It was a normal work day for me like any other, when a Latino woman came into the branch and walked up to the teller beside my desk. At this time there was no one in line at the bank when the customer had entered, but of course as usually happens, the domino effect, in walks about five people behind her. Right away as I began to help my own customer I hear the teller beside me begin to enunciate her words and start speaking very loudly and slowly. The young Latino woman she was attempting to help did not evidently speak English very well, so as one can imagine communicating with her was very difficult, to the point where the teller was so frustrated she simply said to the woman, I CAN’T HELP YOU IF YOU DON’T SPEAK ENGLISH, THIS IS AMERICA AND OUR LANGUAGE IS ENGLISH. I was in complete shock at the tellers response and rudeness to this young lady.

I quickly apologized to the young Latino woman and asked her what she needed help with, in spanish. Apparently the teller beside me, had forgotten that I spoke Spanish and she was completely surprised when I had begun to assist the young lady and ended up with her walking out the door with a smile, whereas before she was very upset. She told me in Spanish why are people so rude when my English is not very good, I am just visiting the states to see some family, but I am trying to learn some English. She was laughing because she thought it was funny how the teller beside me had begun to speak very loudly and slow as if the young lady was deaf, not just misunderstanding.

Language is a beautiful thing. As was mentioned in this lesson, it allows us to express our ideas and communicate them freely. However, on the other hand as was demonstrated in this particular situation language can also cause a barrier and it can make it hard to communicate with others who do not speak the same language that we do. During these times, yes it may be difficult to get a message across, which is why it is nice to have gestures and other universal movements to assist us. Nelson Mandela once said, ” If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.” This could not have been better stated, when we often use the common language between each other to communicate, it can create tension and sometimes misunderstandings, however, as was illustrated above by speaking the native language of an individual there is a sense of kinship that comes with that and almost an immediate bond because of the common ground.

References:

Hamilton, R. (2014, January 1). Dictionary of Quotes. Retrieved October 29, 2014, from http://www.dictionary-quotes.com/nelson-mandela

Wow! You Have a Really Good Occipital Lobe!

Ten years ago if anyone used the comment above in a conversation I probably would have had some unpleasant thoughts about him or her. However, this was a comment from my ten-year-old daughter last week that she casually used in a conversation. I know, it sounds odd. Well, let me first introduce my daughter, the brains as we call her. She is ten years old, has ADHD, and Asperger’s. She has an IQ of 112. She is currently in fifth grade age wise and is studying seventh grade math and language. Anyway, we were baking a cake and she was trying a chemistry experiment to imitate the action of the rising agent in the cake by blowing up a balloon using yeast and relating to the chemical bonds involved. To make baking more interesting my daughter was explaining to me how she learned about the different parts if the brain, as well as explain which areas of the brains I have deficits in such as my parietal lobe – which she associated with my lack of screaming when I touched the hot pan. While she was talking my inattentive brain (with good occipital lobe functions) wandered on to think about the formation of the brains of children with ADHD. She continued to tell me how she is trying to train her frontal lobe and in particular the motor cortex. The way she put it was that having speech therapy for many years helped her think about her pragmatics and social skill. Why can’t she do the same to improve her sense of space and bodily movement? I will not go into Asperger’s and brain function here. I plan to go to graduate school to learn about that.

It is common knowledge that the main deficits in ADHD are inattention and excessive movement. Furthermore, it is known that the frontal lobe which is located in the front of the brain is the main player for reasoning, motor skills, cognition, and expressive language. To be exact the motor cortex at the back of the frontal lobe works as a receiving station to utilize the information received from the different brain parts and carry out body movements. For individuals with ADHD, these functions can be impaired. Up until recently the differences in brain formation that lead to such differences were unknown. However, with the major advances in technology these changes are becoming more apparent. In a study by Mostofsky and colleagues they found that in boys with ADHD the frontal lobes were on average 8.3% smaller in total cerebral volumes (Mostofsky &colleagues,2002) . These finding suggest that the decreased volume in white and grey matter in the frontal lobe can be a cause for the clinical deficits associated with the disorder.

On the contrary, The National Institute if Mental Health, NIMH states that brain scans of individuals with ADHD suggest that the brains actually develop normally. However, they just develop slowly; on average the brains of individuals with ADHD mature 3 years later than those of typical individuals (NIMH, 2012). Now these delays can explain many aspects of the life long process of ADHD. It can explain why many adults with ADHD can regulate their behaviors and impulses. Nevertheless, I wonder can these delays in brain maturity be attributed to the different brain formation? Do they explain the lack of white and grey matter in boys with ADHD? That I do not know. Furthermore, if ADHD in fact is attributes to maturity delays, why bother medicate these children? After all, these medications can change the way their brains evolve and grow.

Going back to my daughter’s debate of training her brain, it makes sense. If you can train a person with speech deficit to speak properly, why not train them to overcome ADHD. With that being said, ADHD is obviously far more involved that just training. I recently read this study about the brain imaging of individuals with ADHD. The results if the study were definitely intriguing. Giedd and colleagues in this study found that the differences found in the brains of children with ADHD are suggestive of different functioning mechanisms that could possible lead to diagnostic ability by the use of MRI scans and PET scans. This study shows that in the brain of an individual with ADHD there is more involvement in the frontal lobe, basal gangalia, corpus callosum, and the cerebellum. (Giedd & colleagues, 2001). Their findings confirm the fact that there are brain deficits and abnormalities in the ADHD brain. Such finding can be really helpful when diagnosing and treating ADHD in the future.

GIEDD, J. N., BLUMENTHAL, J., MOLLOY, E. and CASTELLANOS, F. X. (2001), Brain Imaging of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 931: 33–49. doi: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2001.tb05772.x

Wolosin, Sasha M., Marin E. Richardson, Joseph G. Hennessey, Martha B. Denckla, and Stewart H. Mostofsky. “Abnormal Cerebral Cortex Structure in Children with ADHD.” Human Brain Mapping 30.1 (2009): 175-84. Web.

“Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.” NIMH RSS. N.p., 2012. Web. 15 Oct. 2014.

Something that has always bothered me is my ability to remember some things and not others. The biggest issue I have is that I can remember the lyrics to every song in my iTunes account but fail to remember any of the material I learn in school long enough to pass a test.

I have always received As and Bs and since elementary school I have received post secondary school marks on standardized testing. However when it comes to taking a test or quiz I have not been able to pass. The only exception to this is math. I absolutely love math and actually have the opposite problem – I can’t remember a math test or quiz that I didn’t pass. I can study for weeks on end, I can gradually study from the beginning of the semester to the final exam, I can cram, I can fill out study guide after study guide, reread every chapter, take and rewrite notes, make and study flash cards, but NOTHING seems to work. On the other hand if I listen to a song twice I can remember all the lyrics and by the fourth time I hear it, I have all the ad-libs down. I can go years without hearing the song and still if it comes on I can recite (I can’t sing for my life) the words and ad-libs as if it is one of my favorite songs.

We are constantly taking in stimuli and the stimuli that makes it through short term memory, and working memory gets placed into long term memory. Experiences and specific events become a part of our episodic memory. Episodic memory is “the memory of autobiographical events (times, places, associated emotions and other contextual knowledge) than can be explicitly stated” (The Human Memory). From research done it has been proven that we associate song lyrics with our experiences. Therefore the lyrics become apart of our episodic memory and just like we are able to recall past experiences we are able to recall the lyrics to songs, even if we haven’t heard them in a while. Semantic memory is the complete opposite. It is the “record of facts, meanings, concepts and knowledge about the extern world we have acquired” (The Human Memory). This is the memory system that is responsible for the information on my tests and quizzes.

Blog Post #2:
Long- term Memory

This week for my blog, I have chosen an article published by The Guardian that illustrates how long term memory can be affected. Specifically, this article illustrates how caffeine may affect the brain’s ability to store long term memories. According to Ian Sample, science correspondent for The Guardian newspaper, “People who had a shot of caffeine after looking at a series of pictures were better at distinguishing them from similar images in tests the next day”. (Sample, 2014)

In order to study this relationship the scientists collected 44 volunteers who are moderate caffeine consumers that abstained from caffeine for about one day. The volunteers were then shown a sequence of pictures that included a hammer, a chair, an apple, a seahorse, a rubber duck, and a car. The participants were not asked to memorize these pictures, but were to say whether the object was normally found indoors or outdoors. After the completion of the indoor or outdoor task, the participants were randomly assigned either a 200mg caffeine pill or a placebo. The relationship between the caffeine pill and the average cup of coffee is about 50mg more. (Sample, 2014)

The next day the volunteers were brought back to review another sequence of images that included many that they had seen the day before, new ones, and others that were similar. The task was to figure out which was new, old, or similar. The researcher Michael Yassa stated, “The caffeine and placebo groups scored the same except when it came to spotting the similar images.” What caught my attention was how the caffeine group scored around 10% higher than the placebo group when spotting similar images. (Sample, 2014)

I think this article relates to lesson 8, Long-term Memory: Encoding and Retrieval because of the way the study uses imagery and repetition that could possibly prove caffeine could be another factor that influence the process and the strength of our LTM. In my opinion, the study could be improved by having a longer duration, and a larger sample of volunteers.

Sample, Ian. “Coffee May Boost Brain’s Ability to Store Long-term Memories, Study Claims.” Http://www.theguardian.com/. The Guardian, 12 Jan. 2014. Web. 16 Oct. 2014.

Blog Post #2:
Long- term Memory

This week for my blog, I have chosen an article published by The Guardian that illustrates how long term memory can be affected. Specifically, this article illustrates how caffeine may affect the brain’s ability to store long term memories. According to Ian Sample, science correspondent for The Guardian newspaper, “People who had a shot of caffeine after looking at a series of pictures were better at distinguishing them from similar images in tests the next day”. (Sample, 2014)

In order to study this relationship the scientists collected 44 volunteers who are moderate caffeine consumers that abstained from caffeine for about one day. The volunteers were then shown a sequence of pictures that included a hammer, a chair, an apple, a seahorse, a rubber duck, and a car. The participants were not asked to memorize these pictures, but were to say whether the object was normally found indoors or outdoors. After the completion of the indoor or outdoor task, the participants were randomly assigned either a 200mg caffeine pill or a placebo. The relationship between the caffeine pill and the average cup of coffee is about 50mg more. (Sample, 2014)

The next day the volunteers were brought back to review another sequence of images that included many that they had seen the day before, new ones, and others that were similar. The task was to figure out which was new, old, or similar. The researcher Michael Yassa stated, “The caffeine and placebo groups scored the same except when it came to spotting the similar images.” What caught my attention was how the caffeine group scored around 10% higher than the placebo group when spotting similar images. (Sample, 2014)

I think this article relates to lesson 8, Long-term Memory: Encoding and Retrieval because of the way the study uses imagery and repetition that could possibly prove caffeine could be another factor that influence the process and the strength of our LTM. In my opinion, the study could be improved by having a longer duration, and a larger sample of volunteers.

Sample, Ian. “Coffee May Boost Brain’s Ability to Store Long-term Memories, Study Claims.” Http://www.theguardian.com/. The Guardian, 12 Jan. 2014. Web. 16 Oct. 2014.

Alzheimer’s is perhaps the most terrifying disease out there to me because of my experience with it. When I was little, my family and I would travel up to Vermont several times each year to visit my dad’s parents and family. I have very vivid memories of the drives up during the Fall particularly (we would always go to my aunt’s for Thanksgiving) as northern New York and Vermont are absolutely gorgeous in the Fall and Winter. My grandparents lived in a small wood cabin at the top of a big field, which was almost always covered in snow by the time that we would get there. Once we arrived, we would be greeted by an excited sheep dog and my grandfather hobbling out of the cabin with his cane despite protest from both my father and grandmother that it was too icy. Greetings were exchanged along with hugs, and everyone would shuffle inside while my father unloaded the car. My grandmother would always have some form of food (usually meatloaf) cooking when we got there, and we would all sit and eat together within an hour of arriving. We would talk about what everyone had been doing in the time since our last visit, how big my sister and I had gotten, how cozy the cabin was, and what our plans for the duration of that visit were. Then my grandmother would hustle off and return with something sweet for my sister and I, grinning ear-to-ear while my father scolded her for always spoiling us.

These are the memories that I choose to associate with my paternal grandparents. For the last 6 years of their lives, they were both plagued by Alzheimer’s Disease, degenerating further and further until they had become nothing more than empty shells of their former selves. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, Alzheimer’s is a type of dementia that causes problems with memory, thinking and behavior. Symptoms usually develop slowly and get worse over time, becoming severe enough to interfere with daily tasks (Alzheimer’s Association).

For my grandparents, it started off as the normal memory loss associated with aging: forgetting what day it was, misplacing things, relatively harmless memory lapses. But they quickly progressed to the point where they couldn’t remember where they were, or who other people were, and consistently believed that it was some point in the distant past. My aunt lived just up the hill, so she was able to care for my grandparents for a while, but eventually we became concerned that one of them would wander outside and get lost, or turn the stove on and forget about it, so we had to place them in an assisted living center.

My grandfather passed away shortly after we moved them, but my grandmother simply continued to deteriorate. She would read the same book over and over again, never even realizing it, or tell the same story several times in the same hour regardless of whether or not anyone was listening. But the worst part of this disease was just how much it changed her. You see, when you can’t remember where you are or who anyone around you is, it’s very scary, and being in a constant state of fear makes you defensive and angry. She became so very angry towards the end of her life to everyone, cursing at anyone who tried to talk to her and constantly mumbling about how she wished that she was dead. It was heartbreaking to watch this disease completely take over such a lovely person, and there was nothing that anyone could do.

Losing your memory, mind, and ultimately yourself  is one of the worst things that I can possibly imagine having witnessed it first-hand. We get closer to a cure for Alzheimer’s each year, but in the meantime so many suffer from its effects, directly and indirectly. There are currently 5 approved treatment drugs for Alzheimer’s, and research is constantly closing in on the potential causes of Alzheimer’s to help target future medication more effectively (Alzheimer’s Association).

“Alzheimer’s Drug Treatment Horizon | Research Center | Alzheimer’s Association.” Alzheimer’s Association. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Oct. 2014. http://www.alz.org/research/science/alzheimers_treatment_horizon.asp

Most of us have done it, taking your eyes off the road in order to send or receive a text message. We know it’s dangerous, so dangerous in fact many states have now passed a law in order to prevent us from doing it. Research proves the relationship between attention and our perceptual experience to be extremely important, but what will it take for people to put their phone down while driving? Attention plays an important role in our interpretations of the world around us, and it has been proven that texting while driving is more unsafe that talking on a cell phone or conversing with a passenger. Using a cell phone while driving uses attentional processing that could be used to attend to information in our environment.

In Lesson 4 we focused on attention which is often described as a filter that allows some information to pass onto higher levels of processing (PSU WC, L4, P4). We studied visual attention demonstrations such as change blindness, the Monkey Business Illusion, Sleight of Hand, Person Swap, and Pickpocket examples; all of which validate why attention is important in our understanding of our surroundings. What I found interesting from this material is the statistical research to back up the dangers of texting while driving. Many studies support the notion that using cell phones while driving is risky, but text messaging and conversing on either a handheld or hands-free cell phone while driving actually slows reaction time more than being drunk or high (Strayer, Drews, & Crouch, 2006). Driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs is illegal, but after diving into further research I am glad that texting has become a widespread concern as a precarious driving habit.

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          Drivers who are text messaging also show more missed lane changes, and vary more in their lane positions and following distances (Hosking, Young, & Regan, 2009). Several recent studies of explicit attention capture have found that when observers are focused on some other object or event, they often experience inattentional blindness (Simons, 2000). This was demonstrated by the monkey business illusion I mentioned earlier; when the individual’s attention to one thing causes them to fail to identify an unforeseen stimulus right before their eyes. This finding has hypothetically catastrophic implications for distracted driving. How we process specific information, and how we manage so many things going on in our environment at the same time is fascinating. According to psychologist and philosopher William James, attention “is the taking possession of the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what may seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thoughts…It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others” (1890).  So in this example, when you are driving and concurrently sending a text message, your mind is withdrawing some things from your environment in order to focus on the task at hand.

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          In 2009, almost 6,000 people were killed and a half-million were injured in crashes related to driver distraction (NHTSA, 2010). The essential factor to driving safely is keeping your eyes as well as your concentration (your mind) on the road. Text messaging distracts any driver from that crucial task. The processes by which you are able to press the gas pedal, observe and obey road signs, notice the light switching from yellow to red, be aware of the speed the car is traveling in front of you, your grip on the steering wheel, and the song you are listening to on the radio all involves attention. We select what information we need for further processing while setting other information in reserve. We are flooded by a sizeable amount of perceptual data in everything that we do, and we cannot make sense of everything at once. Texting while driving puts the attention needed on the road on the back burner while our mind focuses on our smart phone. The national campaign It Can Wait is a great tool to spread the awareness of how unsafe texting while driving truthfully is.

Reference List:

Hosking, S.G., Young, K.L., & Regan, M.A. (2009). The effects of text messaging on young drivers. Human Factors, 51, 582-592.

James, W. (1890). The Principles of Psychology. New York: Holt.

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (September, 2010) Traffic Safety Facts: Distracted Driving, 2009. DOT HS 811 379 Washington, DC: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Pastorino Ph.D., Ellen E. (2012). The Truth about Texting and Talking While Driving: Demonstrating the dangers of distracted driving to students. Retrieved from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/get-psyched/201204/the-truth-about-texting-and-talking-while-driving

Pennsylvania State University World Campus (2011). Lesson 4: Attention. Retrieved from https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/fa14/psych256/001/content/05_lesson/01_page.html

Simons, D. J., (2000) Attentional Capture and Inattentional Blindness: Trends in Cognitive Sciences; 4(4), 147-155;

Strayer, D.L., Drews, F.A., & Crouch, D.J. (2006).A comparison of the cell phone driver and the drunk driver. Human Factors, 48, 381-391.

When I was two years old I was injured when a board with a nail fell on top of me. It cut me open and I needed thirteen stitches. It was so close to my heart that they had to check to make sure it was not punctured. The fact that I remember this is because of my episodic memory or my semantic memory. However, my father’s episodic memory has a slightly different story for this event. How does this happen? Why are there two versions of the same event? It is mostly likely because the episodic memory can become semantic memory after time and influence.
Let us begin with the difference between episodic memory and semantic memory. Episodic memory is that memory you have of an event that occurred in your life, an event that you can “time travel” back to. For me, this traumatic event allows me to bring myself back to that memory, or my version at least. Semantic memory, however, is memory of information and facts of an event that you cannot travel back to (Goldstein, 2011). So why might my memory of my experience be semantic now? Because of all of the things that I cannot remember about it and all of the things I cannot prove were factual about my version of events.
The short version of my story is that I remember the board falling on me. I remember there being blood everywhere and screaming for my dad whom I thought was inside at the time. I remember it taking a long time before he came to me and my flesh hanging from my body which my dad held in place with a towel. What I do not remember is it hurting at all. I do not remember being upset or any emotion connected with the event. I do not remember the hospital or anything afterwards. There are several “facts” here that are different than what my father remembers though some are the same. He remembers being outside with me and coming to help me right away. He remembers there being very little blood. This is why the memory or more semantic than episodic now. I cannot confirm the actual version of events. I do not know the specific day or month or year. I can “time travel” there but I can “see” what I remember, not “be” it.
People perceive and remember events differently. What I thought was a lot of blood could have been, in my eyes, as a tiny two year old but may not have been to my much larger father. This part of the situation could be true then. Or my brother (who was five at the time and was also present) could have told me his version of events and since he was extremely upset by what happened his version could be exaggerated. People change stories sometimes to suit themselves (Hanagarne, 2009). My dad could have been inside and convinced himself otherwise out of guilt (I specifically remember him washing dishes). That would make “my version” actually a story compiled of the “facts” from other people. Also, like a game of telephone, the story likely changes over time (Hanagarne, 2009).
In conclusion, unless you can travel back to your experience with specific detail then you are recalling from semantic memory. For my memory to be episodic I would have to remember exactly when it happened, how I felt about it, and the details of it. My semantic memory lets me know that it happened even though I only have a vague memory of when and no recollection of how I felt. The events prior to the trauma, however, I can travel to. My brother wanted to save a kitten from behind the board. I remember feeling afraid for the kitten and sharing that feeling with my brother. I also remember standing in front of the board not knowing of potential trouble. Episodic memory and semantic memory can sometimes be connected that way.

Resources:

Goldstein, B. (2011). Long-Term Memory: Structure. In Cognitive Psychology (Third ed., pp. 159-161). Belmont: Wadswortg, Cengage Learning.

Hanagarne, J. (2009, April 22). Do We Remember The Event Or The Story? Retrieved October 19, 2014, from http://worldsstrongestlibrarian.com/1030/do-we-remember-the-event-or-the-story/

Generate and Test

In chapter seven we discussed the process of encoding and retrieving information from long-term memory (LTM). Encoding, which is the process of getting information and transferring it into long-term memory (LTM), is how we categorize information as we store it into long-term memory (LTM). Retrieving is the process of getting information out of LTM into our working memory (Goldstein, E. 2011). There are many different ways we can encode information into our memory in order to successfully retrieve information. Most importantly, however, is how this process can help us study more effectively.

As we learned the different ways we can encode into our LTM and retrieve information from our LTM, we have also learned principles that that we can use to increase the effectiveness of our studying. (Goldstein, E. 2011) These principles include: elaboration, generating and testing, organization, taking breaks, match learning, testing conditions, and avoiding “illusion of learning”.

I found “generate and test” the most helpful for skill learning. Generate and Test is the process of creating a situation in which it is necessary to take an active role in creating material (Goldstein, E. 2011), as “it is a powerful way to create strong coding and good long-term retrieval (Goldstein, E. 2011).” From personal experience I have seen or noticed how this process does definitely help with learning. During many times in classroom training, which involved training students on applicable skills to use in the field, the course was taught by nonstop PowerPoint presentations only. It became noticeable that when it came time to put the material learned into effect, students failed to execute correctly or at all. Students performed extremely well on field exercises when training incorporated actual hands-on exercises, group scenarios, and tests. I was very surprised how much easier it was to apply what we had learned. I realize now, from what we learned in this chapter, that the hands-on training and group scenario exercises had helped encode the information which made it easier to retrieve; especially as we were put into the same environment where we had practice for the test.

References:

Goldstein, E. (2011). Cognitive psychology: Connecting mind, research, and everyday experience (3rd ed.), pp 173, 181, 188, 198. Australia: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.