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.

When we think of long term memory, we usually think of the best things that have happened to us in the past. However, it does not always work that way. Sometimes we have bad memories that tend to stick with us for the rest of our life, no matter if we want to remember it or not. Those memories that we do not always want to remember are the ones that help shape us into who we are today. There are certain events that occur that can cause you to relive these moments. These are called retrieval cues, as words or other stimuli, that help us remember information stored in our memory (Goldstein, 2015). 

On November 30th, 2018 my world was changed forever. The way I looked at life changed as well. It was my first year out of college, and I was living with two other girls who were seniors in college that I had known from doing track at Shippensburg University. We all had been hanging out, eating dinner that night and then the next morning only two out of three of us woke up. 

I woke up that morning and had a feeling in my gut that I had never felt before. It felt like I could’ve been sick at that moment, however, I knew I was not ill or hungover. The rest of my body felt fine. I just had this very weird feeling in my gut. I went to the gym and did my workout, but still had this feeling. When I came home, my one roommate’s (Tam) car was still in the driveway which was kind of odd because it was close to ten o’clock and she was never one to stay at the house for a long time. She was always out and about doing something with someone. I then texted my other roommate (Erica) to see if she had heard from her or saw her that morning, and she replied somewhat quickly and said she had not seen her. I explained to her this odd feeling I had, that something felt very wrong. My roommate texted again and said they were supposed to have a class together in about ten minutes and she would let me know if she showed up. She texted me then and told me she did not show up to class.
My roommate then raced home. I had been trying to get a hold of Tam ever since I got back from the gym and no answer. I knocked on her door, I tried to unlock the door but was not able to. Erica arrived home and had two of our other friends with her. They knocked on the door, made multiple calls, but there was no response. We then were panicking because I think deep down we knew something was very wrong. One of the swimmers called 911. I went outside to wait for the cops to show up. To this very day I will never forget the screams I heard from Erica and the two swimmers. Erica ran down the stairs and just fell in my arms and then fell onto the ground. At that moment, anyone could’ve told me to take one step for a million dollars and I would not have been able to. Cops showed up, my head track coach showed up, the swim coach and the athletic director showed up to offer support to Erica, myself and the two swimmers that were there. 

This is one of the hardest things I have ever been through and would never wish it on anyone. The memory of this day will always be with me no matter how much I try to forget it. Free recall refers to being asked to recall stimuli (Goldstein, 2015). For me, I don’t mind talking about this, and at the end of the day I think it actually helped me get through that time. Cued recall is when someone is presented with certain things to help remember the event (Goldstein, 2015). I would not say that I need to be presented with anything to be able to recall this event, but there are things in my life, or throughout the day, that will make me think about this exact day. An example would be remembering the house in Shippensburg and instantly being back to that day. Visual coding in long-term memory when you visualize a person or place from the past (Goldstein, 2015). Auditory coding would be another way to recall this memory would be just by hearing certain noises or songs that played that day or at that moment. 

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

One must wonder when they turn on a television or tune in a radio channel or listen to a public speaker is what I am hearing creditable? We must be careful as individuals and a society to listen, really listen. We can’t have our head in our Iphones when someone is talking or playing a game while doing our jobs. We must always be focused and present when we are receiving information that can impact our lives and the lives of the people around us, people we care about, and people we love. There are consequences to every choice / decision we make whether they are positive relies on how well we paid attention.

We have all stayed up too late watching tv and gotten entranced by one infomercial or another claiming miracle results with little to no effort. They show you a bathroom that doesn’t look like it’s been cleaned since the turn of the century and if you spray on this miracle cleaner you don’t even have to scrub just spray, walk away for a while, come back later and rinse and like magic it looks better than new. WOW, unbelievable and since it is also the middle of the night and you are not running on full power you get out your credit card and buy the illusion of getting something for nothing and we all know that in this world something for nothing doesn’t happen that often. The illusion is the thing that is likely to be wrongly perceived or interpreted by the senses, that could be a false idea or belief. 

We also have to be careful of the evangelists of the world, religious and political. These types of speakers know how to trigger the receptors of their audience to pull them into their world. Perception also involves factors such as a person’s knowledge of the environment, the expectations people bring to the event, and their attention to specific stimuli (Goldstein 59). We hear them speak of salvation, community and our everlasting commitment to our fellow man making us feel so good about ourselves and others and that we are all just part of one big team. They can pick us up and make us feel so high, like we are on some kind of drug, giving us the perception that our feet will never touch the ground again as long as we follow their rules. Perception involves information in addition to the foundation provided by activation of the receptors and bottom-up processing (Goldstein 59).  What we forget is that this all comes with a price, everything does it might be in the form of higher taxes or a monthly donation but they look like good people, they sound like good people so let’s DO IT! 

We must be careful how we can be fooled by perception and illusions and be willing to ask questions and really pay attention to what is going on around us. Ask yourself was that dirt on the shower wall really there for 20 years or maybe it was only there for twenty minutes and that’s why it came off so easily. Let’s not forget about that nice person asking us for money so we can have a better chance at life or eternal salvation. We perceive him as a nice guy by the way he dresses and speaks, but did you take the time to notice that as we struggle to give him our hard earned extra money his suit cost more than your whole fall wardrobe and he is wearing a $10,000.00 watch.

We must take these tools that we learn in our informative years and not only put them to use but sharpen them and add to them and grow with them as the world grows around us. It is also our responsibility to pass them on so others can uncover the person behind the curtain as well. We must all commit to staying vigilant and keeping our dialogues open and  So we can make informed decisions and not be fooled by illusions and miss perceptions.  

Goldstein, E. B. (2015). Chapter 3 – Perception. In Cognitive psychology: Connecting mind, research and everyday experience (pp. 51–83). essay, Cengage Learning.