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. 

When I was four years old, my mom enrolled me in Suzuki Violin lessons. The Suzuki method is a philosophy of learning to play an instrument where children learn to play by ear before learning to read music (Suzuki Association of the Americas, 2021). What that meant for me was that for the first five years of violin lessons, I memorized the songs I learned to play and never used sheet music. 

Since I wasn’t taught to read music, I learned to call each note on the violin by the finger used to play it, instead of its note name. To help me memorize how to play the songs I was learning, my teacher encouraged me to sing the string of finger numbers of the song I was memorizing to the tune of that song. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star was the first song I learned to play. I remember singing, “A A E E 1 1 E, 3 3 2 2 1 1 A” (the string of finger numbers for the first line in Twinkle) to the tune of Twinkle all the time. At the time I didn’t realize it, but I was using elaborative rehearsal to memorize my songs. Elaborative rehearsal is “Rehearsal that involves thinking about the meaning of an item to be remembered or making connections between that item and prior knowledge” (Goldstein, 2015, p. 408). When I was memorizing how to play Twinkle, I was connecting the string of finger numbers I was trying to memorize with the tune of the song when I would sing them out loud. I was processing this string at a deeper level by associating each finger number with a note in a song I was familiar with. This form of elaborative rehearsal allowed me to successfully memorize the song.

I excelled at memorizing songs in this manner. However, when I got older my teacher started previewing new songs with me. She’d write out only the string of finger numbers for the new song (without telling me the tune of the song), and give it to me before I would learn this song. She’d ask me to memorize this string of numbers, thinking that in a couple weeks when it was time to learn the new song, it would be easier because I would already have the string of finger numbers memorized. 

Unfortunately, I struggled immensely to memorize these strings of finger numbers. Unlike before, when the string of finger numbers was associated with the tune of the song I was learning, I didn’t know the tune of the song for this new string of numbers. I had no way of connecting this string of numbers to anything meaningful. Since my teacher didn’t tell me the tune of the song, I used maintenance rehearsal to memorize it. Maintenance rehearsal is “Rehearsal that involves repetition without any consideration of meaning or making connections to other information” (Goldstein, 2015, p. 413). As mentioned in the textbook, maintenance rehearsal results in poorer memory since it is associated with a shallow level of processing (Goldstein, 2015, p. 180). Thus, it makes sense that I struggled to memorize these strings of numbers as they had no connection to anything meaningful for me. Unlike when I would memorize the string of numbers by connecting it to the tune of a song, I couldn’t do that with these strings and had to memorize them without connecting them to anything meaningful. This resulted in a shallower level of processing for the string of numbers, and consequently explains why I struggled to memorize it. 

In conclusion, this example explains why using elaborative rehearsal instead of maintenance rehearsal results in better memory. Next time you have to memorize something, connect it with something meaningful. This will allow you to process the information at a deeper level, and remember it better. 

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

Suzuki Association of the Americas. (2021). About the Suzuki method. Suzuki Association of the Americas. Retrieved October 16, 2021, from https://suzukiassociation.org/about/suzuki-method/. 

Throughout this course, we have discussed different aspects of cognition, including perception. This week we learned more about how our brain recognizes and classifies information from the world around us. Two of the methods discussed were top-down processing and bottom-up processing. Top-down processing is when the brain uses prior knowledge and experiences to interpret information from the world, whereas bottom-up processing is when the brain uses sensory information from the environment to interpret the world (Goldstein, 2015, p. 59). After learning about these two processes of perception, I believe Jelly Belly’s BeanBoozled Jelly Beans are a great example of bottom-up processing. 

When you grab a handful of jelly beans, you likely immediately look at the jelly bean’s color. If you have a blue jelly bean, you probably expect it to taste like blueberry, or maybe cotton candy, because these are the flavors we associate with the color blue. Conversely, if you grab a yellow jelly bean, you might expect a popcorn flavor, or maybe a lemon flavor. In this instance, top-down processing influences your perception of the jelly bean’s flavor, because your prior experiences of what items of that color taste like is leading your brain to believe that specific jelly bean will also taste the same way. 

However, Jelly Belly’s BeanBoozled Jelly Beans throw a curveball at our brain’s ability to use top-down processing to figure out a jelly bean’s flavor. According to Jelly Belly Candy Company, “BeanBoozled pairs two jelly beans that look exactly alike but could not taste more different. You could get one of our most popular flavors or one of our wildest. Here’s the catch – you won’t know which ones are which until you try them!” (2021). In a box of BeanBoozled Jelly Beans, a blue jelly bean could either be berry-blue flavored or toothpaste flavored. A yellow jelly bean may be popcorn flavored or rotten egg flavored. Since one color represents two vastly different flavors for the jelly beans, our brain is unable to rely on previous expectations for how that jelly bean will taste based on its color. We must taste it ourselves to determine its flavor.

In the case of BeanBoozled Jelly Beans, your brain is first exposed to information from the environment (the jelly bean) and then analyzes it in order to figure out its flavor. Thus, our brains use bottom-up processing to determine the flavor of the BeanBoozled Jelly Bean. BeanBoozled Jelly Beans remove your brain’s ability to use top-down processing to perceive its flavor because you must rely solely on interpreting the information from your taste buds to figure out what the jelly bean tastes like. 

Even the simple act of eating a jelly bean requires a lot of processing in our brain to perceive its flavor, and Jelly Belly’s BeanBoozled Jelly Beans are a perfect example of how this processing can get complicated. There are countless other situations in which we would use bottom-up processing to perceive the taste of something, such as when you go to a dark movie theater and can’t see the color of the candy you’re eating, or if someone mixes two similarly looking, but different tasting candies together (like M&M’s and Skittles). In conclusion, while top-down processing may often play a large role in our perception of taste, there are many instances in which bottom-up processing is needed as well, and Jelly Belly’s BeanBoozled Jelly Beans are one such example. 

References:

Jelly Belly Candy Company. (2021). BeanBoozled 6th Edition Challenge. Jelly Belly.      https://www.jellybelly.com/beanboozled-jelly-beans/c/341. 

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