problem wrong in my mind and that had me focusing on the wrong information. The tutoring I received helped me because it showed me a different way of working thought of the problem. One of the ways I could confirm that staying after and practicing different math problems was when I was learning new ways to approach and solve  the problem and come up with solutions. Also, along with the well-defined problems there are other problems that need solving and these can be a bit stressful too.

I am a worry wart  and an overthinker, so when it comes to things such as deciding on what summer courses to take, my personal relationships, or paying bills, I have a hard time focusing he rest of the days on other things, if I can’t figure out a solution to these problems. These types of problems don’t have a specific solution but they require thinking. I usually come up with different ways I can fix these problems and then hard part is choosing the best one to execute it. For example, after weeks of contemplating what courses to take I finally chose one that I thought would be appropriate to fill some math credits I had left. Normally I would take longer at figuring out which classes to take on my own rather than my academic advisor choosing some for me.

I am glad I had the opportunity to learn about problem solving in depth. I now have a better understanding of the reason why I may have struggled in areas such as solving math problems. Hopefully now when I struggle with a problem I will come up with some better strategies after learning about problem solving in this lesson.

Alexis Hayes someone

Professor Wede

November 19 2021

Blog 3

Some things that happened to me and other people are speech disorders. It can cause an effect on how a person speaks words. (What Are Speech Disorders.) It is from damage done to the brain in the Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area. (Studying Language, Penn State.) Broca’s part is responsible for speech production and Wernicke’s is responsible for speech understanding. ) (Studying Language, Penn State.) If they are damaged, it can cause a person to misunderstand speech and trouble talking to else.

Speech disorders can cause damage also to vocal cord damage, brain damage, muscle weakness, and strokes. (What causes speech disorders.) The signs of speech disorder are, repeating sounds, adding extra words, and blinking a lot. It makes sense why I and others have a hard time with speaking. There is something called phonemes and morphemes in language. There are over 100s of them and can be hard to pronounce.

Also, there can be several ways to pronounce a sentence with similar meanings. It makes me and others have a more complex understanding of it because we have to make sure it is grammatically correct. It can also be difficult to pronounce a sentence the right way with a speech disorder. There are different types of speech disorders such as stuttering, apraxia, and dysarthria. (What Are Speech Disorders.) I have a stuttering speech disorder so when I talk to someone I repeat sounds and have a hard time pronouncing words, and I also blink a lot.

Apraxia makes a person not be able to pronounce what they want to say or they have a difficult time expressing themselves. Apraxia, what is speech disorder. ) Dysarthria makes a person’s muscles hurt when they talk and they also have slurred speech. (Articulation disorder, what is speech disorder.) “In conversations, there are 4 types of conversational maxims according to Griffin.” (Conversations, Penn State.) They are quantitative criteria, which makes it informative, but not excessive. (Conversations, Penn State.) The second maxim of quality is saying what is true. (Conversations, Penn State.)

Third maxims of relation to be clear in speech. (Conversations, Penn State.) The last one is a maxim of manner to be straight to the point. I think myself and others included can struggle with the maxim of relation and maximum of manner because we know what we want to say but have a difficult time expressing it. The way to heal from a speech disorder is by going speech therapist to help become familiar with sounds and different wording. Also, a person can take medication or do physical exercises to strengthen the muscles to produce sounds properly.

Work Cited:

Kahn, A. (2019, September 20). Speech disorders: Causes, signs, and diagnosis. Healthline. Retrieved November 20, 2021, from https://www.healthline.com/health/speech-disorders.

MediLexicon International. (n.d.). Speech disorders: Types, symptoms, causes, and treatment. Medical News Today. Retrieved November 20, 2021, from https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/324764.

Over the summer, I was having dinner with my mom, dad, and brother. After discussing our day, my dad started talking about a memory from high school. He was an avid biker in high school, and was telling us about the time he and some friends participated in a big bike race. He recalled this story with so much detail; it was as though it had just happened yesterday. My dad’s face lit up when telling this story, and once he told this story, he kept going. He told us lots of other memories from around this time of his life. He talked about being part of the National Honors Society his senior year of high school, he told us about adventures he and his roommates went on during college, and he told us about working in a movie theater the summer after graduation.

After my dad told his stories, my mom started telling stories from college. She, too, had lots of stories about her college experience. My mom and dad were both so happy, telling these stories from their early adult years. They were going back and forth, recounting these stories from high school and college that seemed to really stick out in their mind.

Once they finished their stories, my brother asked my parents about their childhood. He pointed out that they both spent a lot of time telling high school and college stories, but he wanted to hear stories from when they were in elementary school. My parents looked at each other, thought for a moment, but didn’t have much to say. My mom shared a short story about a beach trip she went on, but it was brief and without much detail. After she shared this, my brother asked my dad if he ever went to the beach as a child. My dad looked unsure and said that he didn’t think so. My brother tried to push them for more stories from their childhood, but neither had much to say. 

In the textbook, the authors discuss something called the reminiscence bump. The  reminiscence bump is, “The enhanced memory for adolescence and young adulthood found in people over 40” (Goldstein, 2015, p. 210). During this dinner conversation, my parents (who are both over 40) displayed the reminiscence bump perfectly. They both had so many memories from high school and college that were incredibly vivid in their mind. They were eager to share these stories with us, and shared them with great detail. This enhanced memory makes sense, because these stories occurred during their adolescence and young adulthood (i.e. the period of time the reminiscence bump predicts they would remember well). Moreover, the reminiscence bump also explains why my parents didn’t remember their childhood as well as their early adulthood. Both parents seemed to have limited memories of what happened to them as children, but phenomenal memories of what happened to them in high school and college. 

The textbook discusses possible explanations for the reminiscence bump. According to the authors, one explanation for my parents’ enhanced memory of their adolescence and young adulthood is the self-image hypothesis, which states that because an individual’s identity develops rapidly during adolescence and young adulthood, they remember this time better (Goldstein, 2015, p. 210). Another explanation is the cognitive hypothesis, which states that the rapid changes individuals experience during adolescence and young adulthood, which are then followed by a period of stability, cause stronger encoding of memories (Goldstein, 2015, p. 210). A final explanation is the cultural life script hypothesis, which states that there is a culturally-defined progression of events that occur in our lives, and that we better organize and recall events that follow this progression (Goldstein, 2015, p. 211). 

Overall, based on what we know about our memory, it should come as no surprise that my parents remembered their adolescence and early adulthood with such detail. The three hypotheses above all provide possible explanations for why my parents remembered these periods of their life so well. It would be interesting to have this conversation again in 25 years (when my brother and I are both over 40) to see if my brother and I also experience the reminiscence bump. 

Goldstein, E.B. (2015). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research, and Everyday Experience, 4th Edition. Cengage Learning.