Category Archives: Uncategorized

Dreams Flowing Into Memories

Dreams are common for all humans across the world.  Sometimes we have nightmares and at other times we have wonderful and exciting dreams.  Then there are there are times that the dreams are so vivid that we have to really channel our minds into keeping the dream and reality separate.  It scares me to think that in my thirty-two-years of life, I may have implanted these dreams and made them my own reality.  The mind is overwhelmingly powerful and false memories have been a common occurrence in numerous circumstances that can last for a lifetime.  Are you getting scared yet?

The topic is unknown to most everyone that is around me, but when I talk about it, it usually gives them a startle and then they become intrigued.  Who wants to think that they have created some of their memories based on false information?  When recalling memories, we are reconstructing information (not playing it back like a recorded video) from more than just the actual events and that can influence how we actually remember that memory.  When we are awake, errors due to attention, familiarity, suggestion, and post-event questioning can all impact the creation of a false memory (Goldstein, 2011).

Dreams could also be distorting what we believe is a true memory.  There have been numerous studies involving dreams and false memories.  Empirical data shows that we do in fact have a hard time distinguishing certain dreams because they are intrinsically similar which causes source misattributions.  Needless to say, our unconscious mind is once again manipulating our conscious.  In a funny kind of way, we’re all living in a real-life Matrix movie, minus the fighting skills and no choice on whether to pick the blue or red pill.

“It is very common for memories to be incorporated into the first night after they were initially experienced (Lewis, 2014 ). ”  You can see how this would present a problem.  If we’re dreaming about events that we just did, then the dream can be so vivid and real that if the dream manifests into something that didn’t actually happen, we could wind up adding or deleting the actual memory itself.  In a study done by Beaulieu-Prevost and Antonio, they study the impact of dreams on memories and have concluded that dreams are actually more susceptible at creating false memories than are real-life events (2015).

Unfortunately there isn’t really a cure for the misinformation effect caused by dreams or just errors of recall in our daily lives.  If we really want to make sure we mentally record everything correctly, we might need to hire a film crew to follow us around in our daily lives.  We have to accept that our mind is always trying to fill the gaps and give us the fastest route to recall, even if it does make slight errors.  There are plenty of studies continuing to study false memories and dreams and I urge you to look into it yourself.  It’s simply amazing.

Beaulieu-Prévost, D., & Zadra, A. (2015). When people remember dreams they never       experienced: A study of the malleability of dream recall over time. Dreaming, 25(1), 18-31. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/10.1037/a0038788

Goldstein, E. B., (2011).  Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research, And Everyday Experience.  Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning

Lewis, P. (2014, July 18).  Dreams may play a role in memory incorporation and influence our long-term moods, physiology and creativity.  Retrieved from www.scientificamerican.com

Blog #3

People with autism pave the way for our thinkers. From my experience of people with autism, I think they are mini geniuses with an untapped potential by the typical socially accepted world. There are three different types of thinkers, Visual thinkers, the verbal logic thinkers and the pattern thinkers. I also feel like each type of autistic thinker floats in a grey area between one and more of the types of thinking patterns. The one type of thinker I want to discuss is the visual thinker. A visual thinker thinks in pictures in their mind or physically in order to process information. These types of thinkers use visual imagery and really in depth version of a semantic network and a hierarchical model. When an autistic visual thinker is given a stimulus, they make a connection on a very deep basis. The example Temple used in the article is that when a child see a butterfly, they also see a chicken breast filet because both are similar in shape. A typical person working with an autistic child that thinks in this depth, make not be able to make the connect because the processing ability if far beyond a typical person. Just as in the semantic Network model, two people are given the same word, but the length of the given nodes vary with each person given the same stimulus. An autistic thinker stimulation from one stimulus fires on so many different neurons, than a typical thinker as you can see in the picture below.

 

 

Two component tracts within the language system. In Temple, the tract connecting from the visual object to motor and frontal cortex is ten times the volume of the control, while the tract that connects speaking what is heard (colored cyan) to speaking what is seen (colored fuchsia) is one tenth of the volume of the control tract. Image source: 60 Minutes | Schneider Lab. https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/07/05/research-shows-three-distinct-thought-styles-in-people-with-autism/amp/

By the looks of this picture, you can see that parallel distributed processing show that concepts are represented by activity that is distributed across many aspects of Temples’ brain compared to the control. Hence, I believe that autistic people are very intelligent people that the world isn’t prepared for yet and that is why it is very hard for an autistic person to function in Today’s typical society. They are looking at things from different angles and perceive things that most of us cannot even touch upon at this time.

 

References:

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

Grandin, T. (2017). Forbes: Research Shows Three Distinct Thought Styles In People With Autism. https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/07/05/research-shows-three-distinct-thought-styles-in-people-with-autism/amp/

Blog Post #2

Did I scan that right? Mental scanning involves the whether imagery is based off of spatial mechanisms or propositional mechanisms (Goldstein, 2011). People are scanning every minute of the day to make various decisions about things. In a given situation, mental scanning involves how an object may fit in a certain space, spatial representation. Scanning also entails the propositional representation and the tacited knowledge about the world to make their judgement (Goldstien,2011). Without knowledge about an object, one is unable to determine the corresponding symbol associated to the object. Without a defined space concerning the object, our brains are not able to make sense of what exactly is supposed to go there. Although more evidence is needed to conclude each of these basis, Mental imagery remains a series of equations. Each person has a different set of equations than the next person on the same object. This will forever make it difficult for research to make conclusive arguments.

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

 

Are our memories really our memories?

The idea of flashbulb memories was proposed by Roger Brown (Law, 2011). When we think back on memories we tend to have more memory of what occurred if something emotionally impactful happened. Without these emotions in play we are more likely to just remember vague details, or no specific details at all unless they are brought up by someone else. This has been found to be because when emotions are associated to something we are more likely to remember what occurred (Goldstein, 2015).

The association between emotions and memories has been studied by Talarico and Rubin to have people describe what happened when 9/11 took place, and what happened days prior (Goldstein, 2015). The results obviously showed that people knew more about what happened on 9/11 because it was a major impact on the country’s life but inconsistencies in their stories over time changed (Law, 2011). It was also found that emotional memories are contained in the amygdala (Law, 2011). Those who had this section of the brain activated were better able to recall what happened, even over time, because there was some sort of emotion attached to the event (Law, 2011).

I have realized that this is true as time goes on. Sure, I can remember vacations with my family and traveling around the states while my father was in the military. But there are only a few vacations that I can remember clearly, like seeing the changing of the guards and Arlington Cemetery. Two of the biggest days of my life, when my daughter and son were born are also two clear memories that I have. My daughter’s birth was 4 pushes and I cried because that was my little girl, everything went perfect and she was such a good baby. My son on the other hand I cried for other reasons, his birth was 30 minutes of pushing, they had to rush a pediatrician in due to too much meconium, he was not breathing and they had to deep suction him due to all the meconium and had to give him rescue breaths, and it took over an hour for him to move his right arm and they were not sure why. He was also jaundiced and had to repeat his hearing test due to failing the first time around in his right ear. These memories are so much clearer to me than others due to the high emotional impact.

 

Goldstein, E. (2015). Cognitive psychology: Connecting MInd, Research, and Everdyday Experience (4th ed.). Stamford, Ct: Cengage Learning.

Law, B. (2011, September). Seared in our memories. Retrieved December 01, 2017, from http://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/09/memories.aspx

Can you hear the /s/?

I teach English as a second language in Thailand, and one of the common pronunciation errors many students make is that they do not pronounce the /s/ and /es/ sounds at the ends of plural nouns. I understand it is a difficult concept for them because there are no plurals in the Thai language. They add numbers or quantifiers such as “a lot,” “a little,” or “not much” to the end of a sentence to describe amounts. I believe that when they are speaking or writing in English, they are more focused on sentence structure and vocabulary; therefore, they add less value to the /s/ or /es/ at the end of a word.

A recent teaching experience activated my memory about a concept from our readings and helped me gain a better understanding as to why plurals pose such a problem for Thai learners. I am currently teaching a one on one course to a higher level student. His vocabulary range is quite impressive and he has excellent grammar, but he has asked for help with his listening and speaking skills. He enjoys watching Ted Talks, so I have been choosing videos on topics that he is interested in and preparing multiple listening activities for them. The initial listening activities are broad, but they gradually become more comprehensive. They begin with listening for key points and ideas and they progress until the focus is on individual words and phrases. During this final listening activity, the student completed a gap fill (i.e., a short section of the video written out word for word but with certain words left out for listening purposes) while I filled in a separate one to be used as an answer key. We listened to the video segment 4 times, but when he checked his work against mine, he stated that he had not heard the /s/ sounds at the ends of some of the words, causing him to leave them off. He was curious as to how I had heard them and he had not.

It occurred to me at this moment that my experience with and knowledge of the English language had automatically filled in the gaps where I know certain sounds should have been present. This is similar to the phonemic restoration effect. The phonemic restoration effect occurs when “phonemes are perceived in speech when the sound is covered up by an extraneous noise” (Goldstein, 2015, p. 301). In Richard Warren’s experiment in 1970, a cough sound covered the first /s/ in the word “legislatures” during a speech; however, no one noticed when exactly the cough had occurred or that the sound of the /s/ had even been covered up.

The /s/ sounds that my student struggled with did not create as much ambiguity in the meanings since they came at the ends of words. However, I also believe that my experience with speech segmentation added to my ability to perceive when an /s/ was present. Speech segmentation is “the perception of individual words in spoken sentences due to knowledge of the meanings of words in a language and knowledge of other characteristics of speech” (Goldstein, 2015, p. 303).

All in all, this experience has taught me to be more mindful of the top down processes that affect my understanding of spoken English compared to that of my students. Our “knowledge of the meanings of words and the likely meanings of sentences affects speech perception” (Goldstein, 2015, p. 301). Learners of English as a second language do not have this advantage, therefore require more help perceiving these sounds. In my student’s writings, I can see that he uses plural nouns correctly. Although he understands the grammar, listening for those sounds can be a different thing altogether. Additionally, by not hearing the sound when others speak, Thai speakers feel less inclined to use it when they speak as well.

Goldstein, E. (2015). Cognitive psychology: Connecting MInd, Research, and Everdyday Experience (4th ed.). Stamford, Ct: Cengage Learning.

Problem Solving Strategies

In most cases, people encounter many problems. These troubles make them suffer as some problems interfere with their way of life. However, other challenges do not affect their living habits. Therefore, it is important for the people to learn how to embark on the measures they ought to use so as to solve such problems. Once the problems are not solved, they create other associative chaos which is difficult to solve. Additionally, the appropriate method to be chosen to solve a given problem depends on the extent of its size. For instance, when an individual is seeking for a new job, he has to rely on the career websites where such opportunities are available. In such a situation, the resulting solution is depended on the problem’s extent which in turn depends on its domains. For this blog, I will emphasize on the general strategies that can be used to solve problems which do not depend on the problem domain.

The first strategy deals with the generation of many solutions after which testing is done. Under this, multiple solutions ought to be invented then testing follows to determine whether they work. This strategy may work for the problems that require possibilities that are limited in number though its effectiveness gets lost very fast when such likelihoods increase beyond the measure. However, there is no direct guidance to be followed when solving a specific problem. Consequently, the technique may create a feeling of despair within the first few trials since the outcome may not bring the expectations. For example, once an individual loses his mobile phone in hospital, he has to search for it in all the places he visited in the hospital to determine its whereabouts. A good example of a problem that uses this technique is explained by Duncker & Lees (1945). It describes an incident where a doctor encounters a patient suffering from the malignant tumor which seems difficult to operate. According to the study by Duncker & Lees (1945) and Gick & Holyoak (1980), they said that such a problem can best be solved by generating possible solutions then they test. Once a genuine solution is not obtained, the doctor has to employ another strategy so as to save the life of the patient.

The second technique is called Means-End Analysis. It mainly involves the comparison between the goal of the solution and its commencement point and the ways of overcoming the chosen path and distance. The technique uses the idea of problem space to come up with the solution. The best path to the problem space is chosen if the problem space is known. The core aim of the strategy is to lower the existing distance between the goal and the current state. This can be done by creating sub-goals that act as intermediate states near the goal state. Once we approach at the sub-goal, we break down the complex problem into smaller parts which can then be solved easily. According to Newell (1973), they relied on the arithmetic problems to analyze the strategy where they stated that GERALD + DONALD= ROBERT where they said the problem can be solved through replacement of letters with numbers. However, this strategy does not work all the time.

The last problem-solving strategy in this blog is working backward. In this, one starts working on a problem from the goal state backward till he/she arrives at the initial state stepwise. However, there are similarities between the means-ends analysis and the working backward since, in both, the aim is to reduce the distance between the start and end state. On the other hand, the difference is that the working forward works in a reverse way. The backward process is regarded as the most effective when there exists a unique path from the initial to the goal state.

Duncker, K., & Lees, L. S. (1945). On problem-solving. Psychological monographs58(5), i.

Gick, M. L., & Holyoak, K. J. (1980). Analogical problem-solving. Cognitive psychology12(3),   306-355.

Pennsylvania State University (2017) Psych 256: Problem-solving Strategies. Retrieved from psu.instructure.com

Eyewitness Testimonies

We learned about memory errors and false memory in Lesson 9.  In the book, we read about people making errors in giving an eyewitness testimony. The book explains that innocent people have been sent to prison because of an error in memory of the eye witness. Interestingly, the book explains about an experiment that involved showing people a video from a security camera and had the people then pick the “suspect” out of a lineup. “Every participant picked someone they thought was the gunman, even though his picture was not included in the photospread” (Goldstein, E.B., p. 227). This experiment proves that there can be errors in peoples’ memory and if that experiment were in real life, an innocent person could have potentially gone to prison for something he did not do.

Weapon focus is something else that can contribute to eye witness testimonies not being reliable. “In a crime where a weapon is involved, it is not unusual for a witness to be able to describe the weapon in much more detail than the person holding it.” (McLeod, Saul, 2009). This makes sense as being another factor that could affect a person’s testimony as an eyewitness. I know for me personally, if a weapon was involved in a robbery or any crime related situation, I would definitely be paying more attention to the weapon and less attention to the person who had the weapon. I’m glad I’ve never been in that situation and I’ve never had to relay information in an eyewitness testimony.

 

 

 

References:

Goldstein, E.B. (2011) Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research, and Everyday Experience. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

McLeod, Saul. (2009) Eyewitness Testimony. Retrieved from: https://www.simplypsychology.org/eyewitness-testimony.html

Can we trust memory?

People feel as though memory is a fool proof thing. Many rely on our memory to recount events and to tell stories. When someone one asks us what happened, we use our memory to tell them what occurred detail by detail. One would up most certainty say that there memory was accurate and what they saying is true, as long as they are not actively lying. The thing is, it has been proven that our memory is not as accurate as we think. Many recall errors can be made when trying to recall a memory. There are even ways to trick the mind into remembering something that hasn’t happened.

The course module for this section talks about many experiments that demonstrate this effect. It talks about one study where people were shown pictures of their childhood. Some of the pictures were altered so that it depicted something that had not happened. Even though the event didn’t actually happen, seeing the picture, people would talk about the event as if it did and they were recalling it from there memory. Even though this event didn’t happen, these people really believed it did and really thought that they were remembering correctly.

Another example of this comes in a real life example that happened to me. In a government class, the class was asked to watch a video of a fake crime. We were then asked to answer if the person committing the crime wore a blue or red hat. Everyone answered with one of them and everyone was very certain of their answer. Turns out, the person committing the crime wasn’t wearing a hat. Not one person recorded that the person was wearing a hat. We thought we all remembered that the person was. This shows how faulty the memory is. It also demonstrates how easy it is to manipulate the memory. If the question was “Was the person wearing a hat or not?” maybe people would have realized that the person wasn’t.

Through these two examples, one is a lab through an experiment, and one through a real life experience, one can see that memory can not always be trusted. This is concerning because memory is used not only in daily life but also to help in professional situations that can affect other people. For example, eye witness testimony is used in courts to assess what happened during a crime. This testimony can affect if someone is said to be guilty or not. After knowing about false memory, it seems as though that this should not be the case. The error that can come with the recall of memory does not make it accurate enough to be used as eye witness testimony. The Innocence Project is a group who fights to overturn sentences for people who are wrongly accused. They have studied eye witness testimony and the negative effects of it and feel as though we should use other more accurate techniques in courts; “In case after case, DNA has proven that eyewitness identification is frequently inaccurate” (Innocence Project, 2017).

Through all of this, one can clearly see that memory is not always as accurate as we think. It is easy to accidentally recall something wrong or be manipulated by your surroundings into thinking something happened when it didn’t. Being aware of this, memory should not be relied on as heavily in certain situations. In situations where memory could really affect someone’s life, such as eye witness testimony, other more accurate methods should be used as well to make sure the real truth is being told.

 

References

Eyewitness Misidentification. (2017). Retrieved November 19, 2017, from https://www.innocenceproject.org/causes/eyewitness-misidentification/

What happens when we put a year old child together with a deaf pre-teen?

What happens when we put a year old child together with a deaf pre-teen? When we think of language and acquiring language, we either agree with behaviorists like B.F. Skinner who believed that children acquire their language through environmental influences. Or, we agree with Noam Chomsky who believes that language is written in our genes. What happens then, when we put a year old child together with a deaf pre-teen? The children in my family are being raised to be Tri-Lingual (English, Spanish and American Sign Language), and I have to agree with Both Chomsky and Skinner. Language is acquired through environmental influences (i.e.: my 1 year old Dillan who knows ASL, English and Spanish words) and written in our genes (i.e.: my niece who is deaf and diagnosed late resulting in late use of ASL).

In my family Ashley was the one niece I had who was a little off between the ages of one and three. She hooted like an owl and pointed to things she wanted. Unfortunately, Ashley was diagnosed as Autistic (NOS) before doctors discovered that she was really deaf. Before learning sign language, Ashley used single sounds (or Phonemes) to grasp the attention of others or express herself. Most of her vocabulary consisted of ma, pa, uh, ha, and oh, similar to that of a toddler. Now that she has been attending the Pennsylvania School for Deaf for 9 years, she is surprisingly bilingual. Ashley fluently uses ASL and is very verbal.

When comparing the beginning stages of speech for Ashley in comparison to that of my son Dillan who is 16months old, they both clearly have the desire to communicate. They both have similar vocabularies and both become upset when they cannot convey their message. Currently, Ashley is helping Dillan learn sign language at the same time that he is picking up more verbal vocabulary. Somehow, they both communicate with each other in simple sign language. Ashley signs the word “eat” and Dillan signs the word “more” in return. Their toddler style conversation goes on this way for a bit and is sometimes fascinating to see.

Language is defined as “a system of communication using sounds or symbols that enables us to express our feeling, thoughts, ideas and experiences.” When we put a year old child together with a deaf pre-teen you see the ideas in both their eyes. You hear the sounds they choose to convey their feelings, and you see the symbols they use to express their thoughts. “Peoples need to communicate is so powerful that when deaf children find themselves in an environment where nobody speaks or uses sign language, they invent a sign language themselves” (Goldin-Meadow, 1982)  

 

Goldstein, E.Bruce. (2011) Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research, and Everyday Experience. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth

Creating My Own problems

Everyone has problems, usually a ton of them, and they happen everyday, which is why the unit on problem solving stuck out so much to me. A problem is a situation that is seen as no ideal, and needs to be fixed or altered to make better. Problem solving is such a relatable topic, which is why is really stood out to me.

In particular I thought it was interesting to learn about well-defined versus the ill-defined problems. I had always thought of a problem as just that, only a problem. Breaking the problems down into these two categories makes a lot of sense though, and I can see where each come up in my daily life. At work, when displays need to be set up, there is only one correct way to do them; therefore they are well-defined problems. In the same breath though, there are man different ways to accomplish the task, which brings in the ill-defined problem.

Once you have a problem, the next step would be to solve it. For most problems we can come to a solution pretty quickly, but the ones that stump us we can ponder over for hours, not really knowing why we are so stuck. For this reason I loved learning about our obstacles to problem solving. There are three main obstacles, our mental set, functional fixedness, and incomplete or incorrect representations. I have done all of these at least once, and I am sure will continue to do them even though I am now conscious of what could be hindering me. The one I get trapped by the most though is my mental set. I am prone to assuming things that are not written in a problem, and making things harder for myself. I remember being given problems, weather they were school related or just fun brain teasers, and the ones that would stump me the most ended up being the most obvious in the end. After seeing the answer I realized how much sense it made, and how much I set myself up for failure just from assuming.

During my everyday life I am pretty good at solving things on the spot. I can usually come up with a solution pretty quickly. For the ones that do not come to me, or have directions though, I usually always end up thinking “why didn’t I think of that?!”