Author Archives: kxb321

Lethal Weapon anyone?

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              When reading through the material this week, I encountered a lot of problems I’d never been asked before. Naturally I attempted to solve them myself before looking up the answer (as I’m sure most people did), and some of the problems proved to be more difficult than others. One of the problems that stood out to me, however, was Luchins water jug problem.

               A family favorite movie growing up was Lethal Weapon. At one point in the movie, the terrorist asks Danny Glover and Mel Gibson to solve a water jug problem of their own. They are provided with a 3-gallon jug, a 5-gallon jug, a computer to weigh the final product, and are told they must come up with exactly 4 gallons of water or a bomb will explode. They tell you how to solve the problem in the movie, but every once in a while, I find myself remembering this problem (like I did today) and trying to remember how to solve it (say if I found myself trying to diffuse a bomb).

According to our reading this week, I see my problem in terms of an initial state, the condition at the beginning of the problem, and a goal state, the solution of the problem (Goldstein p. 341). The initial state is the two empty jugs, and the goal state will be one of the jugs filled with exactly 4 gallons of water. I then use operators, actions that take a problem from one stage to the next (Goldstein p. 341) to move from the initial to goal state. At first, I have trouble solving the problem due to my mental set, or the preconceived notion about how to approach a problem (Goldstein p. 340). I know that one jug can only hold 3 gallons of water and that the other is supposed to hold 5, so how do I get to exactly 4?

Using means-end analysis, a strategy designed to reduce the difference between the initial and state goals (Goldstein p. 343), I’ll create my subgoals, intermediate steps between the initial and end state, to break the problem down as simply and succinctly as possible. My initial state, goal state and subgoals are all housed in my problem space (Goldstein p. 343), and the problem ends up looking something like this: I fill up the 3-gallon jug and dump it into the 5-gallon jug. Then I fill up the 3-gallon jug again, and dump 2 of the 3 gallons into the 5-gallon jug (only 2 will fit since there was already 3 gallons). This leaves me with 1 gallon in the 3-gallon jug, and 5 gallons in the 5-gallon jug. I empty the 5-gallon jug, dump the 1 gallon from the 3-gallon jug into the 5-gallon jug, refill the 3-gallon jug and dump those 3 gallons into the 5-gallon jug holding 1 gallon of water, and end up with exactly 4 gallons!

While I was able to easily list out the steps in this blog post, my problem space was a little less clear. It always takes a second for me to figure out the math behind the problem, and I’ve normally wandered down a few different paths by then. I can’t imagine how things would go if I had to do the “talk out loud” task!

Reference:

Goldstein, E. Bruce (2017). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research, and Everyday Experience. Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning.

Bathroom Memories

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As I was reading through Chapter 7 in our Cognitive Psychology book, I found it hard not to stop and start this blog post before I was finished. So much of what we have read over the last few chapters has answered questions I didn’t know I had about our brains and memory. For example, if you’ve ever seen the movie The Notebook, the woman at the home has Alzheimer’s but can play the piano at one point in the film; without sheet music. I now know that the reason she can remember how to play an instrument, but not remember her husband or children, is because episodic memories are explicit memories while procedural memories (riding a bike, playing an instrument) are implicit memories. My fascination with memory not satisfied in the least by this newfound knowledge, I chose to write my blog post this week on memory and the process of retrieval.

The first second of Chapter 7 talked about how to encode information in LTM, which I found to be very helpful when thinking about my studies. However, the next section of the text, retrieving information, really got my attention. I was surprised and intrigued by the number of examples and processes described in the text that I have experienced in my own life. The retrieval cue experience described on page 188 of the text really hit home. Retrieval cues are words or other stimuli that help us remember information stored in our memory (Goldstein, p. 188).  Just this past weekend I was packing for a trip out of town and knew that I had forgotten something. It was a toiletry related item, which I remembered, so I walked back into the bathroom and just looked around until I remembered what I was missing (my toothbrush, btw). This type of retrieval cue is an example of matching the conditions of encoding information to retrieval of that information.

Of the three examples given in the text, I feel the matching conditions process that works best for me is encoding specificity. Encoding specificity states that we encode information learned along with the context in which we learned it (Goldstein, p. 190). What this means is, when I told myself I needed to remember my toothbrush, I was in the bathroom. That is where the information was encoded, in the context of the bathroom. Therefore, when I was trying to remember that information later, I immersed myself in the same context and jogged my memory.

When we started this course, I was surprised to find that we would be learning about memory over four lessons. Now that we are three lessons in, I can see why we have spent so much time on “one subject.” Memory is one of the more fascinating topics I have learned about in my psychology classes, and I would imagine it’s because most people can relate to memories, and how they affect our lives, very easily. Armed with some new tools to study, I’m ready to head into the final memory lesson!

Reference:

Goldstein, E. Bruce (2017). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research, and Everyday Experience. Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning.

 

Experiencing Pain

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When we take my niece to the doctor to get shots, we always distract her by playing games or letting her take pictures on our phones. When I take my puppies to the vet for shots, we give them treats while the doctor administers the shot because we’re hoping they won’t notice. Why do we do this? What drives this behavior?

According to Goldstein in his book Cognitive Psychology, pain can be influenced by many different factors, including what a person expects, how that person directs his or her attention, and the type of distractions present at the time pain is experienced (Goldstein, 2017). There are several examples provided in the text, but I’d like to share my own personal experience as support.

I decided at the age of 18 that I wanted to start expressing myself through tattoos. Now, for those that have never had a tattoo, I am sure you can still imagine that being poked with a tiny needle hundreds of times is not pleasant. There is obviously going to be some pain associated with this act.

Goldstein states in the text that studies have shown that people who are told by their doctors what to expect before surgery are more relaxed and recover more quickly (Goldstein, 2017). For a while I was getting tattoos often enough that I knew just what to expect when I would go into the shop. I knew about how long it would take, how it would feel, when I would get a break, etc.; but then a few years lapsed between tattoos. When I finally booked my next appointment, I was so nervous. I couldn’t remember how badly it would hurt or if I was going to be able to stand it. What if I had to take a lot of breaks? What if I couldn’t afford it? I’m sure my questions could have been answered by my tattoo artist, but instead I decided to visit the shop on my scheduled date feeling the epitome of a hot mess. Low and behold getting a tattoo is just like riding a bike, and after my first few back to back sessions, I was refamiliarized with the process and much more relaxed the next time I went in. Knowing what to expect made me less tense, which lessened the pain of the experience overall.

There are four artists that work in the shop that I frequent. If the other artists are there when I am, all of us normally end up chatting and time seems to just fly by. I’ve noticed that the times where I am the only one in the shop getting work done, I find it harder to entertain myself, which makes the process seem longer. I’m also more focused on what my tattoo artist is doing, which makes me think of the pain more. Just as Goldstein stated in the text, the more distractions present when I’m getting my tattoo, the less I focus on the pain and the better my overall experience.

Whatever the situation may be, getting shots, surgery, tattoos, we’ve all experienced pain in some way and have had our experiences affected by our expectations, where we direct our attentions, and how we distract ourselves. I didn’t learn from a psychology book that you should distract yourself or someone else when they are in pain to lessen said pain; but I knew it to be true. And now with the help of researchers and Goldstein’s documentation of their work, I know my beliefs to be true and why.

Reference:

Goldstein, E. Bruce (2017). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research, and Everyday Experience. Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning.