Author Archives: Christina Marie Skinner

Spatial vs Propositional

I have always had an easier time learning visually. Even in college, I found that it I received better grades whenever I had a visual learning guide like powerpoint over just a written study guide that just stated what to study. So, to overcome this issue that I faced, I would transform the material as I studied into a powerpoint. I saw a the impact that it had on my grades and have been continuing to do it for exams. I would add pictures to almost everything that I put into the powerpoints so that I could understand the material even better. I never knew about the difference in learning of the connection between imagery and propositions until now.

The propositional representation is the relationship that can be represented by abstract symbols (Goldstein, 2011). It explains what a picture looks like or features that stick out that are easy to remember. The spatial representation is when different parts of an image can be described as corresponding to specific locations in space (Goldstein, 2011). But, there is a mix of both when determining what some images mean or finding if they actually are what they appear to be. Some of these examples include pictures that are actually two pictures in one or they have different pictures depending on the way that you look at it. The underlying representation of an image doesn’t have to be spatial, this is what can be called an epiphenomenon. An epiphenomenon is something that accompanies the real mechanism but it isn’t actually part of the mechanism (Goldstein, 2011). This is when a proposition is actually telling what exactly is happening in an image. It’s the verbal statements that can be concluded from the image itself.

I believe that this concept is important especially to children trying to learn. I think that it makes a large impact on how an individual learns because everyone learns differently. There are people that are more visual learners like myself and other people that can read something and remember everything about it. I have found that it’s a combination of both that works best. Everyone has their own interpretation of pictures but its the propositional aspect that makes it everything come together.


Goldstein, B. (2011). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research and Everyday Experience, 3rd Edition. Wadsworth, Inc.

Memory and Emotion

Emotions have a lot of control over us in our everyday lives. Our emotions vary according to our mood and the events taking place around us. Most importantly, they are shown to increase our memories in particular events. These events could have had a positive or negative impact on us. This triggers the amygdala in the brain which shows the amygdalas relationship to emotions. This has been confirmed in multiple studies which involved people’s brain activity is recorded in response to emotional words that they were presented to them (Goldstein, 208).

I believe that this is true do to some of my personal experiences. I have given birth to three children and every birth experience was different. But, I can recall all of the details and times of each one of them. I can remember details even before giving birth such as the previous doctors appointments. I believe that I’m able to remember so much about these events because they’re probably the most positive emotional events that have occurred in my life. These events were very positive and changed my life drastically.

I have also had a lot of negative events in my life that I still can remember due to the emotional nature even though it would be nice to forget them sometimes. For example, when I was 16 years old, I had to get a biopsy done and the hospital called the very next day with the results. My mother had to drive me two hours away to find out that I had cancer. To this day, I can remember every single detail and word that the doctor who told us the news said to us. It was also a very emotional time in my life but it was more negative emotions. Because it was such an emotional time in my life, I can remember all of the details of chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery. I spent a whole year in the hospital and I can recall everything that I had to do during that time. In conclusion, regardless of the nature of the events, any positive or negative emotions are said to be easier to remember than everyday events that happen in our lives.

 

References:

Goldstein, E. (2011). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research, and Everyday Experience (3rd ed.). Belmont: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

Long Term Memory- Encoding and Retrieval

For as long as I can remember, I have always been able to remember decently long series of numbers. The most we are suppose to be able to hold securely in our memory is seven digits. But, I have always had a way with remembering numbers. I can mostly recall up to nine digits and they are social security numbers. I’m not the only person in my family who has this ability and I don’t know if it’s just a motherly thing but my mother has always been able to remember birth dates, social security numbers, and telephone numbers better than anyone else I’ve ever known. I’m sure a lot of people are thinking, “that’s no big deal, I can remember a lot of phone numbers too.” Well, my father passed away when I was seven years old. Since then I’ve needed a lot of information about him including certain dates and his social security number and she is still able to remember it to this day. She has been able to remember her own, mine, my brothers, my stepfathers, her ex husbands, my fathers, and who knows who else’s social security numbers. I have always found this absolutely amazing. But, I found out that I have a memory that also is capable of remember these numbers. Whenever my first daughter was born, it took me no time to remember her social security number as well as my own. That’s not a lot to remember but to this day, I can remember two of my ex boyfriends, from 5+ years ago social security numbers, my husbands, my own, my step daughters, and my three other children’s along with my fathers. I don’t ever use them so I don’t know why I’m able to remember them so well. I don’t know why my long term memory remembers social security numbers of all things but if I’m capable of remembering that many digits, maybe it could come in handy some day.

I have thought about what the retrieval cues must be for these numbers to be perfectly retrieved from my long term memory. I really have no clue. They’re all different numbers and they’re all for different people, even some I haven’t had contact with in a very long time. Then, I read about the findings from Morris, Bransford, & Franks (1977) where long term memory performance is due to physical context, internal state, mood, or depth of processing and our memory is best when encoding and retrieval are similar. This led me to believe that maybe it was so easy to remember all of these numbers because when I’m trying to retrieve them from my memory, it’s in the same condition as when I was encoding them into my memory. This would mean that whenever I need these numbers, which is usually when I’m filling out paperwork, is when I remember them. This is because when I’m encoding them into my memory, it’s from doing the exact same thing. I have only ever needed to see most of these numbers two or three times to completely memorize them so this made a lot of sense to me.

I’m also led to believe that consolidation is one of the reasons why I have been able to remember so many different numbers without getting them mixed up. The hippocampus is involved with the reactivation process during retrieval. The hippocampus uses its connections with the cortex and activates the areas of the brain that are involved when the memory was encoded. In a study done by Frankland and Bontempi (2005), this showed that over time the connections between the hippocampus and the cortex strengthened resulting in permanent memories that no longer needed the hippocampus during retrieval. These findings show me that these numbers have been embedded in my memory which will cause me to remember them as long as I’m put in the same situation when applying them.

 

Frankland, P. W., & Bontempi, B. (2005). The organization of recent and remote memories. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 6(2), 119-130.

Morris, C. D., Bransford, J. D., & Franks, J. J. (1977). Levels of processing versus transfer appropriate processing. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 16(5), 519-533.

Skinner’s Operant Conditioning

As a soon-to-be mother of three children ages four and younger, I have learned that Skinner’s operant conditioning methods are not only useful for rats and dogs to but it also applies to children. Every parent wants their children to grow up and be well behaved, smart, and successful. I believe these attributes are only learned through proper parenting. In E. Bruce Goldstein’s book, Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research, and Everyday Experiences, Goldstein defines operant conditioning as “how behavior is strengthened by the presentation of positive reinforcers, such as food or social approval (or withdrawal of negative reinforcers, such as shock or social rejection).

Positive and negative reinforcers work with children but I have had more success with positive reinforcers than negative reinforcers even though I believe that the two can go hand in hand. Children love to be rewarded with absolutely anything at all no matter what age. For example, my four year old daughter, Callee, just started preschool this month. She has no problem playing with toys and cleaning them up at school but when she comes home it’s a different story. So, I decided that whatever toys she refused to clean up, I would simply take them away (negative reinforcer) and she would have to earn them back (positive reinforcer). She was of course devastated and upset but when she finally was able to earn back just one of those toys that she refused to put away before, it was like she was getting it for the very first time. She was so excited and amazed that when she listened and picked up after herself, she was rewarded. I have been using this method for awhile now and she still is always excited to put her toys away just so she can earn something back that was either taken away before or something brand new. I believe that this tactic teaches kids that when you work hard for something or do your best, you’ll be rewarded.