From our textbooks we learned of autobiographical memory. According to Goldstein, autobiographical memory (AM) has been defined as recollected events that belong to a person’s past (205). So basically when we are reminiscing or trying to recall an event that took place in our lives, we travel backwards in time to remember ourselves in that situation. Autobiographical memories are our episodic memories as well as our semantic memories. If I am given a random date, like April 9^th 2013 I am not going to remember anything! There is nothing significant to me about the month of April and that’s probably the same with others, if nothing significant happened the date probably won’t be remembered well. Also our textbook advises that AM is episodic memory for events in our lives plus personal semantic memories of facts about our lives (205). A visual experience is important in AM, according to our textbook patients who have suffered brain damage that resulted in the inability to recognize objects or to visualize objects because of the damage to the visual cortex also experience a loss of AM (205).

I found this article that was interesting to read about. The article titled “When Memories Never Fade, The Past Can Poison The Present” written by Alix Spiegel wrote an article about a girl named Alexandra Wolfe who has what is known as highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM). This is basically autobiographical memory on steroids. As I stated I can barely remember what happened two or three months ago if it was not significant, but this lady remembers everything. In the article, Alexandra can remember information as far back as 2004, maybe even further back she can remember events. She remembers the event, what she wore, the little details on what other people wore of course the date, and other specific details. While reading the article I thought that this would be an interesting thing to have along with photographic memory for school purposes, but Alexandra says HSAM can be frustrating to deal with because she feels like she always stuck in the past. Alexandra is one of only 55 people identified in the United States as having HSAM (Spiegel).

Remembering past experience is what I think makes our personalities. AM is a multidimensional because it consists of spatial, emotional and sensory elements (205). For an event that has some emotions attached like a wedding or giving birth we can take ourselves back to that event recalling the date, the emotions, the people involved, and your thoughts. Many of us do recall events from the past often during a day or a week but we either don’t remember the event entirely or accurately. I just thought that it was cool that there are few folks out there remember details very vividly. Like most people, I tend to remember details about events that occurred more recently which would be controlled by episodic memory, but the text read that episodic memory fades after a while leaving only semantic memories and memories for events that happened a while ago becomes semantic (205).

Spiegel, Alix. “When Memories Never Fade, The Past Can Poison The Present.” NPR. NPR.Org, 12 Dec.    2013. Web. 21 Nov. 2015.

Goldstein, E. Bruce. Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research, and Everyday Experience.

Belmont: Wadsworth, 2011. Print.

It is my opinion that memories are vital for who us humans are as individuals. The memories we make with others makes our social life relationships prosper. Past memories also kind of shape our personality and originality and help us with decision making. Memories are important and I could not imagine life without the ability to remember my past memories or not having the ability to make new memories. This topic was the most interesting for me because we all take little things for granted, like being able to remember and having memories.

I found an interesting article titled Anterograde Amnesia, which had some good information in addition to our textbook. The article was written by Saul McLeod, a psychologist from Europe. In his article he advised that anterograde amnesia can be caused by many factors like surgery, other illness or alcohol abuse. In the article, Mr. McLeod spoke about the case of H.M. who at the age of 27 had brain surgery. The surgery was to remove the hippocampus to lessen the effects of epilepsy which he suffered. According to the article, H.M. was unable to transfer any new information into his long term memory. He was able to remember perceptual and motor skills. I think this was the most interesting about the article. The article also advised that H.M. had a normal memory span, which I thought was kind of strange. If someone is unable to transfer new information to long term memory I would not think that the attention span would be normal. Besides brain surgery, according to the article anterograde amnesia may be alcohol induced amnesia called Korsakoffs syndrome. Korsakoffs syndrome is usually, but not always is the result of years of alcohol abuse (“Anterograde Amnesia”).

In conclusion, anterograde amnesia is a terrible impairment that some people unfortunate suffer from. As mentioned previously, memories help us develop personally and socially with others. I think my past memories contribute to my attitude and personality today. Memories help us learn about the environment that we lived in. If we did not have memories we would be soulless creatures unaware of the time and obviously not experiencing life.

Sources: http://www.simplypsychology.org/anterograde-amnesia.html

Above all the other aspects of psychology I really do think that sensation and perception are the most interesting topics I am going to learn about. According to our text, top-down processing refers to the processing that is dependent upon the person’s prior knowledge (Goldstein 2011).  I have never noticed how everyone does it and it happens so much that you do not even know that this is the process that is happening. It was sort of difficult for me to think about how I experience the top-down processing in my every day life until my adorable, fluffy, one year-old twin nephews came stampeding through my room. Love them to death, but most of the time they are very difficult to understand. So one them screams at the top of his lungs,  BREAD and the other one screams FUFU equally as loud. Those are code words for “I’m hungry get in the kitchen and make something happen for my tummy”.  One of the twins calls any kind of food  bread, even though it may not be a piece of bread it could be a piece of chicken. The other twin uses the term “fufu” for food when he is hungry and same thing with him, no matter what kind of food it is. So to these boys something to eat will be called “bread” or “fufu”. Also, both of them use the term “baba” when they want something to drink. Now these kids can be nowhere near their bottles and will yell “baba” to indicate that they are thirsty.

Now when the twins are sleepy they both will say “sleep” and when they both need to be changed they say “pot” ( I taught them that! There was a time where I was determined to potty train them, I called to toilet the potty, or pot for short). For any kind of vehicle, like a car, a train, an airplane or even a bike the twins use the word “vroom”

So with the top-down processing concept my nephews associate their wants with their behaviors and their words. These actions just started for both of them right after their first birthday.

References: Goldstein, E. Bruce. 2011. Cognitive Psychology. Third Edition. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.