The subjects of reasoning and emotions in chapter 13 of Goldstein’s Cognitive Psychology book caused me to reflect on the lives of close friends and comrades that have been senselessly lost without clear rhyme or reason over the last 8 years.  On each occurrence, I have wrestled with wonderment as to what goes through the mind of a person who chooses to commit suicide.  This subject has always baffled me, and it continues to hit home for me.

As recently as 4 months ago, a fellow comrade chose to end it all; although he was living a rewarding military career, sharing his life with a woman who was not only his wife, but seemed to also be his best friend, and he was proudly raising the exact replica of himself; the son that he always wanted.  His character unfortunately became flawed in an instance by one single act of his own; however, in my own reasoning, no mistake or blotched image seems to be reason enough to no longer want to live.  Emotionally fueled, and obviously unreasonable, SGT Lance’s (name change) death was tragic; yet, I want to say with certainty, that it was unnecessary and preventable.  Lance had several friends whom he had spoken to and hung out with the day prior to his death, but no one suspected the fact that he was too emotional to obviously think reasonably about the situation that he was now facing.  Of course there were rumors about the situation that he had caused for himself and his image had become slightly tarnished; however, how could a smudge be enough to take such a drastic (permanent) measure?  I often ponder what his reasoning was for feeling as though he no longer desired to live.  “According to Leighton and Kurtz, reasoning is ‘the process of drawing conclusions (Leighton, 2004) and as the cognitive processes by which people start with information and come to conclusions that go beyond that information’ (Kurtz et al., 1999).  Goldstein concludes that, “we can appreciate the process of reasoning by realizing that decisions are often the outcome of reasoning.” (Goldstein, 2011)  Still, I wonder how reasoning is appreciated, when the decided outcome is suicide.

Just as with Lance, I wonder if the nature of Toney’s reasoning: which killed him in 2007, CSM Stellar’s reasoning; which killed him in 2009, SSG Drill’s reasoning, which killed him in 2012, and SSG Scout’s reasoning; which also killed him a month prior to Lance, inductive in any way?  Knowing that each of them had challenging concerns in which they had previously witnessed the outcome of the same challenge through the lives of others, did they all make a prediction about what was going to happen to them, their careers, and perhaps their families based off of evidence and events from the past or other people? (Goldstein, 2011)  Were they met with a roadblock of confirmation bias, which disallowed them to reason accurately? (Goldstein, 2011)  Where they all convinced that they possessed legitimate information that was far from truth?  Only each of those individuals will ever truly know how their emotions affected their ability to reason.

“Toney, who killed himself in Iraq, managed to seclude himself long enough to place the muzzle of his rifle under his chin and pull the trigger.”  Lance walked to a park alone and tragically shot himself in the head, only to be found hours later by his best friend and wife lying in the middle of the field face down in his own pool of blood.  CSM Stellar shot himself in the head in Iraq while his wife (who was battling cancer) was at home awaiting his return with their three young children.  SSG Drill shot himself at home and failed to show for work the next day, SSG Scout hung himself, also at home and was found by his wife.

As I honor my brothers in arms, even today, I wonder what each of their immediate emotions was prior to pulling the trigger and releasing the slack on the rope that took their lives.  “According to Goldstein, ‘integral immediate emotions are associated with the act of making a decision.’ Anxiety is the integral emotion associated with making the decision and is probably the emotion that affects the decision.” (Goldstein, 2011)  “Even after draping the United States flag over Toney’s casket and watching him (his body) get placed inside an aircraft to take his final journey back to the United States, I possessed so many emotions of my own.”  After escorting CSM Stellar’s sick wife to his memorial to say her final farewell while she wondered who would raise their children if she eventually succumbed to her own illness, and after attending the memorials of my other brothers and comrades, there are no words that could possibly reason the outcome of each tragedy.  Lance, Toney, Stellar, Drill and Scott “all surrendered to events in their lives that left them in a state of what seemed to be too emotional to reason…still searching for a way to appreciate it all.”

Rest In Peace, Men!

It was just another day of elementary school. We were sitting in our assigned seats, eager to learn, when my teacher, Mrs. Pickard, excused herself from the classroom. The teachers gathered in the hallway. At first, we all thought they were going to play a fun joke on us (as they had done in the past). Then, we heard Fear – shock – concern – in their voices. Finally, they returned to the classroom where we waited for a special announcement from our school’s principal: “There has been a terrible incident in New York City. We will be excusing our students early today.” My mom came to pick me up shortly after. Still confused, I asked my mom what was going on- and even she couldn’t comprehend what had happened. What is this terrible event that I’m referring to? 9/11. My memory of the event rings so clear in my mind, despite it being so long ago.

This extreme memory is classified as a flashbulb memory. According to Muchinsky (2012), flashbulb memories are an individual’s memory for the circumstances surrounding highly shocking, supercharged events. Thus, in this case, my description of where I was and what I was doing on 9/11 is a perfect example.

In the article “A Memorial Is Itself a Shaper of Memory”, Boxer (2001) determines if it is possible for individuals to remember events as they actually were, or if they are highly influenced by emotion. Memory is highly susceptible to change; when individuals talk or hear about a pressing issue, they fulfill an internal consensus, forming new collective memories. Boxer (2011) describes a public memorial or ruin as a “scaffold,” something on which collective memory can hang. Ruins have the ability to “erase history”, as individuals are more likely to believe the narrative that comes with it.

This article explains just how inaccurate our memories may be. If we were to measure the accuracy of an individual’s reported memories, a repeated recall must be used to compare later memories with memories collected immediately after the event.

References:

Muchinsky. (2011). Cognitive Psychology. Cengage Learning: Belmont, CA (3).

Boxer, S. (2001). A Memorial Itself is a Shaper of Memory. NY Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/27/arts/27MEMO.html.

Flash Bulb Memory is a memory is a vivid memory that is in result to a situation or event that embeds that memory in your brain. Situations like September 11^th 2001 when someone can tell you every detail of that day that had occurred in some cases 15 to 30 years ago as if they happened yesterday were on the same note they can’t recall where they left their car keys when they got home yesterday.

My topic that I will visit today will take us back to lesson 9. I am going to recall an evening on board my ship in the navy. On September 14^th 2014 I was carrying out a normal days routine starting out at 0600 I went to breakfast. That morning I enjoyed pancakes and some cocoa puffs. 0730 rolled around and it was time to meet up with my division to inform them what was going on that day and what they had to accomplish. It was a normal light load day we were finishing up combat operations and heading home from our deployment. Everyone was in a type of laid back we are tired of being here type of mood. The evening before we decided that our sailors needed to remove Non Skid flooring from a re-fueling station that had taken a lot of damage from heavy usage on the past months. Once they accomplished this task they were off for the day with nothing else we wanted them to have a day to themselves to unwind. After this information was put out I left to go to my office to accomplish the administrative work that needed to be done for the day which took me 45 minutes. at 0900 I decided it was time to take a minute away from my division to go wander around my watch section to make sure nobody was asleep or not standing a proper watch. I made my way up to the Bridge and my Helmsman ( the person driving the ship) called me over and informed me that something awesome was supposedly happening that night that he overheard being discussed. He informed me that we were going to launch our first strikes on isis directly from our battle group. Naturally being in the Military this was something that was exciting to the young gentleman. I decided that I needed to know more about this so I went over and asked the officer of the deck what I needed to know. The officer of the deck informed me that I may want to stay up till approximately 0230 the following morning, he assured me it would be worth it. At that point I was baffled that we were on our way home but still participating in campaigns. After all the work was accomplished on that day I decided it was time to let everyone go do things for themselves and told them that I would see them tomorrow. I was greedy with my information because I did not know if it was sensitive information at that point or if it were even true because in the navy people love to make up stories to see how far they can get. I went to dinner with who is now my wife and a few of our friends on the ship. After dinner I went to my office and decided it was time for some video games to kill time. The video games lasted about 2 hours at 1900 I had what was called an evening meeting which was something that our department’s leadership had to go to too discuss problems from the day and plans to fix them and move forward as well as personnel issues and upcoming events. 2000 rolled around and I decided if I needed to be awake so early that I would benefit from a nap. I decided my nap would be best fit for my office couch since no one was in there it worked out. 0230 hit and I woke up a little late at 0230 on the dot to be exact. I ventured out to the deck outside which conveniently was right outside my office. To my surprise there were two of our ships not more than 2 miles away from us which on the water is abnormally close. 0243 rolled around then I heard a boom and from that moment for about 30 minutes I watched tomahawk cruise missiles launch from these ships. I remember that day and the events of it as if I had just experienced them an hour ago to this day.

Goldstein, B. (2011). Cognitive psychology: Connecting mind, research and everyday experience (3rd ed.).

Language is such a complex means of communication. It is also strange, beautiful, and capable of expressing so many perceptions in such creative ways. I am an avid reader and have an inherent appreciation for the descriptive and the poetic ways in which our thoughts, feelings, and experiances can be communicated. Every year my desk calendar features a word of the day and there always seem to be more words to learn. For example, did you know that there is a word for flirtatious conversation that leads nowhere? There is, it’s sphallolalia. Or that moment of hesitation just before you introduce someone because you’ve forgotten their name? The word for that is tartle. I also marvel at the way many languages have words for things that the English language does not describe, such as the German words kummerspeck and fremdschamen. The former is a word to describe the excess weight that one gains from emotional over-eating, and the latter literally means the horror that you feel when you notice that someone is completely oblivious to how embarrassing they are in a moment. The creativity of language is wonderful! Which is why when researching topics for this weeks blog I was shocked to find a language that uses only about 100 words in total.

Toki Pona is the world’s smallest language. According to Roc Morin in his article for The Atlantic, the simplicity of the language creates a more profound form of communication (How to Say Almost Anything in 100 Words, 2015). Toki Pona contains 14 phonemes and 120 root words and is designed to shape the thought processes of it’s speakers in a Zen-like fashion. This is a miniscule Number of parts to work with considering there are a quarter of a million words in the Oxford English Dictionary and even Koko the gorilla has a 1000 different words that she can sign.

Apparently Toki Pona is now utilized by thousands of people around the world from Belgium to Australia, to China, but was constructed fairly recently and was first published in 2001 by linguist Sonja Lang from Toronto. Her aim, it seems, in creating this language was to minimalize and simplify the spoken word to its most efficient and reductive form. The result of this carefully crafted language is that it is subjective to what an item or concept means to the speaker. It is a language of neologisms in a sense. In order to speak Toki Pona, one must determine what the word they wish to say means from their subjective point of view and construct a phrase. Morin uses the concept of a car to illustrate this. The speaker must determine what exactly a car is. Lang says: “You might say that a car is a space that’s used for movement,” she proposed. “That would be tomo tawa. If you’re struck by a car though, it might be a hard object that’s hitting me. That’s kiwen utala.”(2015).

To create the Toki Pona, Lang used a sort of top- down method of reducing language to it’s most basic elements and figuring out what would be needed to express most anything with as few flourishes as possible. There are no words for thank you or please. There are no words for vague concepts like the color pink. As I was reading this article, I wondered what would be the point of creating a new language in such way and why you would want it to be so limited. But as I read on I realized that it was just another miraculous invention of expression. It’s the linguistic version of Modern furniture. It has clean lines and clear artistry. It can also be learned in 30 minutes or less!

Morin, R. (2015, July 15). How to Say (Almost) Everything in a Hundred-Word Language. Retrieved November 21, 2015, from http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/07/toki-pona-smallest-language/398363/

A flashbulb memory is a vivid, enduring memory for how one learned about a surprising or a shocking event. It involves memory for the source of event information, as opposed to only a memory for the event itself. The brain regions involved with flashbulb memories are unknown. (Davidson, 2005)

According to the APA, the idea of a flashbulb memory was first proposed in 1977 by psychologists Roger Brown, PhD, and James Kulik, PhD. They believed that these memories become so emotionally important to us that they are stored as vividly and accurately as a photo. Today’s research however has shown that these memories are not as accurate but yet still very clear and vivid. (Law, 2011)

One of the most widely known events that would relate to this topic would be the horrific moment when the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center. Too many people can describe that moment whether they were in New York City or across the country, many of us can recall that exact moment in time when those terrible events began to unfold on the television. We are likely to remember when and where we were as the terrible news came about just as well as the event itself. I know I was sitting in my 3rd grade classroom looking up at the television in the corner of the room, where my teacher and other students felt it was horrible to watch nobody turned it off. I even remember the days following, and the moment of silence asked of us each morning before the start of class for a few days. I can picture myself in the classroom but I cannot completely remember the news itself aside from small bits and pieces of it.

A moment in my life that has seemed linked to a very strong emotional event was the death of my grandmother. She had been in the hospital for over a month and I was 6 years old. I was at my grandfathers house the night she died, and he and my mom say me down next to my “little bear” teddy bear on the couch next to the window. I can’t quite remember the words they used but I remember my response, I remember laughing at my mother telling her she was joking with me and asking to go visit my grandmother. I was old enough to understand death but it took a week to truly hit me. To this day I can still picture this moment in time as if I were sitting behind myself in the past on that couch. Like somehow my mind had warped what every angle of that room looked like. However, if I walk back into that room and look out that window from the couch if doesn’t suddenly pop into my head it seems to follow up with other sad events in my life or if for some reason I’m randomly thinking of her.

These flashbulb memories however are not always 100% accurate. We tend to believe that all of these memories are completely accurate the way we replay them through our head but we are very prone to make errors. It’s too easy to forget important details or “remember” things that never actually happened. As we take in new information we need to be open minded to the fact that not only new evidence confirms our original belief. As we repeat these memories to others, we also hear other accounts of that event which may seem more vivid than ours and might lead us to “revise” our own memories. Even the flashbulb memories that seem to be unforgettable have their own inaccuracies and can be wrong. (Vitelli, 2015)
References

Law B.M. (2011) American Psychological Association: Seared in our Memories http://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/09/memories.aspx

Davidson, P. R. (2005) Source Memory in the Real World: A Neuropsychological Study of Flashbulb Memory.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2349094/

Vitelli, R PhD. (2015) years Remembering 9/11
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/media-spotlight/201503/remembering-911

In chapter 9 of the course text book it talks about if there is a “privileged” level of categories and goes into placing the basic level as that “privileged” level. I have noticed that my niece almost only uses this basic level of categorization when identifying objects. It could be argued that this is due to lack of knowledge of subordinate level of the objects, but she doesn’t use the superordinate level either, which she does know.

For example, when it comes to dinner time she might say something like, “I don’t want to eat the veggies (vegetables).” instead of saying I don’t want to eat peas. She does the same thing with fish, it can be whiting, swai, salmon, or fish sticks, but it is still just fish. As well as with potatoes they can be mashed, baked, or scalloped they are still potatoes to her.  This agrees with Rosch’s reasoning as discussed in the book.

Although she will call most automobiles cars (cars, vans, and trucks) there are certain automobiles that she will use the subordinate level. They all seem to be public service vehicles, such as a trash truck, fire truck, ambulance, etc. This is due to the important of the specific nature of the vehicles. She knows that an ambulance or fire truck means that there is danger or people are hurt. You could say that her greater knowledge leads to the use of the more details subordinate level than the basic level in these cases.

Goldstein, E. (2011). Cognitive psychology: Connecting mind, research, and everyday experience (3rd ed., pp. 228-230). Australia: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

Have you ever encountered a time where you are asked to recall a memory or friends are reminiscing about a certain event that you possibly attended and you cannot remember it and then all of a sudden the memory seems extraordinarily clear as they describe parts of what they remember? This is a defense mechanism the brain uses in order to prevent distress in the psyche. The brain is able to fill in holes or gaps in memory with possible logical events and happenings when distress occurs, these memory fillers are called ‘false memories’.

False memories are unique in that the person can with remarkable certainty express that a memory or event occurred, but also recognize on a scale that they are different from genuine memories in terms of sensory detail. For instance, a person showed a picture of a circus with no people it and asked to recall what occurred the day it was taken could probably tell with general detail say what occurred, even if they hadn’t been truly been at the circus; the recall would be slow and jumpy with certain details being remembered spontaneously. However, if you were to present a picture the same person in which they were in and asked them to recall that day, they would most likely be able to quickly and accurately recall events in a sequential order. If asked to compare the memories of the two days, the person would probably recognize the second memory as being more accurate to their experience and truer.

False memories activate two different areas in the brain, the hippocampus and parahippocampal gyrus. When looking at activation in the medial temporal lobe, the hippocampus showed equal activation and activity when a person remembered both false items/memories and true items/memories, but not when new items/memories that were introduced. This activation suggests that there is a dissociation in the brain when it comes to sensory content and somatic content. It also suggests that false items/memories are similar to true items/memories (Gazzaniga, 351).

So the next time you have recall an old memory, be critical of the details; it might not be a memory at all!

Gazzaniga, M. S., Ivry, R. B., & Mangun, G. R. (2009). Cognitive neuroscience: The biology of the mind. New York: W.W. Norton.

After reading Lesson 9, I started thinking back about a few events it brought up.  One being was the September 11 attacks, the other would be my childhood home.  At first, I thought I had a pretty good recollection on these events.  But after reading more into the lesson, I started to wonder if maybe I did recall these events correctly or not.

I will start with my childhood home.  I would like to focus more so on my Grandparents’ house.  I always felt confident in my memory of this house due to its out-of-date colors.  The house for most of my childhood had yellow paint on the outside and on the inside each room was painted in various vibrant shades.  I felt that such unusual color choices only helps in aiding this memory rather than my placing other colors in place.  Then I realized that when they finally changed paint to grey, I found that simple change blurred the rest of the memory for me.  I still, however, remember the basement vividly, or at least so I thought.  My Grandmother absolutely loved Frank Sinatra.  So much so that she had multiple posters of his portraits all over the basement walls.  When I think back to the placement of the posters, I confuse their placement.  I remember the posters themselves but don’t recall how exactly they were arranged.  I feel that if I overthink it too much, I might form a new memory.  A memory in which wherever I decided to place the posters might ruin how I may remember the basement permanently, like it stated in the reading.

The second event would be September 11, 2001.  I feel that I can recall this day a bit easier due to the fact that I live in New York, my mother worked in Manhattan during that day, and McDonald’s toys.  I will explain all this in a second, let me start with the first one.  I woke up around 9:00 AM.  This was at the time when beepers were very popular.  I sent my mother a page and waited for her to call me from work.  She finally called me, to inform me to wake up my father, and put on the news.  She stating that the Twin Towers were attacked.  I woke my father up and showed him the news, for the rest of the day, I ended up watching the news broadcasts’ and received updates from my mother’s whereabouts throughout the attack.  She was close enough to the towers to see the attacks from her office window.  Even with the attacks in the city going on, my mother made her way to a McDonalds to purchase me some toys that they were offering.  At this time, I was into a Lego toy line known as Bionicle.  McDonalds started to include their own spin of this toy with their Kids’ meals.  My mother, even with the 9/11 events going on, she still went out of her way to get the toys that I was missing from the collection.  I felt that with these factors in mind I should be able to recall everything quite well.  I suppose most of the day is blurred out, but I do think the most vivid parts are the essential parts.  I suppose you can say this mostly reflects the flashbulb memory.

In conclusion, it’s hard to say if your memories are truly accurate.  Sure you have other people who may have been there as well to talk about the memories with you.  But what if their memory differs from yours?  Who can really be accurate?  I think back to times where I reminisce with other people and have that, “Oh yeah!” moment, but now I wonder if that, “Oh yeah!” moment is now a newly formed false memory.

At the age of  17 my mother came to America with both parents and little sister from Cuba. My grandparents wanted a better life for their children and that’s just what they got. They moved to Jersey, got stable jobs and provided for their girls. However, my mother’s sister was young enough to transition easily into the culture of America and was able to pick up the language with little to no struggle. My mother, on the other hand, went from living in Cuba and  Spanish being the only language she knew  to preparing herself for college and having to learn English enough to succeed in school. My mother has always been a driven individual but she struggled to understand the language and it continued on through her college years.

She ended up attending Chestnut Hill College in Pennsylvania and decided to major in biology. Even when she had a hard time with her classes she found her love for science at a young age and worked along side tutors and practiced her English every step of the way. At home, her and her sister were the only two that spoke English.  My grandparents never took the time to try and learn because they were much older. It’s true when they say the younger you are the easier it is to pick up a new language. By day my mother practiced English with her classmates and professors and by whenever she communicated with her parents she spoke her native language. Although she expressed how several of her friends and classmates remained patient with her, her adviser suggested maybe not majoring in biology. She thought it would be way to challenging for my mother to continue to understand the context and language of English while undertaking a major that’s quite difficult. My mom never gave up however. She graduated at the age of 21 with her degree in Biology and even met my father within her last year in school.

Now she is the director of two programs, Child link and Personal Link and has continued to work through any obstacles she comes across. Even though she may still struggle with some spelling and context of words she speaks English just as fluently as she speaks Spanish. It goes to show how the brain works hard and enables us to learn and withhold two languages at a time. Being bilingual is definitely a plus and studies show that those who do speak two languages have better memory of things, are more creative and their minds are more flexible in the thinking process.

Work Cited:

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/sep/04/what-happens-to-the-brain-language-learning