False memories can happen to anyone.  A false memory is an inaccurate recall of an event(s) that did not happen. We like to think of our memory as a video recorder, but the truth is that our memories are really more susceptible to manipulation than we’d like to believe.   Even when we are 100% confident in our memories, they can be wrong

One way false memories can be created is by suggestion.  On page 225 of our text, is a great example of suggestive false memories.  The interviewer asked the participant a series of questions revolved around an event that took place in their early childhood (the event did not actually occur).  Within two days, the participant was asked about this event again, and they could describe a few details of the given event.  They remembered who, where, what, and even the temperature outside.

I have a false memory of my own.  My mother was talking about an event that took place with my younger brother, who was about 5 at the time.  One day she told my brother that our father was an alien.  Of course, he didn’t believe her and he wanted proof.  My mother took out his old green card.  Written on it was “resident alien”.  My brother’s reaction was priceless.

Sometime last year, I was re-telling stories to my children and this story was one that came up.  And since my children like to confirm my stories with my parents, they called her to see if it was true.  My mother asked me how I knew about that, since it occurred when I was away on vacation with my godmother.

Apparently, hearing the story previously triggered my memory of the re-telling of the event and not the event myself.  Funny thing about that is I can picture the scenario in my head as if I was actually there.

Our memories as based on our knowledge and experiences of our life. We learn information and encode it into our brains for later retrieval. When I was creating a fire in our fire pit outside a couple of days ago I had the word safety on my mind, I was teaching my 10 year old cousin how to make a fire without using starter logs or lighter fluid and his safety was paramount. The word safety cued several other words to the situation at hand, first aid kit, ice water, fire extinguisher, these three things I had at the ready for fires are dangerous and 10 year old cousins are not the smartest of people.

My safety cue brought to mind the word of first aid kit, for if he hurt himself practicing chopping wood or fell on a rock and cut himself. Treating cuts is immensely important because he could get some form of bacteria or infectious disease from the insects that inhabit my backyard. Luckily this was not the case, we keep a first aid kit in the trailer behind our fire pit at all times, I would be ready when the time came for its use.

Another item that my safety cue made me think of was ice water. Ice water was important for this situation because if either of us had gotten burnt from the fire, maybe if it got out of hand or somehow gasoline got spilled into it, the ice water would have helped reduce the pain.  Before I started the instructions for how to make a fire I instructed him to always have ice and water handy before making any attempts on the fire. When he added a bunch of leaves to the fire and they when up in flames he did get a small burn, I had told him to throw them in from a high distance but he decided to place them in the fire, I got the ice water and told him to hold his finger in it for 5 minutes to ease the pain.

The last item my safety cue made me think of was a fire extinguisher. What if the wind picked up and the fire started roaring in different directions other than stabilizing in the fire pit, maybe it could reach the newspaper to its left  or the paper towels to its right. A fire extinguisher would be the one thing between a traveling wild fire and an easily managed fire pit fire.

It is easy to get hurt doing dangerous things, and fires are among the most dangerous. Without the safety cues that I had thought of beforehand, We could have created a monstrous fire that wreaked havoc on my house, my cousin’s fingers could have 3rd degree burns, and he could also have a terrible bacteria enter his bloodstream from cuts he could have gotten from chopping wood. Safety is paramount and worth thinking about beforehand.

Works Cited

Goldstein, E. B., 2011. Cognitive Psychology Third Edition Connecting Mind, Research and Everyday Experience. Chapter 7, 180-181

Everyone forgets…wait what???

Article: 5 ways of everyday memory loss

Have you ever experienced a “brain fart” or walked into a room forgetting why you were there? Maybe you were listening to a song on the radio that you had never heard before, but were able to recall the words? I may have come across an article that sheds light on just how easy it is to experience memory loss or recall things that you never knew of.

Have you ever been in your car and forgot something in your house, then after walking through the door immediately forget what you came inside for? This phenomenon happens to approximately 2.3 million people at least once a year. The specific type of memory that is being forgotten is categorized as short-term memory. In our course online lecture the term is defined as memory that allows you to remember about 3-7 items for about 15-30 seconds (Goldstein, 2011). Apparently, walking through a doorway is one of the things that will cause the brain to kind of restart (Live Science, 2014). The brain recognizes there is a new surrounding environment. So, in order to make space for the new incoming information the last group of items remembered that were no longer needed is forgotten.

Another way people may lose memory is through having sex. Although, not as common as walking through a door it can happen. When people are having sex transient global amnesia can occur (Live Science, 2014). This is when an individual experiences memory fog or a “brain fart”. People can even have problems remembering the day prior. There hasn’t been any recent research indicating a correlation to the amnesia and brain damage.

In 2013, a strange case in the journal Frontiers of Neurology came to light showing how memory can live on longer than expected. The particular type of memory involved in this case is labeled as long term memory. Long term memory goes through a deep level of processing to be stored in the brain for later reclamation (Goldstein, 2011). What occurred that made this case so peculiar was the patient being observed had a musical hallucination (Live Science, 2014). The first ever recorded in medical history. The patient unconsciously sang a song that they claimed they had never heard before. However, when a person close to the patient was asked about the same song they said the patient had heard it before.

Can you recall childhood memories past the age of four? Well, most Americans are unable to do recall these memories and researchers feel it is a natural occurrence of memory loss called infantile amnesia. While the brain grows exponentially through those distinct years of age the brain has specific mechanisms that terminate those memories in order to make space for new memories in life (Live Science, 2014).

One more reason why you may experience memory loss is due to damage of the brain (Live Science, 2014). Especially, when the hippocampus is involved there is a much greater chance of it occurring. There a few cases of this occurring and being studied in the history of neurological science. In the case of patient H. M. who ended up losing their ability to create new memories. They had undergone a surgery that took out the hippocampus part of their brain. This was during a period of time where removing the hippocampus was associated with curing epilepsy. Another patient nicknamed E. P. lost the same ability while fighting a virus that caused the inflammation of their brain.

Memory is a complex element of the brain. Researchers still have a lot to learn about it to this day. Hopefully, this article explained to you memory loss whether mild or severe can be caused by a variety of reasons. Wait, what was I talking about?

URL link: http://www.livescience.com/44940-strange-facts-about-memory.html

References
Bahar, G. (April 18, 2014). Why you forget: 5 strange facts about memory. Live Science. Retrieved from http://www.livescience.com/44940-strange-facts-about-memory.html
Goldstein, B. Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research and Everyday Experience. Belmont, CA: Linda Schreiber-Ganster, 2011.

Steve Harvey Morning Show

I usually am an early riser. I like to wake up in the morning, get a cup of coffee from my Keurig, and check my emails while watching some sort of morning show. I love watching Ellen and The Steve Harvey Morning Show, in particular. As I was reading chapter 7 of the class book, Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research and Everyday Experience, there was one specific show that popped into my head continuously. It was an episode of the Steve Harvey Morning Show that I had watched a long time ago. On the show Steve had a guest speaker that was demonstrating aspects of cognitive psychology, that tie in perfect with this week’s lesson of long term memory: encoding and retrieval.

Steve Harvey had a guest speaker on the show to talk about and demonstrate examples of encoding and retrieving objects in our long term memory. The guest speaker had arranged an assortment of extremely random and bazar items in the corner of the stage. There was about 15 items (if I remember correctly) and included things like a tire, a blown up giraffe, a blow up pool float, a pillow, a blown up hammer, etc. The guest speaker had given Steve only a couple seconds time frame to observe the objects, and then recall them. The point of demonstration was to show that by connecting the items together and creating a story, Steve would be able to recall more items. More items than if he were to simply look and try to remember. I tried my hardest to find a clip of this particular episode to link in the post, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. If you have the chance to watch it, please do. Those of you that watch Steve Harvey might be able to image how out there and hysterical his story was to link the items together.

There are many ways of getting information into your long term memory, some better than others. Steve encoded the items on the stage with elaborative rehearsal, or by thinking about the meaning of the items and making connections (Goldstein, 2011). This encoding method is more effective than maintenance rehearsal, simply repeating the items over and over (Goldstein, 2011). Although, the level of processing theory has its downsides, the method of elaborative rehearsal, Steve demonstrated on his show, directly ties into this theory. This theory states that memory depends on the depth of processing that an item receives (Goldstein, 2011). Steve demonstrated that by taking the items and making connections (deep processing) he could remember more items than if he paid no attention to the meaning or made no story (shallow processing)(Goldstein, 2011). How Steve encoded these items influences how he was able to retrieve them from his memory when asked. He had organized the items into his own little story (with a beginning, middle and end) (e.g. Sally used the giraffe to get to the pool to use the pool float, then got stuck and had to use the hammer on the tire and then was tired so she fell asleep on her pillow.) (Not the story Steve used, just an example so you get the gist). By organizing the items into a story, that made sense to his rather off beat mind, he was able to retrieve the items easier.

Works Cited

Goldstein, E. Bruce. Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research and Everyday Experience. Belmont, CA: Linda Schreiber-Ganster, 2011.

Amanda Spencer

Blog 2

Working Memory

The text book defines working memory as a limited-capacity system for temporary storage and manipulation of information for complex tasks such as comprehension, learning, and reasoning.  Short term memory deals with storage, like trying to remember a phone number.  Working memory is more to do with the manipulation of the information.  There are two sub systems to working memory and that is the phonological loop, where the verbal information is processed, and the visuospatial sketch pad, where the visual and the spatial information is processed.  While I’ve touched on my son’s struggle with dyslexia, the core cause can be traced right back to a deficit in the working memory.

When I first noticed a problem, I observed that when he would stumble over a word, and I would tell him how to pronounce it, he wouldn’t remember.  I’m not even saying from one book to another, he couldn’t recognize, and still can’t, a word he is just told from once sentence to another.  He couldn’t retrieve words he’s learned, especially sight words that had no picture.  He has trouble remembering words aside from these because instead of learning the meaning of words, he remembers them by the picture in his head.  He replaces words that he can retrieve in place of the ones he can’t, though they sound similar.  Dyslexia is a phonological disability, which is a problem in the phonological loop in their working memory.  It took him six months to recognize the word “the”, it took a year for him to learn “you”.  But his spatial skills and in turn his math skills far exceed his grade level.    This is a clear problem that lies within the way he processes the visual and the phonological aspects of reading.

Dyslexia affects the working memory, it directly affects the way they learn the acquisition of phonics, which is the relationship between the letter and its sound.  They must learn this, figure out how the letters form a word, remember it and string all the words to make a sentence.  This lack of ability to retain words that they have just learned, and the struggle they have learning the sounds of letters is a problem.   Research has found a direct link between reading comprehension and working memory.

Resources

“What Is Working Memory and How Does It Affect Reading?” Dyslexia Help Starts Here. The Regents of the University of Michigan, 1 Jan. 2015. Web. 4 Mar. 2015. <http://dyslexiahelp.umich.edu/professionals/dyslexia-school/working-memory>.

Goldstein, Bruce. “Short Term and Working Memory.” Cognitive Psychology. Third ed. Belmont: Wadsworth, 2008. 131-133. Print.

Amanda Clear
Blog 2
Musical Cues
In Chapter 7, we learned about long term memories and retrieval cues to access those memories. As I was reading about retrieval cues, I thought about how songs and smells always triggered memories for me. As I read on, the book mentioned those as a kind of retrieval cue (Goldstein). Certain Glade air fresheners will always trigger memories to my granny’s house, she loves to have cans of them laying around. Then, I was thinking about songs and music. When certain songs come on the radio, they can immediately transport me back in time to an important memory that made this song so special. It’s amazing how something like a music can trigger a memory in your brain and send you back to that time and place for a brief moment.
Songs triggering memories reminded of an article and video I’d seen a year or so ago about how dementia patients that did not speak anymore, would communicate when I song that triggered their memory was heard. Through all the loss of their brain to dementia, the patient’s minds were awaken by a song. The song cued the remote memories (Goldstein) of the patients and temporarily pulled them out of their dementia haze. Hopefully, this musical cue can help the patients and their families in the time that they have left. Maybe their musical retrieval episodes can create lasting memories for their families as well.
Works Cited
Goldstein, E. Bruce. Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research and Everyday Experience. Belmont, CA: Linda Schreiber-Ganster, 2011.

Have you ever walked into a room and completely forgot why you came into it in the first place? I couldn’t agree more when I read an article from Live Science that stated, “there are several types of memories, and the brain has a unique way of forgetting each kind” (Golipour, 2014). Memory does some funny things. While forgetting is a normal and vital part of our brain function, we have to admit that memory can be a mysterious and mischievous prankster. One of the most common mysteries is a short-term memory failure where people find themselves entering a room with no memory of why they did so.

Everyone has experienced this at least once in their lives. We call it a “senior moment”, but researchers say it’s actually okay to put the blame on our doorways and not on our aging brains (Golipour, 2014). The act of walking through a doorway sends a hint to our brains that a new scene has started and that previous memories should be put away. This is what causes our memory lapse and confusion. The thoughts we had before we entered that new scene have actually been compartmentalized. In a 2011 interview with Live Science Gabriel Radvansky, a psychologist at the University of Norte Dame said, “entering or exiting through a doorway serves as an ‘event boundary’ in the mind, which separates episodes of activity and files them away” (Golipur, 2014).

I find this amazing, seeing as how I watch it happen to people all around me every day. I guess I should stop telling them they’re getting old and actually explain the cause. For me it’s not doorways that pose a problem. It’s flights of stairs. Every so often I find myself going up the stairs and forgetting why I did so just as soon as I’ve reached the landing. What’s up with that? Now if I can only find out what that means I’d be truly fascinated.

Gholipour, Bahar. Why You Forget: 5 Strange Facts About Memory. http://www.livescience.com/44940-strange-facts-about-memory.html. 2014

The testing effect is a rather recent discovery that states we are able to retrieve information from Long Term Memory (LTM) that has been tested rather than just repeatedly studied (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006). This is an effect I wish I would’ve known before midterms as I’m stuck in my ways.

Unfortunately time and creativity are my enemies as I have none of either so attempting to try this myself during midterms was impossible. However, having a nine year old fourth grader that has a weekly spelling test was the perfect way to test this effect so I decided to try. After averaging the results from eight weeks of spelling test results I found my son’s errors averaged out to 2.12 per test. My independent variable was the daily spelling tests I would give my son and the dependent variable was the official spelling test he would receive in the classroom on Friday.

During the week I tested my son twice a day using a different order of words. He was not allowed to look at his words outside of his testing. I attempted to create the same type of situation he would receive on the official test. I would say the word; he would repeat the word, spell it then write it. Unfortunately I could not recreate the exact environment as we did the experiment in my living room without the pressure he would feel during the test.

I talked to his teacher on Friday afternoon and she gave me a copy of his test and I saw he received a perfect score (I am a proud dad). I interviewed my son when I got home and graded his test. I asked him what was different on this test than previous tests. He told me that he could “picture” the words in his mind. I asked him what he was thinking after the teacher said the word. He said that he would remember the order of words from his daily testing, he said he would remember the word I would say before or after the word the teacher said during the test. I could tell he was using cues because of the eraser marks on his paper.

The errors in this study are that I just learned this effect this week so this experiment is not longitudinal (although it should be as I should do this every week for my son’s spelling). Also the words last week could have been easier for him to understand and spell than in previous weeks but that can be mitigated by continuing this experiment on a weekly basis and averaging his scores at the end of the school year.

According to my experiment with my son the testing effect does actually function better than just reading material over and over in an attempt to code the information to LTM.

Goldstein, E. B., 2011. Cognitive Psychology Third Edition Connecting Mind, Research and Everyday Experience. Chapter 7, 180-181

Roediger, H.L., & Kapricke, J.D. (2006). Test Enhanced Learning: Taking Memory Tests Improves Long-Term Retention. Psychological Science. 17, 249-255

Have you ever found yourself repetitively repeating things to yourself in order to remember them? I constantly do this, especially with numbers. If any one thing distracts me from my concentration on remembering these numbers, poof, I am no longer able to remember the order of these numbers. Remembering verbal or auditory information is a part of our Phonological Loop, which is responsible for processing and storing all verbal and auditory information.

As we learned in our week 5 lesson, the phonological loop has two different components. Firstly, we have phonological store, which is only able to store information for a few seconds. Secondly, we have the articulatory rehearsal process, which is used to rehearse and store information from the phonological store. So, let’s say we need to remember to make a payment of $35.78. We would remember the amount the cashier has told us we owe, for a few seconds and be done with the information. Yet, what if we needed to remember this payment amount for future reference? We would have to rehearse this information for it become a part our memory.

Our phonological loop is a part of our working memory. Our working memory also houses our central executive, episodic buffer, and visuospatial sketch pad.  Each part of our working memory is special. Studies show that the memory in our phonological loop can be related to the digit span of the information being presented. “The word-length effect suggests that our digit span is related to the time it takes to pronounce the first 10 digits of a language” (Stigler et al., 1986; Naveh-Benjamin & Ayres, 1988). So this means that cultural upbringing is a factor in memory, which I found to be quite interesting.

Memory is such a fragile thing, if you really think about it. There are so many working parts to create the whole, and should one small function not being fully working, there would be a domino effect. The example of distraction when trying to remember something you are rehearsing for memory storage, is a prime example of how sensitive the process of memory truly is.

Works Cited

https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/sp15/psych256/002/content/06_lesson/11_page.html

Kansas Parker-McKinnell

How many times have you been driving around looking for a place you have never visited and found yourself turning the radio down? I find myself doing this quite often, even with my GPS giving me turn-by-turn directions. Why do we do this? We are not looking for our destination with our ears. Or are we? While everything in our brain pertaining to how we process information is linked in some way, two methods I will describe are what is happening in our working memory and the distribution of cognitive resources.

Your brain initially uses selective attention to determine which information is most relevant. Obviously, following the directions to the new location, looking for the road signs, paying attention to traffic, and so on take up most of the cognitive resources allowed. Driving is a low-load task because we have practice with driving every single day. However, looking for unfamiliar road signs and following unfamiliar traffic patterns is a high-load task. Our textbook defines high-load tasks as those that “are more difficult and…not as well practice…and use more of a person’s cognitive resources” (Goldstein, 2011).

After determining how much of the cognitive resources will be allocated to finding this new location our brain then begins processing out all irrelevant information. We focus more on the directions and looking for specific landmarks than what is playing on the radio. We have allocated most of our resources and the radio is becoming more of a distracting hindrance than a help. Our working memory begins translating the incoming information. In order to reduce the amount of unattended information that may snag our attention, we just turn down the radio.

Our working memory kicks in at this point and is defined as a “limited-capacity system for temporary storage and manipulation of information for complex tasks such as comprehension, learning, and reasoning” (Goldstein, 2011). The central executive, a part of the working memory, takes over and coordinates processes happening in our memory. These processes are the phonological loop and the visuospatial sketch pad. We know that we are looking for Main Street, so while reading the passing street signs we repeat to ourselves the name of the street we are looking for. This process is the articulatory rehearsal process in the phonological loop. What this does is keep the information from disappearing from our short-term memory and slowing the decay process. Also, the visuospatial sketch pad helps us keep track of the roads we have passed, which roads we may be approaching, what buildings are in our surroundings.

I do not know if anyone else has noticed that turning the radio down does help with focus, but I know I do it just about every single time. My children laugh at me and tease me that I am not looking for the location with my ears, but it is possible that directions would be more difficult to follow with a distraction in the background. Our attention filter does weed out most of the unneeded information but why not just make it easier on yourself and turn down the radio?

Reference:

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