I always tease my husband that his memory is trash. Specifcially I tell him that his semantic memory is great, but his episodic memory is terrible. Which isn’t true in all cases, but mainly in recent long-term memory instances. He also tends to have good autobiographical memory – which is defined as memory for specific experiences from our life, which can include both episodic and semantic components. He tends to have stronger semantic components in his autobiographical memory and weaker episodic components.

My husband is the kind of person who knows all of the random facts at a trivia party or all the answers on Jeopardy, his semantic memory is amazing. He also plays the piano and is fluent in French. His semantic memory has proven to be quite good. Bu when he tries to recall different events that have happened or trying to remember if he had done something that he meant to do is where is memory falls short. I also have to mention that he has never had any brain injuries or damages.

When prompted with a script, which is defined as our understanding of the particular sequence of events that occur during an event, he is somewhat able to recall pieces of the event just based on context, but when asked to recall details of said events, he is unable to produce answers.

Though he has weak episodic memory, he seems to gain strength in that component when they are tied to certain emotions. “Emotions and memory are intertwined. Emotions are often associated with “special” events, such as beginning or ending relationships or events experienced by many people.” I believe this holds true in my husband’s case. When prompted with questions that contained emotion during the event, he was able to recall more descriptive details and instances from the specific events.

Goldstein, E. B. (2014). Cognitive psychology: Connecting mind, research and everyday experience. Cengage Learning.

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.