Please read chapter 6. After reading the chapter, please respond
to the following questions:
Next you will be asked what three things from the chapter that you
found interesting?
1a) What did you find interesting?
1b) Why was it interesting to you?
2a) What did you find interesting?
2b) Why was it interesting to you?
3a) What did you find interesting?
3b) Why was it interesting to you?
4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting?
4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?
5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most
useful to in understanding Cognitive Psychology?
6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the
previous chapters?
7a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
7b) Why?
8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think
about) did you have while reading the chapter?
9)
Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you
used in your post.
Thanks,
--Dr. M
1.I thought reading about very long-term memories was interesting. I’d heard of short-term and long-term memories before, but never knew there was yet another distinction of very long-term. It was interesting to learn about how in various studies done our long-term memory usually take s a big drop after a certain number of months or years and then stayed relatively stable for the rest of our li ves. Such as with the Spanish example, it appeared that for students who took Spanish in high school, their memory of the material declined the most over the first three years but their knoweldge on what they retained stayed fairly stable after that, suggesting the possiblity of a permastore.
2.Another piece of information I found interesting was about schemas. I enjoyed reading about the study where they told participants a story and tracked their retellings of it over time to see what parts of the story were retained. Through studies such as this one reconstructions of memory were able to be deciphered. Some analyses were that memory contains omissions, rationalization, dominant themes, transformation of information, transformation of sequence, and the participants attitude. These all contributed to how the story was recalled and what it was they ommitted, remembered, or altered.
3.Something else I thought was interesting was the concepts of procedural and declarative memory. It’s neat to learn about how our brain stores different types of material and memory. Our brain stores different types of memories in different areas. It’s fascinating how our brains are developed and structured enough that it automatically knows how to process certain information, where to store it, when to retrieve, and so on. The procedural and declarative memories were interesting because they were an example of how our brain sorts through material and keeps it organized for the easiest access.
4.A topic I found the least interesting was the speed-up principle. It wasn’t very intersting to me because the concept seemed to be so common knowledge. It talked about how the more you practice something, the better you get at it. We’ve learned things like this since we were kids and it’s an easily understood concept that makes sense when applied to many areas. It makes sense that it would apply to memory as well, that the more you practice recalling certain patterns from your memory the quicker you’ll be able to do it over time. It just wasn’t a new concept to ponder and therefore wasn’t very interesting.
5.I think simply having a basic understanding of our long-term memories helps in my understanding of Cognitive Psychology. Similar to how learning about short-term memory helped with understanding Cognitive Psychology, this is helpful because this class is about understanding how our brains work, function, and affect our lives and actions. Our long-term memory is used everyday allowing us to complete essential tasks. Therefore, knowing how this works allows us to understand a huge part of how we use the even broader field of Cognitive Psychology every day as we function as well.
6.This chapter relates most specifically to the previous chapter as they were both about different types of memory. It builds on it by covering the memories we hold over long periods of time and utilize every day. It builds on all of the previous chapters in the book as a whole by expanding our knowledge on the many concepts Cognitive Psychology encompasses.
7.I would like to learn more about the Alzheimer’s studies on the brain. Through various sources I’ve heard of individual’s who after death were discovered to have advanced Alzheimer’s symptoms within their brain, but didn’t show any symptoms throughout their actions and thought processes when they were alive. I’m curious about what you can do to best protect yourself from the symptoms of Alzheimer’s, and about how it could be possible to have a brain that suggest fully progressed Alzheimer’s yet you don’t show any symptoms.
9.Long-term memory, schema, procedural memory, declarative memory, speed-up principle
1a) What did you find interesting?
1b) Why was it interesting to you?
I found the case of nuns and Alzheimer’s interesting. In my lifespan developmental psychology class I took back in Minnesota, we watched a documentary on this study. The nuns were doing something to exercise their brains every day: puzzles, books, board games…etc. They also engage in as much physical activity as they can, pushing their wheelchair with their legs for some extra physical exercise for example. They were functioning very well and by the end of the documentary we saw that their brains showed signs of Alzheimer’s; it seems like their nonstop challenge to their brains helped them cope with Alzheimer’s better than other people. My friend believes that he will not live into his late 60s because his father’s side all died of complications of Alzheimer’s very early. But none of them went to college and were not as intelligent as he is. I believe that there are things people can do to delay the onset of any type of dementia, and if much effort is put into fighting the disease, I know people will be able to live longer and not be affected by the impact of Alzheimer’s as much.
2a) What did you find interesting?
2b) Why was it interesting to you?
I was wondering, when studying for chapter 5, whether or not there are subcategories for long term memory. For instance, song lyrics that I remembered for a month before the song fades away from my head belong to a type of long term memory. The moment I remember I was chased around the house by my mom and her broom more than a decade ago belongs to another type of long term memory. The textbook material I cramped 5 hours before the exams but is forgotten as soon as I stepped out of the exam room belongs to another type of long term memory. The concept of the duration of long term memory, very long term memory, and autobiographical memories partially answered my question. It also explains why I remember some childhood memories but not others. I came across some news article a few years ago about this man who did not forget. He remembered everything that happened in his life, and he could go back to the exact dates that it happened, point out every details that he saw, and repeat exactly what happened that day at that time. His inability to forget had also taken a toll on him, as he could not forget any painful memories. I do not know the credibility of the source, but if it was true, it would be an interesting case study.
3a) What did you find interesting?
3b) Why was it interesting to you?
I thought the concept of Spanish interesting. It is surprising that much of the Spanish learned in high school is still useable after fifty years. However, were the participants using Spanish regularly? Did they use Spanish at all after high school? What about another language that is not so similar to English, such as Russian or Vietnamese? Will it still be useable fifty years after high school without using it at all? My father is a businessman, and at one point in his life he could speak seven or eight languages fluently, communicating with his clients and partners. However, just a decade went by and he only retained some basic skills; he can no longer communicate in those languages without a lot of assistance. But languages that he uses daily, English, Chinese, and Vietnamese are still as fluent as before. Speaking three languages myself, I know how much my Chinese and Vietnamese has regressed after two years of college in USA because I do not use it daily anymore. The fact that people can still use their Spanish fifty years after only a few years of learning in high school is still very surprising to me.
4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting?
4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?
I thought the theories section least interesting. They were so abstract that it was boring to read and I often confuse the theories with each other, not knowing which is which after reading the section. Also, I prefer reading and learning about facts, rather than theories. Theories that are easier to understand does not bother me as much, sometimes I would even find those theories interesting and google more about it to explore the ideas behind the theories. But the theories provided in this section do not stand out to me and it took me a few reads to briefly grasp the ideas.
5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding Cognitive Psychology?
I think that the duration of long term memory is useful for understanding cognitive psychology. Knowing the longevity of different types of memories may be helpful in studying dementia; or the process of learning and remembering things people learned.
6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
This chapter seems very different to the previous chapter, but they belong to the same topic: memory. The previous chapter focuses on how the stimuli are perceived and stored for a short period of time, and this chapter extends the previous one by focusing on how some stimuli end up being stored for a long period of time; some time for a very long period of time.
7a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
7b) Why?
I would like to learn more about how briefly learned languages, not only Spanish, can be stored and used so much later in life although there is a fifty years gap of the language not being used. I would also like to know what happens when people learn a language in college? Middle school or elementary school? And what happens when they learn a very different language from their mother tongue? Is it harder to retain more than another language which is closer?
8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?
I thought about false memory and wonder how much of our childhood memory is actually fiction? Or false? The story written in the blue box on page 176 demonstrates some very long term memory that an old person still remembers but how much of it actually happened?
9) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
False memory, long term memory, short term memory, very long term memory, Alzheimer’s
Chapter 6 Reading Activity
1a)
Reading about very long-term memories was interesting to me.
1b)
I did not know there was another distinction of memory. I am familiar with short- and long-term memory, but it was interesting to learn about very long-term memory. After a point in time our long-term memory becomes stable over time. For a few years we may store concepts within our long-term memory, but proceeding that we hold these concepts within our very long-term memory. The example in the textbook was about the students in a Spanish class. The students were able to store the Spanish material within their long-term memory, but by the time the students were in their late high school years, they were retaining more knowledge about Spanish words rather than just basic information. This illustrates the possibility of a permastore.
2a)
The next concept I found interesting was autobiographical memories.
2b)
I enjoy looking at past history and applying it to the present time. With autobiographical memories, memories of an individual’s past history are recalled. Autobiographical memories are interesting because the memories are about an individual themselves rather than an event or occasion. These memories are a unique history of a person and by sharing these memories, others can learn about an individual’s personality and what shapes them into who they are today.
3a)
The codes of long-term memory and the tip of the tongue concept were interesting to me.
3b)
Information is coded acoustically, visually, and semantically in our long-term memory. Due to this, there may be things in our memory that we cannot fully recall. I find this and the tip of the tongue interesting as I can relate these concepts to my personal life. With the tip of the tongue (TOT) state, an individual can remember some aspects of an item being recalled but not all. There are many times where I can remember a really good restaurant that I ate at, but when it comes to sharing my experience with others, I cannot recall the name of the restaurant. I can remember the way the restaurant was set up, the music, the lighting, and the food, but the name cannot be recalled. The information about the restaurant is coded in the three ways, but I am in a TOT state when trying to recall the name.
4a)
I found the speed-up principle the least interesting.
4b)
I think I found the speed-up principle the least interesting because it is something that I already knew. The speed-up principle is being able to recall things due to the more you apply the concept to life activities. Such as, the more you practice, the better you will get. These concept is something we were taught as little kids. Our parents always said, the more you practice, the better. Well, the more you recall things from your memory, the more you will remember them. The speed-up principle is just basic knowledge and therefore not very interesting.
5)
The information I read in this chapter that will help me in understanding Cognitive Psychology is the idea of our long-term capacity. Cognitive Psychology is about understanding how our brains function and affect our everyday living. Our long-term memory is very important as it allows us to complete essential tasks throughout our day and recall crucial knowledge that helps in our survival. Without having the capacity to hold this knowledge, that would not be possible to assist in our survival.
6)
This chapter specifically builds on the previous chapter about short-term memory. Both short- and long-term memory are important in our everyday living. This chapter also expands on other chapters as we look at what Cognitive Psychology is about in regards to our brain and how it functions.
7a)
I would like to learn more about the brain in regards to Alzheimer’s studies.
7b)
I have a long distant family member battling Alzheimer’s disease and I would like to learn more about how this disease affects the brain and memory. How can individuals be protected from Alzheimer’s? What regions of the brain are most affected by Alzheimer’s that it would affect memory? What can researchers do to better protect individuals from damaging their memory from this disease?
8)
While reading this chapter, I thought about why we recall certain events but not others. How do we or our brain decide what memories to recall the most and which ones we will only hold in our long-term memory rather than our very long-term memory. Also, as we get older, does our long-term memory function in a similar way as when we were a child? Or do we recall different types of events in our long-term memory as an adult?
9)
Very long-term memory, short-term memory, long-term memory, permastore, autobiographical memory, tip of the tongue, codes, speed-up principle, long-term capacity, Alzheimer’s Disease
1a) What did you find interesting?
1b) Why was it interesting to you?
I thought the section about LTM and Cognitive Psychology was interesting because it talked about an actual study they did where they tested how much students actually remembered from their Cognitive Psychology class. They found that remembering actual names showed a rapid decline compared to the retention of concepts. They also found a higher relationship between getting good grades and VLTM. The text puts it interestingly that it either pays to study or it pays to have a good memory. Either way I thought this section was interesting because it uses an example of something I’m doing right now and talks about how much I’ll actually remember in the future.
2a) What did you find interesting?
2b) Why was it interesting to you?
I also really enjoyed the section about Tip of the Tongue (TOT). I can’t recall how many times I know what I’m thinking of but I can’t find the word. This happens a lot when I’m doing homework and I’m thinking of a simple word that I use every day. It gets very irritating at times when we can’t seem to recall the information we need. I also think back to the brain processing that goes on when you are attempting to remember something. We think of anything that could possibly be associated and then we make lists in our heads until we find what we’re looking for. Our brains immediately think and look for associations to help us remember. I would love to learn more about this because the brain activity involved has to be complex.
3a) What did you find interesting?
3b) Why was it interesting to you?
The third thing that I found interesting was autobiographical memories. I thought these were interesting because I haven’t been taught a lot about how our brains store personal memories. We are our own experts and we understand ourselves the best. The LTM doesn’t just collect information randomly it is highly selective when deciding what contents it wants to keep. The book describes it like an attic. There are a lot of random but important things in our heads that our LTM stores. I’m interested to know how our brains choose what it wants to remember and what it doesn’t find too important.
4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting?
4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?
I didn’t find the Theoretical Analysis of Expertise very interesting because it didn’t make sense at first. I gathered that it was speaking about how experts gather their information. But I didn’t think it was detailed enough about what it means by expert and it seemed like a random piece of information just placed in the middle of the chapter. I think if it was explained better I might have found it more interesting.
5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding Cognitive Psychology?
I think understanding where the localization of the LTM function is and how much of our brains are a part of the process is very important to help understand cognitive psychology. It really gave me a better idea of how our brains utilize themselves and perform a lot of different functions all to make one thing happen. This chapter talks about different ways our LTM is stored depending on the memory which I believe is a testament to the complexity of our memory storage and systems.
6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
This chapter goes into more detail about LTM. The last chapter talked about STM and they both are building on getting a better understanding of the functions of our brain. This chapter talks about localization and where the ability to store LTM is found. It also speaks about our visual and auditory systems which we’ve already learned about, and ties our memories into those as well.
7a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
7b) Why?
I would like to learn more about the Tip of the Tongue (TOT) and how our brains go about retrieving that information. I think it would be interesting to know what parts of our brain are active and why it takes so long to find the information. We can be thinking about it for days and then come up with the answer for no apparent reason. I would love to be able to study this phenomenon in more depth.
8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?
I think this chapter really got me to think about personal situations where I know I have remembered certain things but not others. It got me to start thinking about why my brain chose to remember what it did. As I was reading I felt like the chapter gave so much information but there is so much more to learn. It gives examples of studies and possible ideas but LTM is a tough subject because so much of our brain is used when storing a LTM and it is a long process.
9)Terminology: LTM, VLTM, STM, Cognitive Psychology, Tip of the Tongue, Brain processing, autobiographical memories, Theoretical Analysis of Expertise, localization
1)
One thing that I found interesting was the section on autobiographical memories. I found this particularly interesting is that it looks into the memories of one’s historical memory. By looking into these memories we are actually able to find out quite a bit about a person just by looking at their autobiographical memories. I found it particularly interesting the lady who put two memories on a card for every day and she would go back to these cards to try and put a date with the card to see actually how much she was able to remember from her own autobiographical memories as her life went on did the amount of information that she would retain decrease over time. I feel that if we all exercised our memory then we would be able to recall more information.
2)
Another section that I found interesting was knowing what and knowing that, as we look in to declarative and procedural knowledge. We often are using both parts of knowledge in our daily lives by making jesters that we know thing by telling detailed facts about them like a bike has two wheels one handle bar, two breaks, two pedals. By describing the bike we are using our declarative knowledge. But we are only about to show our procedural knowledge by actually doing a task like riding a bike. This makes me curious as to if we know there is more than one type of knowledge then why don’t we use more ways to test to see if people in the world really know information or if they are just using their experiences.
3)
Another section that I found interesting was Episodic and semantic memory. I found this section particularly interesting because the memory to me is very complex and to understand any part of it is a hard task to take ahold of to do. I think that without knowing anything our brain does to retain information we would not be able to function in our day to day life. Episodic memory is a neurocognitive memory system that enables people to remember past happenings. Episodic memory is very useful in past events and can even be harmful in trauma events as they will stick with the person. Sematic memory is the memory of words concepts and language. Without sematic memory we would not be able to read or communicate concepts of language with one another. I am sure there would be other means developed but our main way of communication would no longer be able to exist as we would not be able to function without it.
4)
This chapter it was really hard for me to pick out topics that were very interesting to me because I felt that the chapter drug on and that the information was dry. I thought that it was so closely related to last chapter that they could have more than likely just been added together with the important parts. I felt that it drug on into two weeks so it was hard to stay focused and pay attention for two settings.
5)
The thing that I found most useful in the chapter was the part about the sematic memory. I found this the most important to cognitive psychology because without it how would we do the research and or read about the research being done. I feel that the sematic memory is one of the most important parts of memory.
6)
This builds onto chapter 5 and those before it by looking at the brain and the buildup of memory and how it step by step gets more complex. The last chapter started to talk about the long term and short term memory but now we are going even deeper by looking at specific types of memory.
7)
I would like to look at other forms of memory but I would also like to look deeper into those living without sematic memory. I feel that this is something that is not talked enough about and I think that we need to know more about the effects to live a life without a sematic memory. This would mean that we would have to learn a whole different way to live our life as we don’t know the world of language any more.
8)
During this chapter I thought a lot about memory and what it would be like to live in a life where I would have had to learn to life under different situations and was not able to learn the so called “normal” way of life. I think that it would be interesting and yet challenging to life that life but I feel that not many American’s give those who have had to live a different life a chance to even explain what they have been through and their thoughts on their life. Before what these “NORMAL PEOPLE” stereotype them to be and feel about there “non-normal life” and this is WRONG.
9)
Sematic memory, memory, long term, short term, cognitive psychology, episodic memory, declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge, autobiographical memories.
1. I thought that the studies done on Very Long Term Memory (VLTM) with the faces and names of classmates from high school was extremely interesting. The fact that we recall the faces at about a 90 percent success rate from 3.3 months all the way until 34 years, and perhaps even longer is incredible. However, if we return the good old evolutionary perspective and take a look into why it is that we may have this, the blanket answer is that it served some kind of survival aspect. In more detail, I speculate that it very possibly could deal with the necessity to be able to identify friends, enemies, family, etc over very long periods of time. If prehistoric man encountered an enemy, and then 10 years later travelled back to that area and had to risk his and all of his entourage’s lives learning again that this person is an enemy, our existence would be much shorter.
2. I really liked the way the book discussed autobiographical memory. I, like most people believed that you would be able to recall at least most of your life in some vague detail if asked. However that is not the case at all, apparently the autobiographical memory is more like your attic in that stores only highly selected, and sometimes odd memories. It, also like your attic, changes the memories it chooses to store about as often as you choose to climb up and declutter the attic. Less important memories are replaced with new more important ones, and what is very important to us right now is often what shows the fastest decline in our VLTM. This decline is especially evident the shorter a time you are involved in this thing, idea, or what have you.
3. Another thing I found really interesting was the discussion on level of processing versus information processing. I personally feel that the best explanation is a combination of both that the book discusses stating that memory is very possibly a byproduct of perception, and that new pathways are created when we perceive something new, and the more we perceive or experience that thing, the stronger the memory becomes and the more likely it is to be transferred into LTM from STM. This is just a very interesting concept because no one actually knows exactly how this process occurs, and I’ve found studying science in the making is extremely interesting, and it also challenges you to expand your thinking because instead of looking for the answer on the page, you have to look for it in the evidence around you based on these theories which is really fun and challenging.
4. Honestly, I find memory very fascinating, and I didn’t find anything in this week’s chapter difficult or boring to read.
5. I think the most important concept in this chapter is the explanation of all of the different categories of memory. I for one, was not aware that there are multiple types of memories, and that those different memory stores all work together to aid in the retrieval and coding process of one “memory” we experience. This is an extremely important concept, and without understanding this, we would be lost in our pursuit of conceptualizing the memory process.
6. This chapter builds on the last chapter especially by expanding from STM to LTM, and also talking about the process by which one turns into the other (or at least how we think it does right now).
7. One of the topics I would really like to learn more about are the separate types of memory, especially episodic, and semantic. These are the two types that seem to pop up the most in my memory of how I visualize and experience my memories personally.
8. One question I found myself asking a lot during the reading of this chapter was how long does this stuff take? I know in the back of my mind that the brain is capable of processing mass amounts of information in an extremely small time span, but when the book neglects to remind you of that, it seems like the coding of memories could take days for how long the process seems.
9. Very Long Term Memory (VLTM), evolutionary perspective, autobiographical memory, level of processing, information processing, memory, perception, pathways, LTM, STM, retrieval, episodic, semantic, coding
The first thing I found interesting about this chapter was the capacity of long-term memory. Shepard conducted a study in which 612 ads were shown to participants at the speed that they chose. Afterward participants were shown 68 of those pictures paired with pictures that were not shown and were asked to decide which one they had seen. Participants scored almost 97% on this test. Two hours later the test was given again and participants did even better. This was repeated after 3 days, 7 days, and 120 days. Similar studies have confirmed the findings of Shepard. This interests me because, as a person, we are really unaware of how much information we can recall. I personally find it easier to find the correct answer from multiple choice and matching than to have to come up with the answer on my own for tests. It is also amazing just how much you can remember when you are grouped with people whom you have had many past experiences with. Reminiscing about one experience can trigger more and more and suddenly you are thinking about memories that you haven't thought about in years. I think this shows how amazing the brain is and how pervasive memory is in our lives.
Another section I enjoyed was the on on very long-term memory for Spanish. In this study by Bahrick memory for Spanish was examined up to fifty years after the language was first learned. This study was for people who had learned Spanish in high school. It was found that the more thoroughly it had been learned, the more the subject remembered. The knowledge declined the most during the first three years before leveling off for about thirty years. Reading comprehension dropped off at about 25 years. This shows that if you learn a language well, you will still be able to retain a good chunk of that language for the majority of your lifetime. This was interesting to me because I took 6 years of German in my middle school and high school and I was unable to continue with it in college. I often feel that I do not know as much as I used to, but there are still many words and phrases that I am able to remember. It is exciting for me to learn that I will be able to retain most of this information.
A third section that I found interesting was the one on autobiographical memories. One interesting part of this section was that a psychologist, Linton, wrote down two memories from her day each day for six years in order to study autobiographical memories. Every month she would pick two cards at random and try to remember what happened on those days. Linton discovered through this process that the rate of decline was linear, not curvilinear. She also learned that things that were done frequently, such as meetings, seemed to melt together until you could not remember what thing happened in which meeting. She also found that there was not a relationship between the importance or emotional connection of a memory and how easily it was recalled or remembered. I liked this section because Linton's results go against what your common sense says. You think that if a memory is important to you that you will be able to keep it forever. This is not always the case. Many important memories are stored, but so are random memories that are not as important.
One section that I found less interesting was the one on semantic and episodic memory. Semantic memory consists of words, rules, and abstract ideas and is necessary for language. Colors and math equations would fall under this type of memory. Episodic memory consists of things that have happened in the past, such as a vacation or a wedding. This type of memory is susceptible to changes in details and loss of certain parts. It also lacks the structure that semantic memory has. I did not find this section as interesting because I have learned about this in my memory and language class. It also makes sense. You can't change the details on what the color blue looks like, but you can on memories of your wedding or your first date.
This chapter builds on the last in that the last chapter talked about short-term memory and this chapter continues the theme of memory, but instead focuses on long-term memory.
I would like to learn more about autobiographical memories and their reliability. The book said that these memories are hard to determine to be authentic or not, but that they do tend to correlate with family member's memories as well.
While reading this chapter I kept relating everything back to myself and my own memories. I spent a lot of time during this chapter trying to do what the section talked about or thinking about what memories I have remembered or forgotten. I think information is always more enjoyable when you are able to relate it to yourself of something going on in your own life.
terms:
long-term memory, capacity, short-term memory, Shepard, recall, Bahrick, Spanish, reading comprehension, memories, retain, autobiographical memories, Linton, linear, curvilinear, semantic, episodic, language, structure, reliability
1a) The first thing I found interesting in this chapter was the three principles in which Chase and Ericson explain our memory operations: Mnemonic encoding, retrieval structure, and speed-up principle.
1b) This was interesting because the idea seems so simple and logical but at the same time these two researchers are looked up to for finding this idea. The first principle basically deals with organizing our memories and using existing knowledge to chunk new information. The next principle deals with how we access these memories/develop different mechanisms to encode and retrieve patterns from our LTM. the last principle, which I thought was the most easy, basically deals with the speed in which we recognize and encode different patterns.
2a) The next thing I found interesting was the Permastore of very long term memories section.
2b) When I was reading last week I was wondering if there were different types of long term memories and when when I read through this section it made more sense. I especially liked reading this section because of the different experiments they gave dealing with identifying your high school classmates 3.3 months after graduation to 48 years. This will be interesting to test at my high school reunions in the future. I also thought that the Spanish study was interesting especially when they said that it depends on how thoroughly you were taught a subject which made sense.
3a) The last thing I found interesting was the section on Episodic and Semantic Memories.
3b) This section was interesting because it compared and contrast the two different type of memories and it made it easy to learn and understand by providing different examples. Episodic, like the name sounds, are memories of a particular experience we had. These memories are stored as a type of autobiographical reference and they are susceptible to change and loss depending on how important they are to you. Semantic memories are our memory of things we learn such as words, concepts, rules, languages, and abstract ideas. A good way to remember this is by thinking of it as our mental thesaurus.
4a) The thing I found least interesting in this chapter was the section on Alzheimer’s, only because that is what I did my topical blog on last week.
4b) This wasn’t as interesting because much of what they touched on, I had already learned from doing my own research last week. For example I had already learned that Alzheimer’s initially effects STM but eventually affects LTM in advanced stages, the cause is not clear, and diet/exercise (physically and mentally) can help prevent Alzheimer’s. This section was interesting though when they provided the information on the nuns because I hadn’t heard of that before but I did know that they could only diagnose Alzheimer's by looking at the brain after a person has died.
5) All in all I think understanding LTM, it’s different subcategories, and the way we process and store information into this is going to be very important down the road in this course. Also I believe understanding all of the different types of memories (autobiographical, semantic, episodic) is also going to be very important.
6) This chapter builds off of previous chapters because it elaborates even further on LTM, what it is, the different types of memories, and the different theories behind it. Also in the last chapter it mainly only referred to how we perceive different types of events/stimuli but here we are learning more about how we store and retrieve this different information.
7a) I would like to learn more about autobiographical memories.
7b) I find this concept very interesting since all it is is memories of an individual's past history. The book says the individual is the expert and we can learn a lot about a persons personality and concept of self by studying these types of memories so I want to find out in what ways this is possible.
8) When I was reading through this chapter I asked myself many different questions. First when the book began talking about the duration of LTM, specifically on our memory of Spanish, I wondered in general how long do people retain any kind of information they learn in school. Also the book mentioned how it pays off to have a good memory and this made me think about different studies that may have been done that show this. How do people have stronger memories than others and how does this play a part in the education system?
9) Terms: Chase, Ericson, mnemonic encoding, retrieval structure, speed-up principle, LTM, STM, VLTM, Permastore, episodic/semantic memories, Alzheimer's, autobiographical memories.
Chapter 6 Blog
The first thing that I found interesting in chapter six was the information on the localization of long term memory. I am learning about short and long term memory in another class, and I was totally unaware of the fact that memory in localized in the brain until I read this chapter. It isn’t something that one really considers or thinks about. I never realized that memory stemmed from certain parts or places in the brain. Our book tells us that some brain regions are essential for the storing of memories. Some of these regions that the book mentions are the hippocampus and the thalamus. I have learned about these parts of the brain in other classes I have taken. We also discussed the hippocampus in chapter 2 (Cognitive Neuroscience). The reason that we know the hippocampus and the thalamus are important for memory is because there have been people with damage to these areas. We’ve all heard of people with some form of memory loss. It just so happens that those people have brain damage to certain parts of their brain: the hippocampus and the thalamus. This is really interesting to me because I never realized that memories were a formed or kept in a certain part of the brain. I guess I always thought that memories were just something that your mind “did”. I thought that it just happened. I never realized that memory was localized.
The second thing that I found interesting in chapter two was a concept I have never heard of. In the section of the chapter that talks about the duration of long term memory, the term permastore (very long term memory) is discussed. I have never heard of very long term memory. This seems odd to me. As far as I have ever known, there is short term memory and long term memory. Once I read about this new term, it did start to make sense to me. The example that the book gave was about high school students. They took a large sample of high school students and tested them right after graduating. The students were tested on how well they could recall names and faces of their classmates. I think that straight out of high school, I would have done very well on this test. And the students did. The most amazing part of this study was that the percentage of recognition maintained a high level. Even after 34 years – the students were 90% accurate in remembering their classmate’s names and faces. After reading this chapter, I have realized that I think I could do the same. I have already been out of high school for 4 years, and I am very certain that I could name all of my classmates, and recall all of my classmate’s pictures. I am also very certain that after another 4 years I could do the same. It would be interesting to test my knowledge after 30 years. I also think that it’s interesting that I have all of those people stored in my memory even though I never see them anymore. I never tried to store those people into my memory, but now I know that they are in my very long term memory.
The third thing I found interesting about chapter six was the section on the types of memories. The book tells the types of memory from an adaptive function. This means that we remember these things, and we store these things in our memory to help us adapt to everyday life. The first type of memory is special ability. This is information that we store about locations of objects. This would be like remembering where your car is parked or where you left your keys. The second type of memory is called physical properties of the world. This is information that we store based on what is safe around us. If you see a snake, you most likely will walk the other way because you remember that they are dangerous. The third type is social relationships and the fourth is social values. These two are about the people you interact with around you (who you should have around and who you shouldn’t) and what they value. The fifth type is motor skills. This is the reason we remember how to drive a car or ride a bike. And the sixth type is perceptual skills. These skills help us remember language and things like music lyrics. I find all of these things interesting because they are things that I don’t realize I am storing into my long term memory.
There wasn’t a specific thing that I found un-interesting. But there was something about the chapter that caught my eye as concerning. There is an example in the chapter under the section about very long term memory. It talks about people who were shown 612 photos and then later asked to recall the photos. It is really interesting information and it is a really interesting example. But the thing that I found weird was that this exact same story (verbatim) was later repeated in the chapter. A few pages later, there is a section called memory for pictures. The EXACT same story was repeated. It is almost as if this information was copied and pasted into a later part of the chapter. It goes on for a couple paragraphs, and it is the same as the earlier example, word for word. It is good information, but it doesn’t need to be read twice.
I think that all of this information will help me in learning about cognitive psychology. There is an entire section of cognitive neuroscience that relates all of this information to cognitive psychology. As I discussed earlier, there are certain parts of the brain that are responsible for storing memories. This chapter is all about long term memory. It discusses the importance of long term memory and how long term memory works. Long term memory (along with short term memory) is a very important part of cognitive functioning. If we did not have memory, there would be no point to cognitive processes. All of the information would not be stored and there would be no use.
This chapter relates to the other chapters because long term memory is basically what happens after short term memory. Once we get information into short term memory, we use rehearsal and repetition to store it permanently into long term memory. Both long and short term memory are ways that we store our perceptions and sensations. The chapters before this were all about how we perceive things, what we perceive, and why we perceive. Perception and sensation would be nothing without memory. There would be no need to perceive things if we were unable to store them into our memory.
I think what I would like to learn more about are the different memory codes. Chapter six talks about memory codes and it gives a very good example. The talk a lot about when you have an answer to something “on the tip of your tongue”. I’ve always thought that this is an interesting phenomenon. I would really like to look more into that. How is it that we know we have that information, but it’s not readily available to us when we try hard to recall it? I would also like to know if there are certain triggers that will bring forth the information that we look to recall. There must be SOMETHING that clicks in our memory bank when we can finally recall whatever it was that was on the tip of the tongue.
While reading this chapter, I was mainly thinking about my own memory. I thought about all of the things that I have stored in my long term memory. I have never really consciously realized all of the things that I store in my long term memory. I don’t think that anybody does. It is really interesting to me that long term memory is everlasting and there is no limit to the amount of things a person can store. The only exception to this is when someone has brain damage or brain deterioration. Otherwise, if you have a healthy, fully functioning brain, the possibilities are endless.
Terms: Localization, Long Term Memory, Hippocampus, Thalamus, Cognitive Neuroscience, Brain, Permastore, Short Term Memory, Very Long Term Memory, Spatial Ability, Physical Properties of the World, Social Relationships, Social Values, Motor Skills, Perceptual Skills, Codes, Tip of the Tongue (TOT)
1a) What did you find interesting?
I was very interested by the research on K.C. in this chapter.
1b) Why was it interesting to you?
I liked reading about this because they talked about the neuroscience of the case. This guy is as interesting a case as H.M. or Phineas Gage. The dude was in a motorcycle accident and suffered damage to his right parietal-occipital and frontal-parietal regions of the brain. K.C. did not lose his procedural memories, but lost function of his episodic memory and some of his semantic memories. This was really interesting, because the man could remember how to play chess, though he could not remember ever having actually played it.
2a) What did you find interesting?
I enjoyed the section about self-reference effect.
2b) Why was it interesting to you?
I thought this was interesting, particularly because of the study that they referenced in the section. In the study, participants were asked to evaluate a list of 40 words in one of four conditions: structural, phonemic, semantic, and self-referent. They found that recall was weakest for structural and followed through to self-referent being the strongest. I thought this was interesting because it kind of made it seem as though our brains are hard-wired to be narcissistic. It makes sense that our brains pay more attention to things that apply to our individual selves, but it still was interesting to me.
3a) What did you find interesting?
I thought the part about the tip of the tongue state was kind of cool.
3b) Why was it interesting to you?
I thought this was interesting because I have experienced the phenomena before, as I assume everyone has. It’s very frustrating to know the aspects of what it is you are trying to say, but to simply not have the words available. The book explains that it is because of the way information is coded in long-term memory, as either acoustic, visual, or semantic information. So when in a TOT state, you may recall aspects of the stored information, but you cannot recall the acoustic aspect, and therefore cannot verbalize it.
4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting?
4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?
It was all interesting, but I felt that some of the content was a bit redundant. For example, two of the headings in this chapter were ‘Autobiographical Memories’ and another was ‘Autobiographical Memory’. Luckily, it was interesting to learn about autobiographical memory, but it just seems that the book spends a lot of time re-iterating information.
5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding Cognitive Psychology?
I think the aspect of this chapter that will contribute most to my understanding of cognitive psych will be the understanding of the different types of memory. The model on p.192 illustrates in pretty well and I think it will be very helpful in my overall understanding of memory, and mental processes in general. The model breaks LTM down to explicit (declarative) and implicit (non-declarative) memories. Explicit memories are further broken down into either semantic or episodic memories. Semantic memories are those involving facts, words, concepts and abstract ideas, whereas episodic memories are memories of experienced events. Implicit memories are further broken down into procedure, priming, classical and operant conditioning, and nonassociative learning.
6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
This chapter briefly talked about some of the imaging techniques that were discussed in chapter two. This chapter also heavily related to the previous chapter as they were both about different types of memory.
7a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
I think I would like to learn more about K.C. and the connectionist model.
7b) Why?
The case of K.C. is very interesting to me, but I know that for the exploration blog this week he will probably be a topic that is discussed heavily. Instead, I think I will try to do more research on the connectionist model, as that is also very interesting. I would like to learn more about the organization of the brain, as far as memory storage is concerned, and I would be interested to learn about the complex neural pathways that I assume are heavily discussed in research about the connectionist model.
8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?
I was actually thinking a lot about how this knowledge could be applied. It would obviously be awesome to improve your memory so that you can just read through books and retain information. I sadly didn’t find any way to help me remember things, aside from relating concepts to myself, as self-referent association was the best for word recall.
9) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
K.C., procedural memory, episodic memory, semantic memory, self-reference effect, tip of the tongue state, autobiographical memory, explicit memory, implicit memory, connectionist model
1a) What did you find interesting?
Autobiographical memories.
1b) Why was it interesting to you?
When I first began reading the section about autobiographical memories I thought of the vivid memories from experiences I have had throughout my life. In many of those cases I can remember them as if they happened yesterday, but ask me what I had for lunch last Wednesday and I probably wouldn’t have a clue. Autobiographical memories or a person’s personal experiences have an effect on how strong the memory can become. These memories can also tell you a lot about an individual’s personality and how they view themselves in the world. The way the textbook explained it made perfect sense to me, our memory does not allow us to remember everything but rather the most important things. The memories that have a last effect on us are given the highest importance and thus are never thrown out like old junk from an attic. The old junk in terms of one’s memories are those that may have been important at one time but have since faded and are forgotten or stored even deeper to create more room for new memories.
2a) What did you find interesting?
LTM storage.
2b) Why was it interesting to you?
People have been trying to gain an edge on others by improving their long term memory storage for years. An improved LTM would allow you to store large amounts of information and access it at any time, a skill any student would be happy to have. One of the earliest pioneers into explaining how long term memories are formed was Donald Hebb who essentially theorized that if you practices or rehearsed information enough times or long enough the information would be converted from STM into LTM. Hebb explained that the information is passed through a self-excited loop of neurons and remains in the loop for a period of time before it is either disregarded or converted into LTM. Other information or experiences like excitatory, ego-involving or traumatic experiences can make memories stick in our minds longer.
3a) What did you find interesting?
Long-term potentiation.
3b) Why was it interesting to you?
I found this interesting because it was a term I remembered from a previous class I took, Biopsychology. In the class we learned a lot about neural activity within the brain and the many different areas and functions. I remembered learning about long-term potentiation because we all do it on a daily basis without thinking about it. The example I remember is the experience of getting a new phone number, you won’t remember the number right away but after you have given it out a few time or told all your friends, you could repeat it in your sleep. This is due to long term potentiation, the signal that is being sent through the neurons is being strengthened each time you send it so it only becomes easier and quicker to recall.
4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting?
Connectionist model of memory.
4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?
This was the least interesting to me because I just did not understand the concept of it. It seemed a little over my head so I took to the internet to research it further and still could not fully grasp it.
5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding Cognitive Psychology?
This chapter will help me in understanding cognitive psychology because LTM and our ability to store information for longer than a few seconds or minutes is what got us to this point. Without being able to store information and experiences we wouldn’t even know who we were let alone how to develop and produce some of the great innovations we have today.
6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
In the previous chapter we discussed short term memory very heavily, this chapter builds on that by taking it to the next step. The next step from short term is long term memory, information must pass through one to get to the other so the chapter had great continuity.
7a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
Connectionist model of memory
7b) Why?
Simply because I didn’t get it.
8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?
While reading this chapter I recalled many memories from my life, traumatic and cheerful. After reading how LTM is effected my things like emotion and the people you are with or experiencing the memory with it made perfect sense why some of those memories you can relive every day.
9) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
- long-term memory, short-term memory, connectionist model, long-term potentiation, autobiographical memory, Donald Hebb
1a) What did you find interesting? 1b) Why was it interesting to you?
I thought modular memories were interesting because we tend to think of memories as one whole thing not several components. I was surprised to learn that the different components of our memories are stored in different areas of the brain and are somehow integrated together during recall. It is also interesting because memories are retrieved rather quickly suggesting that our brain is able to complete parallel processes quite efficiently.
2a) What did you find interesting? 2b) Why was it interesting to you?
I thought the idea of permanent memory or permastore was interesting because it implied that not all of the information we learn is eventually lost. This is interesting to me because it is often hard to recall information that you learned three semesters ago and you end up feeling like all your hard work was a waste of time. Permastore suggests that you do retain at least some of what you learned and you did not, in fact, waste all your time.
3a) What did you find interesting? 3b) Why was it interesting to you?
I thought long-term potentiation (LTP) was interesting because it explains, on a neurological level, why we are better able to remember familiar information. It is also interesting that neurological paths can be strengthened through use similar to a muscle being strengthened through exercise.
4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting? 4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?
I thought the self-reference effect was the least interesting part of the chapter. This was not as interesting to me because it was fairly intuitive. It would be interesting, however, to see if a cultural difference exists for the self-reference effect because some cultures value the individualism more than other cultures.
5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding Cognitive Psychology?
I thought the concepts long-term and short-term memory was most useful in understanding cognitive psychology. These concepts have a lot of research support backing there existence and these concepts are used in theories about memory.
6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
This chapter builds on previous chapters because it describes long-term memory which has been mentioned in previous chapters about perception and object recognition.
7a) What topic would you like to learn more about? 7b) Why?
I would like to learn more about Alzheimer’s disease and exercise. I am very interested in health psychology and I would like to learn more about how physical health as well as mental health influences the course of Alzheimer’s disease.
8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?
While reading this chapter, I was wondering about how the different levels of memory, procedural, semantic, and episodic memory, relate to evolutionary psychology and why different types of memory evolved.
9) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
Procedural memory, semantic memory, long-term potentiation
There were a lot of things that I found interesting in the chapter. The first thing that I found interesting was the section on the theories of forgetting. I like how it was a nice build off of the last chapter. The last chapter talked about amnesia with the case dealing with HM. The second thing that I liked from the chapter was the section on memory errors and false memory. I had heard of what false memory was in previous classes. The study with the cars was the main thing that I remembered, and this chapter does a good job of reviving the memory. I also liked the part about memory that talked about child abuse and the fact that some memories are repressed. The last section of the chapter that I liked was the section on mnemonics. I liked this section because they are something that I use from time to time when I am studying for exams. They are very useful and help me in understanding cognitive psychology because it helps me learn how my brain works. A section of the chapter that I did not find interesting was the section on eidetic memory. I liked reading about photographic memory, so I guess that I was not disinterested I just liked the other sections more. I will also talk about how this chapter helped me in my understanding of cognitive psychology, how it built off previous chapters, what I want to learn more about, and thoughts that I had while I was reading the chapter.
The first section that I liked was on the theories of forgetting. I liked this section because it built off nicely from the last chapter. The last chapter had talked about HM and how he suffered from both retreograde amnesia and anterograde amnesia. This chapter also talk about the area of the brain that deals with both of the amnesia's (temporal lobe). retregrade amnesia is when the brain cannot remember events that happened before the accident. anterograde amnesia occurs when the person cannot remember events that happened after the accident. Another section on the theories of forgetting is the section motivated forgetting. This was a nice lead into the next section that I liked because it deals with memory errors. Motivated forgetting occurs when a person will purposely not remember a certain event because that event was to traumatizing, so they usually will force themselves not to remember. With retrograde amnesia you cannot recall the past, but you can build new memories. In the case of HM he could build memories through the use of motor function. With anterograde amnesia you can recall the past, but cannot build new memories.
The next section that I liked was the section on false memories. Elizabeth Loftus was the psychologist that did most of the research on this area. In previous classes I had learned about the car accident experiment that was conducted. She found that when asked to describe the accident the word smashed made the collision speed of the accident to 41 mph, and when the word contacted was used the speed of the accident went to 31 mph. Another part of the section that I previously talked about was the part that dealt with false memories. Some people will remember false memories that have never happened to them. People will do this in order to please the therapist, so a therapist must be cautious when someone brings up memories that deal with child abuse or anything else of that nature. In a case of false memories people will also start to believe their own lies. Around 25% of people that give false information in order to please an authority start to actually believe that what they are lying about is true. A technique that helped prove this theory was the lost in the mall technique. Participants were told that they were lost in a mall at the age of 5 to 6 and were later found by an elderly person. around 25% of the people actually started to believe that they were actually lost in the mall, and started adding events that the researchers did not include in the initial experiment. I thought that this was a very interesting technique that reminded me of the works of sigmund.
The next section that I found interesting was the section on mnemonics. This is a technique that it used for storage and remembering information from memory. I thought that this section was interesting because it is something that I use from time to time. When preparing for exams I liked to use mnemonics because I feel that I can remember more information, and it is also easier to remember the information better. Another part of this section that I liked was on the method of loci. This was an interesting section because I had learned about it before in intro class. We actually did this in the class and it was a very fun experiment. It actually worked when we did the experiment but I have not used it since. The method of loci works by matching that things with what you want to remember with words. The way that we used it in the class I was in was by matching a list of groceries by going through our houses. The grocery list was easy to remember because I had a perfect visual of what my house looked like because I had lived in it for so many years. For example I would match the word bread with door, and then eventually match the list and go through my house. I had never used it on an exam because I think that mnemonics are easier to use because you do not have to remember other things as well. Also it is hard to match different words once you have already used a loci source (your house).
The section that I did not find the most interesting was eidetic imagery. eidetic imagery is the same thing as photographic memory. This reminded me of the time that Otto talked about his sister and how she could remember while pages of information. I had a high school teacher that also could do this. He also talked about how he could remember a page from when he was high school that had a picture of a tiger on that specific page. He could also remember the information on that page. I thought that this was interesting because I had never heard about photographic memory until then. The chapter talks about how that children can do this but start to lose this ability as they get older. This also reminded me of the rainman story. I wanted to know if the rainman had the same ability or if he had some other ability of memory storage.
I thought that this chapter helped in my understanding of cognitive psychology because I could relate to the material. I could relate to the material because I knew about mnemonics. Learning how to use this technique was cool because it is something that I use everyday. It is a helpful technique that can help me to do better on tests. Also the section on amnesia was helpful in me understanding cognitive psychology because I had learned about it in the previous chapter. This chapter does a great job on building off the other chapters to help retain the information.
A section that I would want to learn more about is the false memories. I thought that when people make up false memories and then actually start to believe there own lies was cool. I think that doing more research on this area for the topical blog would help me to better understand the topic. Doing research on victims of child abuse and seeing if the memories matched up to what they were saying are true.
This chapter did a nice job of building off the last chapter in a couple of ways. The way that I like best was with the section on amnesia. The last chapter talked about this in the case of HM. HM had both retrograde and antergrade amnesia. Having already read about the topic made it easier to understand the information in this chapter. Learning about the information in the last chapter was also helpful in retaining the information. It also did a good job of building off the last chapter in the sense of memory storage. Talking about how the brain remembers information is useful, and so is the information on how the brain forgets information.
Some thoughts that I had while reading had to do with the photographic memory section. I have seen the movie rainman, and just wondered if he had the same thing as a photographic memory of something different? Also I wondered how psychologist knew whether child abuse victims were lying or not. How are they able to tell if they are making up false memories.
terms: theories of forgetting, anterograde amnesia, retrograde amnesia, temporal lobe, motivated forgetting, false memories, Elizabeth Loftus, mnemonics, method of loci, photographic memory, eidetic imagery
1) One topic that I found to be interesting was the part on the localization of long term memory. I am learning about short and long term memory in my Memory and Language class right now. Memory is localized in the hippocampus and the thalamus. The reason that we know this is because when a person has some sort of memory loss, the brain can be scanned to see what parts are damaged. People are affected different by memory loss. Some lose their short term memory, and remember things from when they were a child, others have an amnesia, and they don’t remember the past. I find the memory section to cognitive psychology to be very interesting. I really like how I was able to relate this section to what I have learned in my Memory and Language class so far.
2) Another topic I found to be interesting was the section on the duration of long term memory. Permastore is a term for very long term memory. I have never heard of this before. I have only heard of the long and short term memory systems. An example was given, where high school students were tested if they could remember the names and faces of their classmates after they graduated. Right after high school they tested well and after many years their recognition was pretty good. I feel that I could name and recognize everyone I have went to class with and I have been out for 4 years. I guess it probably might be easier for me than others, because I graduated with a class of 16 people so everyone knew everyone. For those who have larger classes it might be harder for them to recall all of their classmates.
3a) A third section I found to be interesting was the section on autobiographical memories. One part that I liked in this section was how the psychologist would write down different memories from each day for 6 years. She did this to study autobiographical memories. She would pick a random card each month and would try to recall what had happened on those days. She found that it declined in a linear direction. I have heard of people being able to do this before where you ask them a date and they can tell you what happened, and it is just crazy the things that people can remember.
4) If I had to pick a least interesting section it would be the section on Alzheimer’s. I did my topical blog on that last week and I had also known information on it from working with people who have some sort of dementia, so I already had learned a lot about it. So that’s why I would consider this the least interesting for me.
5) I think that pretty much the whole chapter is, because most of it was about long term memory, and this is a huge part of cognitive psychology. It can also tell us which parts of the brain may be damaged, if people are having trouble with their memory.
6) This chapter built on from the last chapter by memory, and more about dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. It also expanded my knowledge from what I was learning in my memory class.
7) I think the topic I would like to learn more about is the permastore, because I have never heard about this. The only memory systems that I knew about was the long and short term memory. I would be interested in researching more on this topic. Even in my memory class we have not talked about this yet.
8) I thought it was crazy that there is a memory past long term memory. I also can’t believe how people have the autobiographical memories. There is so many days in a person’s life, and to have someone tell you a date and be able to remember events of that day is just amazing, especially like in the book where it was over like a 6 year time span.
9) long term memory, short term memory, permastore, memory systems, recognition, autobiographical memories,
1a) What did you find interesting?
I thought the section on remembering Spanish was interesting.
1b) Why was it interesting to you?
I found this interesting because I took Spanish in high school so I could relate. Right after high school I could remember quite a bit of Spanish but I feel like more and more keeps slowly fading away. It has been around the three year mark so my memory of Spanish should be pretty stable from here on out. My reading comprehension in Spanish is worse than other aspects of Spanish like the book mentioned.
2a) What did you find interesting?
I found the section on codes interesting.
2b) Why was it interesting to you?
I found this interesting because again, I could relate to it. This section talked about the tip of the tongue codes in long term memory. I see this happening to people all the time. They can remember something, they just can’t think of the name of what they are thinking of. I thought it was interesting to read how the car full of people kept talking about it and then they finally came to the name of the pop they were thinking of.
3a) What did you find interesting?
I also thought the Schemas and Gist section was interesting.
3b) Why was it interesting to you?
I liked this section because it reminded me of the game telephone. This is a great example of our short term memory and our long term memory. I was surprised that the individual could remember as much as they did when he/she was asked about the story years later. The same things they mention in this section are the things that happen in telephone. Specific information gets dropped out, some information is added to explain it better, and some parts of the story seem to become more prominent than others.
4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting?
The thing I found the least interesting was VLTM.
4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?
I don’t think I was interested in this because I still don’t understand the difference between long term memory and very long term memory.
5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding of Cognitive Psychology?
I think the information in the localization and distribution of long term memory section will be the most useful to me in understanding Cognitive Psychology. This section mentioned cognitive neuroscience of memory. This section talks about the current studies into the cognitive neuroscience involving the plotting of functions on the topography of the brain, the routing of memory traces, and the identification of the neural changes in the brain associated with memory formation and change. This is why I think this section is the most useful to me when it comes to Cognitive Psychology.
6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
This chapter builds on the previous chapters, especially the last chapter because it goes more in depth on long term and short term memory.
7a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
I would like to learn more about the duration of long term memory and the difference between long term memory and very long term memory.
7b) Why?
I would choose to learn more about this because I am unfamiliar with it.
8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?
While reading this chapter, I thought about my memory of Spanish and my experience with tip of the tongue codes.
9) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
Codes, tip of the tongue codes, long term memory, Schemas and Gist, very long term memory, localization and distribution, neuroscience, topography, memory traces, short term memory
1.
a. I am interested in the topic of autobiographical memories.
b. To remember your past is something that you want to have, and need to keep. Now most are able to remember all the things that happen in their personal history. For me though my history is blurry. When I was young I fell off a hayloft onto a concrete floor, apparently I didn’t breath for a few minutes after either. Since then I have accumulated at least five more concussions. So my memories are a bit of a scrambled mess, up until my middle school years. So knowing history for me at least is a bit more difficult. If I could remember more things of my past I would really enjoy it. Although I do remember bits and pieces of my childhood. Like a little white lamb toy that was on wheels that I really loved to play with. I want to be able to recall my memories more, but with how my mind was shook up so much, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to remember parts of my memory that I am not able to recall at the moment. Memories are special, and you should treasure them while you have them, because you never know what may happen in life to take them away.
2.
a. I was interested in to topic of the tip of the tongue codes.
b. I like this because it happens a lot. At least for me it does. I can’t always recall the things that I want to, and it seems that is on the tip of my tongue. Life seems to go through with things that you currently have to remember day after day. Memories can be difficult to recall because maybe at the time you were interested in something else as you were learning it, or maybe you weren’t able to focus fully on the subject. Then as you are trying to recall the subject because, although the information was saved in your memory you don’t know all of where things are in your memory and you have to organize the information, although it is confusing to where all the little pieces go. So having it on the tip of the tongue may just be a way of organizing things before you can recall all the things that are there in your thoughts.
3.
a. I am interested in the speed-up principal.
b. This is where information is practiced and it helps the learner get more information from the memory systems, at a quicker rate than that of not practicing. With more practice the better that you are going to remember things. You are learning things over and over to remember things that you need so you can get better as you go along. You pick up traits as you learn things to help you get better memory recall. Practicing makes you force your mental process to remember things that you won’t be able to by just seeing the information once. Then by being able to practice multiple times on something you find hard to do, by practicing it you can make it simple.
4.
a. I thought the theories were kind of boring to read about.
b. You have to lean so many theories that end to get repetitive. Then these get even more boring to go over in multiple things and classes or books that I have read. Theories are full of things that are to be done it all things must have a ways to work. So they try and figure out all the things of the brain. Yet, we still are not positive how everything works in the brain.
5. I think how this chapter breaks things down, how long memories last for each memory system. How long the memory stays in either the LTM or the STM.
6. This chapter connects STM and LTM to the previous chapters. It explains how their durations on how they keep memories in your memory systems. They are very important on how you remember things.
7.
a. I would like to learn more about autobiographical memories.
b. I want to know if there is anything I can do to get my memories back from the past, or if they are just lost for good.
8. I was thinking about all the people that found out all the things that we know now, how they came to the conclusion that something was there to study. There are things that need to be seen in this world and that means that there are things that the mind is very complex and the people that have learned what they have were very good at what they did.
9. Autobiographical memories, STM, LTM, tip of the tongue codes, speed-up principal
1. One thing that I found interesting from this chapter was the description of the KC study. This study described how a man's memory was effected after he was in a motorcycle crash that had done damage to the right parietal-occipital and frontal-parietal areas of his brain. This damage led to KC's loss of the ability to form or access episodic memories. Episodic memories are help in our long term memory system that encompass experiences and events from our own lives. Episodic memories are a type of autobiographic memory. Though KC had lost all of his ability to form or access episodic memories, his ability to use and form semantic memories was left unharmed. Episodic memories are also stored in our long term memory, but these memories contain memories of how things work, rules, concepts, and abstract ideas. This allowed for KC to live a normal life in the sense that he was capable of performing the same tasks as before and learning new tasks, he was just unable to hold memories or actually doing those things. I find case studies like this interesting because I think they are great examples of exactly what each type of memory holds and is responsible for as well as showing that the memory process and different kinds of memory all take place in different areas of the brain.
2. I found it interesting to learn that information that is processed, coded, and organized within our self schema shows to be more easily recalled and is shown to stay within our long term memory longer. Our self schema is the internal representation and organization of who we believe that we are and the different attributes that we believe define us. The studies have shown that information that we are able to refer to ourselves or connect it into our self schema is the category of information that will be the most deeply coded into our long term memory. I thought it was interesting that the type of information that is brought in can determine the type of encoding that takes place with that incoming information. Knowing this can help with improving memory on particular information by making an effort to relate it to your personal self schema.
3. I found it interesting to read about the different ways that we reconstruct our memories as time goes on. I liked the example given with the original story and the retellings of the story to help show the different types of information that was changed from one story to the next. The use of omission is one that most people recognize as time goes on with recalling memories. The information dwindles to only the details that makes sense and get to the point. Information transformation is also a mechanism that I believe most people easily notice when reconstructing memories. It is easier to remember and recall things when it is done so in our own words that are common to our vocabulary. We use rationalization by adding information to the memory when it is reconstructed in order to have the memory make more logical sense. We use transformation of sequence when reconstructing memories which shifts occurrences of events and information that are involved with that memory to what makes the most sense to us, regardless of that's how it truly was. I found it particularly interesting that we tend to relate recalled information to a common theme of the memory. This is not something that I would have picked up on while reading the different versions of the story. I also did not notice that the participant's attitude shapes what information and the degree of that information that is remembered. It is interesting to understand how our memories are changed overtime, especially when we believe them to be the complete truth and recollection of what took place.
4. The part that I found the least interesting in this section was the explanation of the connectionist model of memory. I would have liked for this section to go into more detail as to how this model of memory functioned. I found myself confused as to exactly how the system worked. I was unsure if this was not explained in great detail because it is not as supported as some of the other models or if it goes into extreme complex explanation that would not fit well into the chapter. I would have liked for it to go into more explanation as to how it is involved both with the memory processing as well as the mentioned involvement with action and representation of knowledge.
5. I think that it is most important to understand that there are different models and ways of thinking about how long term memory is set up and organized, meaning that it is not for certain exactly how long term memory is set up. Though there are difference, each of them sets up a system that involves areas across the brain and a variety of different types of memory. Though there is still much that is left to uncover about our long term memory, it should be understood that the basic process of stimuli coming are transformed into neural activity and sent to the brain. In the brain they are then organized and sent to different areas of the brain and processed, with some being sent through short term memory to be processed for long term storage. We also know that even with the different models as to how long term memories are stored there have been findings that show that our memories that are stored and recalled are manipulated and changed by our own minds in different ways and for different reasons. There may be a lot left to find but it is good to understand the basis that is set for the topic and what can be built off of for future research.
6. This chapter gives many models for the same process which builds on to the first chapter where it was explained that models are not facts set in stone. We continue to research and uncover new information in a field that allow for people to reform and shape models to best fit our current understanding of the memory system. This chapter describes different methods that are used to study long term memory which builds off of many methods that we learned about in previous chapters such as PET scans, EEGS, and the use of electrical probes in the brain. These technologies help to show that memory takes place in many different areas of the brain rather than being localized in one area which has been discussed for a number of processes in previous chapters. The connectionist model builds on to the neuropsychology chapter with the idea that neurons and connections are formed with memories and those that are used more and make strong connections are those that stay and are easily recalled.
7. I would like to learn more about the chemical and structural changes that occur when a memory goes from short term memory to long term memory. I would especially like to learn more about the different chemical changes that help to increase the change that an experience is remembered. I found it extremely interesting to read how studies have shown that the secretion of epinephrine into the blood system has been linked to the enhancement of that memory of the event which cause the secretion.
8. While reading this chapter I began to think about the different ways that memories are manipulated as we reconstruct them. It made me wonder how much I have reconstructed my own memories of past experiences and would like to talk with others that had the same experiences to compare how our reconstructions of the same events compare. I also began to think about the ways that I could help myself improve getting information from classes into long term memory by somehow connecting it to my self schema.
9. Terms used- long term memory, episodic memory, autobiographic memory, self schema, coding, omission, rationalization, dominant theme, transformation of information, transformation of sequence, participant attitude, connectionist model, PET, EEG, short term memory
1) When reading the subject of very long term memory I thought that using high school yearbooks to research how long someone can keep memories a very interesting way to test memory. For this study, researchers tested almost 400 people on their memories of names and photos of people they graduated with, from old yearbooks. There were different interval levels tested, ranging from just a few months out of high school and up to 48 years. First, they were asked to remember everyone they graduated with. Then, photographs were randomly selected from the yearbook and they were asked to identify the individual. Third, they were asked to recognize names of their former classmates from a list. Then, they were asked to match names with pictures and pictures with names.
What they found is that face recognition was really high, at almost 90 percent over 34 years, while name recognition and name matching declined after 15 years. It surprised the researchers that very long term memory lasts as long as it does. How someone is able to remember for so long tells us that the degree to which we can remember something is associated with the amount of encoding and rehearsal. To figure out the amount of rehearsal, the researchers had the participants fill out questionnaires on their level of participation in high school, as well as whether they attended high school reunions.
The researchers also tested long term memory for Spanish. They wanted to find out to what degree individuals could remember Spanish after taking it in high school, over a span of up to 50 years. Tests on reading comprehension and recall, as well as tests on vocabulary and grammar were given. Not surprising, was that the more thorough of a Spanish education, the more recall there was. Knowledge of Spanish generally fell sharply after three years, but remained stable for the next 30. Much of the Spanish originally learned was still recalled after 50 years. This kind of memory is regarded as permastore, which is permanent.
2) Autobiographical memories I found quite interesting. Autobiographical memories are just as they sound, which is a memory of one’s own life. The memories we store also can tell a lot about the kind of person we are and our perception of our selves. LTM does not just record everything, without reason. Certain times of our lives become more memorable than others, such as our first car, school colors, and the name of our hometown or the floor plan of our childhood home. It isn’t possible for us to remember everything, even if we say we never will forget. We tend to remember the most important or odd things about our lives. Research in this area of memory can be difficult to find because it's hard to contest someone’s personal memory. However, certain events can be validated by other close family members or friends, and those types of memories are generally quite accurate. On the other hand when researching emotion and attitude, the accuracy isn’t quite so good.
One study done by Linton, a psychologist, looked at a concentration of episodic memories over a 6 year period. Every day, she wrote a brief description of at least two events that happened during the day. Then, every month she randomly selected two cards and tried to recall the events listed on the card. She also rated the memory for its significance and degree of emotionality both at time of recall and when writing the card. The results of this study indicated that the ability to recall every day, episodic events declined at a steady rate over time. Linton indicated there were two types of forgetting, with the first one associated with repeated events, such as meetings. These types of memories are easily blurred together. The second was just simply forgetting. Even if there was a strong emotion attached to the event, it didn’t necessarily mean the recall would be high.
3) Nuns and Alzheimer’s was the last interesting thing I found interesting. Alzheimer’s disease is a disease that first attacks short term memories, but then eventually long term memories are affected in advanced stages. In some cases, patients cannot eat or sit up without assistance. The cause of the disease are not concrete, but some feel as though there is a link with diet and exercise. Daniel Snowden began a study on Alzheimer’s, using a group of nuns in Minnesota. They kept meticulous health and biographical records, with a lifestyle that is almost exactly the same for every woman there. The nuns also agreed to have regular health checkups with blood tests and DNA samples. They also donated their brains after their death. This factor is important, a definite diagnosis of Alzheimer’s can only be made when looking at the extent of brain damage. Snowden found was that the more articulate the nun was, the less damage there was to the brain. This has led researchers to indicate that exercises that help the brain, such as puzzles or reading, can help in the prevention of Alzheimer’s.
4a) I found the chapter to be very interesting and I really can’t find anything that I didn’t enjoy reading.
5) One thing I can think of that would be most useful to cognitive psychology is that there is a capacity to what we can remember. Also, the way we remember things is so very charged by how we see ourselves and others.
6) This chapter build on long term memory systems to a greater extent.
7) I feel that I would like to learn more about autobiographical memory if there are any studies out there. Why I am interested in this is because I feel like I can remember a lot about my life, but I'm not perfect so I would like to see how much an average person really does remember about themselves.
8) This chapter made me think about my own memories.
Terms: Very long term memory, long term memory, autobiographical memories, episodic memory, procedural memory, Alzheimer’s, permastore.
1. The first thing that I found interesting in the chapter was the discussion of very long-term memories (VTLM). I found this topic to be interesting because it is typically the type of memories that come to mind when people talk about memory. Remembering things such as people's names and faces is important and it was interesting to read about the various studies that have been done on the subject. The results of these studies was also interesting, as I didn't expect there to be a very high level of recall of either the names or faces of former classmates decades after graduation. The study involving the retention of knowledge of the Spanish language was also interesting and good to know considering I took Spanish myself in high school and can relate to the 3-year decline in knowledge they recorded.
2. The discussion of codes and the tip of the tongue phenomenon was also interesting to me. Knowing that information is coded in three ways (acoustically, visually, and semantically) seems like it will be an important thing to know in understanding long-term memory and possibly cognitive psychology as a whole. The tip of the tongue discussion was interesting because it is something everyone has experienced at some point and therefore can relate to. Knowing the reason this phenomenon occurs is due to the way information is coded in long-term memory helps to remember those codes in the future by relating it back to the TOT state.
3. The third thing that I found particularly interesting in the chapter was the general discussion of the types of memory, particularly the distinctions between explicit and implicit memory and episodic and semantic memory. The knowledge of the various types of long-term memory is obviously important information in understanding the subject and I feel that this part of the chapter did a very good job explaining the subject. Reading through the various types of information long-term memory stores makes me think of how much the LTM can be taken for granted.
4. Unfortunately nothing in the chapter was particularly uninteresting, like most of the chapters seem to be. Memory is a very interesting subject and long-term memory is particularly interesting to me, even more so than short-term memory was.
5. I think the section involving the various types of memory and information that is stored in LTM will be the most useful in my understanding of cognitive psychology.
6. This chapter builds mainly on the previous chapter, as it is the continuation of the discussion of memory. There is some discussion of topics brought up in other previous chapters as well, such as various brain structures involvement in the storage of LTM.
7. I would like to learn more about the subject of Alzheimers and its effects on memory. I didn't use it as a subject for last week due to the fact that this week was about LTM and I felt it would work well as a topic this week. Some of the studies I have read about previously also sounded interesting and the topic itself is important.
8. The main thoughts that I had while reading through the chapter were relating my own personal examples of recalling people/events/etc. to the various information that was presented throughout the chapter. The discussion of permastore and autobiographical memories in particular caused me to draw comparisons with my own experiences.
Terms: very long-term memories, LTM, codes, TOT, explicit/implicit memeory, episodic/semantic memory, permastore, autobiographical memories, Alzheimer's
1a. One topic I found interesting was the concept of permastore, or very long term memory (VLTM). An experiment conducted by Barick and Wittlinger showed that people have highly accurate and extensive memories. In the tasks performed the participants were asked to recall, using various methods, the names of former classmates. The first task would ask the participant to freely recall the names, the next would ask them to remember the names after seeing a picture, or recognizing the names on a random list. The findings were that in all the various tasks there was significant accuracy of the recall. Accuracy remained high even after 34 years. Another study by Bahrick showed that participants across a fifty year span retained a fairly high level of what they learned in high school Spanish classes.
1b. I found this interesting because I often wonder what I’m going to retain 20 years from now. Will everything I learn in school be in my long term memory, or will it just be things that were particularly important to me, a mix of both perhaps? It seems from these studies that self-important information as well as rehearsed material such as school work both have the potential to enter our VLTM.
2a. Another topic I found pretty amusing was tip of the tongue state (TOT). In this state you are in an instance where you cannot recall the exact word you are looking for but are able to describe aspects of it instead. For example, you may be trying to think of the name of your favorite child hood book. You may say things like, “You know the one, about the little train, it had a picture of train on the front and the title had blue letters!”. You could go on and on describing it and it may be hours later after the conversation is over that you suddenly remember the name, The Little Engine That Could!
2b. I found this interesting because the example in the book made me think of many times where I have had this happen. When I lived in Hawaii I found that many people would say “Da Kine” for various items they couldn’t think of the name for. For example, I worked at Kmart in electronics and a guy came up and asked me for da kine battery for his remote, and he went on to describe them before I finally said which ones they were.
3a. A final thing I found interesting is the level of processing model of memory in comparison with the Atkinson-Shiffren model. The A-S model of processing differs from the LOP model by stating that you have to actively work to put information from STM into LTM, through the mechanism of rehearsal. It was stated in the A-S model that you had to consciously attend to information in STM to get it to stay put in LTM system. The LOP system differs in that it isn’t a straight forward matter of rehearsing information that gets it into our LTM but it is rather the level of processing that we use to attend to the information. There are many different levels and information that gets processed at the deepest level is said to be retained the best.
3b. I found this interesting because we have been contrasting these two models to the theory our own culture holds on memory in my memory and language course. It is interesting to note the differences between the models as they emerged throughout the timeline of research and how our opinion on memory functioning changes throughout time.
4a. I did not quite understand the connectionist model. From what I gathered it’s a system that maps neural processing units of the brain and this explains memory functioning apparently. I get that it is handy to map out brain activations in the human brain in regards to memory processes but I don’t see how it can elaborate on the functions of STM, LTM, etc..
4b. I didn’t find it interesting because I didn’t quite understand the concept all the way.
5. I think the most important thing to know is how each of the models of memory works and how they contrast from one another. Also knowing their limitations and strengths in explaining memory as well as the one that is best supported in the cognitive field.
6a. This chapter elaborates on previous chapters by building our knowledge of models that have presented over time and even delves deeper into the processing of LTM, a subject which was only briefly discussed in earlier chapters.
7a. I would like to know more about the connectionist model and how it explains various phenomena.
7b. I know I said it was the most uninteresting topic, but I only feel that way because I didn’t get the clarity I wanted from reading the section.
8. As with all the previous chapters, and almost any school text I read, I try to relate it to my personal experiences as to more deeply process the reading. It is very useful to read this information on LTM and ask myself if I’m aware of some of these processes going on in my own mind.
9. Connectionist model, levels of processing, tip of the tongue state, very long term memory/permastore.
1.A. Distribution of Long Term Memory.
B. Chapter six tells us that long term memories are not stored in one place, but instead long term memory functions are spread throughout the brain. One example it gives is that PET scans have been able to help researchers see that “deep processing” of information happens in the frontal area of the brain. It also claims that that type of memory would be highly specialized. The hippocampus, the adjacent cortex, the thalamus and the cerebral cortex are all involved with long term memory. I find it interesting that we can remember all that we do when our brain can not simply ‘pull out’ a memory from a single area.
2.A.Duration of Long Term Memory.
2.B. Our book discusses two studies in its section on duration of long term memory. In one study the researchers were interested in long term recall of names and photos of former classmates in a yearbook. They found that over the course of 34 years the recognition of faces generally stayed stable. They hypothesized that the subsequent declines 35 years and latter were due to degenerative processes associated with age. In the other study they found that memory of Spanish after learned in high school declined after 3 years but then stayed stable for about 30 years. It is interesting to me that the brain can remember very different stimuli in the form of both images and complex systems of grammar/words from a second language so well.
3.A. Autobiographical Memories.
B. One thing I found interesting about autobiographical memories was that these memories are selective. Our brains do not indiscriminately attempt to store every piece of information that is presented to it. Instead our brains store what is most important. Prior to reading that I had not given the subject much thought and always assumed the brain stores important memories and many other random ones. However upon trying to remember more mundane day to day events from my life, I could not. The only memories I could recall are ones similar to the examples in the text i.e. important life events and affect laden memories.
4.A. Theoretical Analysis of Expertise.
B. I did not find this to not be interesting, just less interesting than other sections of the chapter. It delineates three schools of thought relevant to understanding expertise. These are the mnemonic encoding principle, retrieval structure principle and the speed up principle. These are somewhat interesting to read and helpful for giving context to the research in this area. However, I would also like to have had more examples and citations form previous research that supports these different schools of thought.
5. I think the most important thing for understanding cognitive psychology that was presented in this chapter was the way our brain prioritizes autobiographical memories. This may seem to be of little importance but our brains prioritizing certain things at the expense of other is a recurring theme. In the last chapter on short term memory there was an “executive” part of short term memory that helped determine what stimuli would be processed by the finite resource of working memory. I think it is possible that when trying to learn from future chapters on this topic, it may be helpful to keep in mind that the brain does not operate indiscriminately or in a dumb fashion but instead it is trying to do the best possible job it can at processing whatever the most useful/important stimuli is that it is being presented with.
6. This chapter builds upon the last chapter about short term memory by presenting us with information about how the other part of our memory (long term memory) functions. It helps us understand what happens to information after our very finite working memory finishes processing it. Just like the past chapter explained how long and how much we could hold in working memory, here we learn about the capacity of long term memory and the duration of long term memory.
7. I would really like to learn more about autobiographical memory. More specifically I would like to know what kinds of procedural or declarative memories could trigger one to think about an autobiographical memory. I’m also generally interested by what types of random stimuli can trigger these kinds of memories. For instance, perhaps hearing a song with bagpipes makes you remember a funeral or parade with bagpipes present. Or on a darker note, maybe loud noises or people who look a certain way scare someone because those memories are deemed so important or are so affect laden that those long term memories are much more accessible than say a memory of a driving a car alone for the first time.
8. I thought about how what I remember tends to be important life events just like the text describes in the section on autobiographical memories. I thought about procedural memory and how that might be related to why I don’t remember how to get somewhere with directions or street names but by remerging the ‘procedure’ of actually getting there. I wanted to know what if any structure serves as a management role for long term memory or potentially for both short term and long term memory.
9. short term memory, long term memory, autobiographical memory, procedural memory, declarative memory, executive, mnemonic encoding, retrieval structure principle, speed up principle, hippocampus, thalamus, cerebral cortex, PET scan
1.A. Distribution of Long Term Memory.
B. Chapter six tells us that long term memories are not stored in one place, but instead long term memory functions are spread throughout the brain. One example it gives is that PET scans have been able to help researchers see that “deep processing” of information happens in the frontal area of the brain. It also claims that that type of memory would be highly specialized. The hippocampus, the adjacent cortex, the thalamus and the cerebral cortex are all involved with long term memory. I find it interesting that we can remember all that we do when our brain can not simply ‘pull out’ a memory from a single area.
2.A.Duration of Long Term Memory.
2.B. Our book discusses two studies in its section on duration of long term memory. In one study the researchers were interested in long term recall of names and photos of former classmates in a yearbook. They found that over the course of 34 years the recognition of faces generally stayed stable. They hypothesized that the subsequent declines 35 years and latter were due to degenerative processes associated with age. In the other study they found that memory of Spanish after learned in high school declined after 3 years but then stayed stable for about 30 years. It is interesting to me that the brain can remember very different stimuli in the form of both images and complex systems of grammar/words from a second language so well.
3.A. Autobiographical Memories.
B. One thing I found interesting about autobiographical memories was that these memories are selective. Our brains do not indiscriminately attempt to store every piece of information that is presented to it. Instead our brains store what is most important. Prior to reading that I had not given the subject much thought and always assumed the brain stores important memories and many other random ones. However upon trying to remember more mundane day to day events from my life, I could not. The only memories I could recall are ones similar to the examples in the text i.e. important life events and affect laden memories.
4.A. Theoretical Analysis of Expertise.
B. I did not find this to not be interesting, just less interesting than other sections of the chapter. It delineates three schools of thought relevant to understanding expertise. These are the mnemonic encoding principle, retrieval structure principle and the speed up principle. These are somewhat interesting to read and helpful for giving context to the research in this area. However, I would also like to have had more examples and citations form previous research that supports these different schools of thought.
5. I think the most important thing for understanding cognitive psychology that was presented in this chapter was the way our brain prioritizes autobiographical memories. This may seem to be of little importance but our brains prioritizing certain things at the expense of other is a recurring theme. In the last chapter on short term memory there was an “executive” part of short term memory that helped determine what stimuli would be processed by the finite resource of working memory. I think it is possible that when trying to learn from future chapters on this topic, it may be helpful to keep in mind that the brain does not operate indiscriminately or in a dumb fashion but instead it is trying to do the best possible job it can at processing whatever the most useful/important stimuli is that it is being presented with.
6. This chapter builds upon the last chapter about short term memory by presenting us with information about how the other part of our memory (long term memory) functions. It helps us understand what happens to information after our very finite working memory finishes processing it. Just like the past chapter explained how long and how much we could hold in working memory, here we learn about the capacity of long term memory and the duration of long term memory.
7. I would really like to learn more about autobiographical memory. More specifically I would like to know what kinds of procedural or declarative memories could trigger one to think about an autobiographical memory. I’m also generally interested by what types of random stimuli can trigger these kinds of memories. For instance, perhaps hearing a song with bagpipes makes you remember a funeral or parade with bagpipes present. Or on a darker note, maybe loud noises or people who look a certain way scare someone because those memories are deemed so important or are so affect laden that those long term memories are much more accessible than say a memory of a driving a car alone for the first time.
8. I thought about how what I remember tends to be important life events just like the text describes in the section on autobiographical memories. I thought about procedural memory and how that might be related to why I don’t remember how to get somewhere with directions or street names but by remerging the ‘procedure’ of actually getting there. I wanted to know what if any structure serves as a management role for long term memory or potentially for both short term and long term memory.
9. short term memory, long term memory, autobiographical memory, procedural memory, declarative memory, executive, mnemonic encoding, retrieval structure principle, speed up principle, hippocampus, thalamus, cerebral cortex, PET scan
1) Duration of LTM. I found this interesting because of the example they gave for permastore- very long-term memory. They had a study with 392 high school graduates and tested if they could remember old names with pictures. They tested their memories 9 times from between 3.3 months and 48 years. They were given identification tasks of pictures and names, names with pictures, just pictures, and just names. The recognition rate for faces of classmates were high. Name recognition and name matching declined through the years. They believed that the decline was because of degeneration with aging.
2)Capacity of LTM. This is just about the same as duration, which I found interesting too. They once again had people look at pictures 612 of them. The experimenter then picked 68 of those pictures out and paired them with new pictures. The participants were then asked to tell which ones were from the previous set and not new. Having asked the participants right after showing them the pictures there was a 96.7% recognition rate. After two hours had passed they did the test again with another set of pictures old/new and the recognition rate went up too 99.7%. They then did this with color slides. The recognition rates were about the same for this too. After about four months they saw a decline to about 63%. This appeared that there was other pictures they were taking in and it was intervening with their memory. Showing that they needed to gain new information by forgetting some of the old information.
3)Nuns and Alzheimer’s. This was another part of the chapter that was really interesting. They asked nuns if they could test them by getting blood work, DNA samples, and once they passed their brains. They wanted to test how their brains would look seeing that they all lived together. The nuns had the same diets and routines. This gave them a pretty good study for correlation. They all did the same thing so if they were showing the same results in their brains there is a chance that it could mean something for their study. In the section is says that the nuns brain training was making them less susceptible to Alzheimer's.
4)I didn’t really find a section that I didn’t at least find one interesting thing involved in it.
5) This will be useful because it deals a lot with memory and which areas of the brain hold that memory. It also has ways the brain works in storing memories.
6) This all relates through the functioning of the brain and different areas that are used and needed for different functions.
7) I really found tip of the tongue, VLTM, and the case with KS interesting. I think that story with KS how he could remember items and events but could never actually remember him being apart of anything that dealt with it.
8) How do these things affect me. I thought about how long my memory would last if I was involved in any of these studies. I also thought a lot about the Alzheimer's and how I could prevent being a victim to it and helping my family too.
9) LTM, perastome, alzheimers, tip of the tongue.
1) the section about codes is one thing that i found to be interesting
i found it to be interesting how something so random can bring up things that you had forgotten about. you can sit there and remember everything about it, like what the person was wearing, what the day was like. the smell in the air. all kinds of stuff and yet you cant remember the person that you were with or there name. its right there at the tip of your tongue but you cant find it. you think about it for hours and then you start thinking about something else. and then boom the name comes out and maybe the people that you are around you are, like what are you talking about then you talk about that person all over again then they understand why you just shouted out Jim was his name.
2) memory and pictures
i found this to be interesting because it makes sense to me. if you showed me words or names i couldn't remember them. but pictures yes i can. i see it when i drive places too. i cant remember the name of the street but i got a picture in my head of what the turn looked like. i can see it when you play those photo hunt games ( like the ones in the bar) its pretty easy for me to find the differences or what is missing. even after a few days you can go back and still remember it.
3)Auto memories
i thought this was neat because you don't remember this night forever.its neat how random my brain is sometimes. looking back i can remember quite a lot from my childhood, but no birthdays or things that you think you could remember. from my deployment i don't know if this is part of the PTSD but it seems like i can remember everyday. and those are the things i would like to forget. i remember the first day that i saw a cloud. it was pretty exciting. phone calls people in my platoon i can see all their faces but no names. it is weird how selective our memories are. what makes it something that you cant forget, but a night that you want to remember forever or say you wont forget is gone in a week or two.
4) i read these chapters and i never find anything that i didn't like or found uninteresting, i like it all
5)all the stuff about memories i think that will all be useful
6)it builds on the memory models and how it all works, explains more on why you can remember some things and not others
7) i think that i would like to learn more about the auto memories. why some things you remember and others you don't. maybe why the things in your life you want to forget are always there and the things that you want to keep seem to disappear.
8) as i read this chapter i guess my mind was going every where. examples that were brought up brought back some stuff that i had forgotten about. like the trying to remember the name of the pop, you can remember everything about it but the name. things from your past that you can remember but never the nights that you don't want to forget.