Last weekend my husband and I decided to begin decorating our home for the holiday season. This year, unlike last, we wanted to add some decorations to the outside of our home. More specifically, we wanted to add faux evergreen garland and lights around the entryway of our front door. However, in our wanting to be festive, this created a set of problems that we had to overcome in order to properly hang the garland. To better explain and reflect on this week’s lesson, I decided to illustrate this garland journey using the Newell and Simon’s approach to problem solving.

Newell and Simon’s approach starts with the initial state, or “conditions at the beginning of the problem” and concludes with the goal state, or “the solution to the problem” (Goldstein, 2015). The initial state to my garland problem was how to hang it securely onto the door frame. The operator, or how we would achieve my goal state, was using some sort of fastener/s to attach the garland to the frame. However, the garland must be able to withstand inclement weather (primarily wind) and remain taught without sagging. The goal state to our problem was a beautifully hung evergreen garland with lights to frame the door.

Before trying to accomplish the goal state of the problem, we had to look at the entire problem space, or all the possible steps between the initial and goal state (Goldstein, 2015). These possible steps that are taken between the initial and goal states are known as intermediate states (Goldstein, 2015). In viewing the entire problem space and all possibilities it was easier to decide on the most efficient steps and subgoals to reach our goal state. Carefully strategizing the most direct route to our goal state is known as means-end analysis (Goldstein, 2015).

The first intermediate state was using either nails or 3M command hooks and attaching them to the wooden door frame. Thinking of my subgoal, to withstand inclement weather, we decided to use nails over the command strips for more stability. The second intermediate state was using an additional fastener to fulfill my second subgoal of keeping the garland taught. We decided to attach zip ties to the actual garland prior to hanging it on the nails. The third intermediate state was using an additional zip tie and wrapping it around the nail as well as through the zip tie on the garland, therefore avoiding any sagging.

After all the steps were completed, we finally arrived at the goal state to our problem. We achieved a stable, perfectly hung, festive evergreen garland around our front door. In having a means-end analysis strategy in place, we avoided additional intermediate states and met all our subgoals. It has been up for almost a week and still holding on strong even through the wind gusts we’ve been experiencing!

Works Cited

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

Last week, prior to beginning to study for our midterm exam, I quickly sifted through the notes I had taken for lessons one through six. I wanted to see what information I could easily retrieve from my long-term memory. While going through the retrieval process, I noticed that lesson three on the topic of perception seemed to be the easiest for me to recall. I didn’t understand why that lesson in particular would be better stored in my long-term memory over any other, except that I had written my last blog post about perception. Fast forward to this week’s lesson on encoding and retrieval of memory form long-term memory into working memory and I asked myself that same question I had last week. Why was lesson three easier for me to remember?

To begin to answer my question, I thought about the levels of processing theory, or “the idea that memory depends on how information was encoded” (Goldstein, 2015). I had, for the most part, utilized the same techniques for all six lessons. I read the commentary and textbook chapters as well as took notes on each lesson. Thus, each lesson should have been deeply processed and encoded into my long-term memory similarly. That wasn’t the case, so I turned my attention to the different types of encoding I used to store the information of lesson three into my long-term memory.

The first thing I remembered is associating bottom-up and top-down processing information with an activity my husband and I enjoy, star gazing. I had encoded their meanings with an association to myself. I was utilizing the self-reference effect which, in turn, helped to strengthen that knowledge and encode it “deeper” into my long-term memory. Also, throughout that week, my husband would give me examples of perception and asked if he was using top-down processing. I would have to retrieve the knowledge of top-down processing from my long-term memory and decide whether it was or wasn’t. Inadvertently, I was experiencing the testing effect, as he was “quizzing” me on the processes. Again, helping to strengthen my memory of lesson three’s information.

Visual Imagery also played a part in helping to strengthen the encoding of the terms and concepts of the Gestalt Grouping Principles of lesson three into my long-term memory. In my last blog post I associated the constellations of Ursa Major and Ursa Minor with the Principle of Good Continuation. In picturing the star formations in my working memory, acting as a retrieval cue, I was able to better retrieve the information of the principle from my long-term memory. Picturing the stars instantly cued my long term memory to transfer the Gestalt Grouping Principles into my working memory.

So, to answer my initial question, the way that I had encoded the concepts from lesson three using the self-reference effect, testing effect, visual images, and retrieval cues is why it was easier to recall over the other lessons. Reading and taking notes, while helpful, wasn’t as effective in creating strong memories in my long-term memory. For the other lessons I had fallen victim to the familiarity effect, I was recognizing the information but not fully remembering it (Goldstein, 2015).

Works Cited

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

Most summer evenings my husband and I spend time relaxing from a long day on our patio. Often times, we take for granted our ability to perceive and interact with the world around us. Enjoying the visual stimulation of the potted trees, colorful flowers, or perhaps in watching the flame of a citronella candle flicker on the iron table in front of us. In addition, our favorite hobby, looking at the night sky to pinpoint constellations and gaze at the moon. This week’s lesson on perception gave me meaningful insight on just how incredible our eyes and brain work together in order to achieve those enjoyments.

To make better sense of the concepts we learned this week like bottom-up processing, top-down processing, and the Gestalt Grouping Principles I attempted to incorporate them into a real life setting. Using my patio scenario, first my eyes began to pick up what is creating natural light and what this light is reflecting on in the sky above me. My eyes concentrated on the clusters of stars and illuminated moon with a passing cloud covering a portion of it. This information is collected and must now be sent to the occipital portion of my brain. This illustrates the concept of bottom-up processing, or “processing that starts with information received from the receptors” (Goldstein, 2015). In this case the journey the information my eyes received being transported to my brain. Although, this is just the beginning of the incredible process the brain is capable of aiding us within our visual perception.

The next step is our brain taking this information and deciding if it can be further explained or influenced by prior knowledge. This step is known as top-down processing, or “process that involves a person’s knowledge or expectations” (Goldstein, 2015). Here my brain has understood the clusters of stars have a deeper meaning. In knowing of the constellations Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, my brain realizes this in fact isn’t just a random star group but has more meaning. I now see the stars take shape and create an image in the sky of the “Big Dipper” and “Little Dipper”. The Gestalt Grouping Principles could arguably come into fruition here as well. For example, the principle of good continuation could apply to the star constellations having straight and curved lines that uniquely connect the stars together making a shape our brain connects with.

Top-down processing is also utilized by my brain in further understanding the moon in my patio scene. I was able to mentally depict the moon as full and spherical shaped even though it was partially cloud covered. This achieved by having prior knowledge of not only the shape of the moon but also what phase it was in. The moon itself made me think of the quote “the man in the moon” and the phenomenon of being able to see a face on the lunar surface. This demonstrated to me the exercise presented in Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research and Everyday Experience, of noticing faces in rocks and trees through the influence of top-down processing (Goldstein, 2015). I imagine this is also reminiscent of most of our childhoods in seeing objects in cloud formations.

Throughout my exploration of perception on a summer evening, I found it astounding how our brain considers, influences, and reworks our environment in order to provide us with information. Applying the key concepts into my nightly routine helped in better comprehending this week’s lesson. While our brain in processing visual information is incredibly useful, it does now and then provide us with some inaccuracies when utilizing top-down processing. For instance, seeing a face on the moon staring back at you when logic obviously tells us there isn’t one, or is there?

Work Cited

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