It's Magical, It's Malleable- It's MEMORY
What is the relationship between memory and selfhood?
As described in the article written by Jill Neimark, the most solid part of selfhood are our emotions and experiences which these two are both parts of our memories. Memories are like the stored information of our experience which usually is attached by emotions. However, some memories can also be created by our imaginations in which the article referred to as “creativity blending and reblending the experience and emotion”. Without these memories, we will not be who we are today and therefore, there is an effect to selfhood but with the misconceptions of memories, we can also become someone we are actually not. Memories are not always the reliable source of information.
What new discovery about memory do you find most interesting?
The new discovery that interests me most is concerning memories and senses in relation. Our brain can record memory even before it records the senses. In other words, we can remember things even before realizing it. Amazing how the memory part of our brain works but yet no one seems to be able to figure out how it actually works.
What is the homunculus crisis?
The homunculus crisis is the idea introduced by Gerald Edelmen; it is the mystery state of confusion of where and how some memories are suddenly reminded in our minds. The issue is simply who and how these memories are suddenly activated into our brains causing these memories.
Which theory of dreams finds support in the experiments by Lynch?
“Lynch is known for his inspiring, if slightly mad, brilliance. His laboratory found that LTP is strongest when stimulation is delivered to the hippocampus in a frequency that corresponds to the slow rhythms of theta, of deep relaxation.” (5) LTD refers to consolidation of memories during the most relaxed state of the human brain, simply when we’re sleeping. Researches prove that humans obtain more information if getting enough sleep. Lynch’s experiment proves how information can be better restored during sleeping state, particularly, REM sleep.
How can some memories become indelible?
The term “fight-or-flight” refers to the reaction of the body in a traumatic event. When faced with trouble or dangerous situations, the body chooses to either fight, meaning react back or flight, meaning run away. During “fight-or-flight”, the body releases hormones, particularly stress hormones which gives human the strength to do things beyond its normal capacity. When faced with a traumatic event, the information gets stored much deeper than normal events; this is because the body needs this essential information in times of need, like facing similar situations, the body can take prior precautions. However, the brain does not know its limit. The memory can be too deeply stored and will most likely haunt you without going away.
How can amnesia and repression be explained?
Amnesia and repression are two diverse ideas. Amnesia is when a person lost his or her memories because the memories were never encoded since the first place whereas repression is when memories are retrieved. Amnesia may be cause by one accident while repression may be caused by a repeated number of bad experiences. Siegel suspected that the causation of these two ideas is due to the malfunction of the hippocampus. Sometimes memories detach because of a continuous traumatic events, so the explicit memories are forgotten but the implicit memories remain.
Explain the following statement: “Memory is more reconstructive than reproductive.”
Human can remember most events well but all the details are miscalculated. “Memory is more reconstructive than reproductive.”- Memories can be encoded, retrieved and even encoded back or with added information but it’s not useful because all the little details are overlooked and forgotten; therefore, not reproductive.
What new paradigm of memory is now emerging?
The new paradigm of memory is that is can be seen as a combination of facts, what really happens and our own imaginations. Sometimes people remember things that did not actually happen, all because of his or her own creativity and imaginations. This mixture is synergized with experience and emotions into creating memories.
After reading this article, what conclusions can you make about memory?
Memories can not be easily understood. Not all of its happenings can be explained with theories and experiments. Some believe that memories shape up a person’s character and being but memories can be delusive or fantasized. It can be created and at the same time destroyed. In simple words, it is as fragile as the egg’s shell when you don’t want it to be and sometimes can be as tough as bricks and bones. We cannot really choose which memories we want to remember and which ones to forget. It seems as if memories are controlling us instead of us controlling it.
Memory is Often a ReconstructionThis demonstration proves that our memory is not necessary an accurate reflection of our past experience but rather distorted through reconstructive nature of memory. We were shown eight shapes of figures with little time for each figure to be encoded. We were told before hand that eventually, we’ll have to write out these shapes.
The figures were all so different and unrelated. After seeing all the shapes, we were given a sheet of paper with clues to help us draw the shapes. The tricky part is that the person sitting next to you will be given a different set of words and the result is that the shapes drawn tend to follow the clue even after seeing the same images. For the first image for instance, one person was given the word eyeglasses and the other person, dumbbells and the images turn out being different. This idea is massively important in faculty like law, since false testimony can be leaded by lawyer’s word trick.
The Chain Rumor ActivityMr. Anthony started the activity by asking for four volunteers. Three of them were asked to leave the class and one was asked to stay. Mr. Anthony read a story to the first volunteer:
A plane named Aquantus 747 was taking off from Bangkok International Airport to Los Angeles. One of the flight attendant named Jack Straw (People’s Revolutionary Army) hijacked the plane with a magnum gun, forcing the pilot, Jane Smith to fly to Cuba. The pilot radioed for help, threw the microphone at him and he fell on the ground. The angry passengers tied him up and the hijacker was arrested.
As demonstrated in the experiment, when they story was retold, information is either changed or lost.
1. leveling: simplifying material
e.g. he was arrested, Jane Smith, angry passengers, Los Angeles, People’s Revolutionary Army: the information was lost
2. sharpening: highlighting or emphasizing some information
e.g. Bangkok International Airport, Microphone: information that was emphasized
3. assimilation: apply personal information to the story
e.g. two pilots, 7:47, terrorist: information added into the story based on one’s prior knowledge
To conclude, this demonstration proves how scary rumors or gossips are. As stories are retold, the information is distorted and therefore; easily misunderstood.
Meaning Enhances RecallWe were told prior to the experiment that we will get to see a set of words. At the bottom of the paper, a letter will be displayed, either an “A” or a “B”. If an A is shown, we were told to count the number of syllables on the word. If a B is shown, we had to make a judgment whether the word is associated with a positive or negative connotation. Throughout the experiment, 20 words were shown with an equal number of each. There were a set of controls, such as the amount of time each word was shown and also how many times they were recited.
After all the words were both shown and recited, we were told to write the words down. The words do not have to be in order. The results shown in class was a wide difference in numbers ranging from 10 to 20. To conclude, information can be easily encoded if:
- participants concentrate throughout the experiment
- participants connotes the word related with either meaning or emotions
- participants should group words in chunk to be able to remember more words in a chunk instead of individual words
However, the most important part of this experiment is whether or not the “B” words, which is related to emotions and meaning will help us remember the words better. The result of the experiment is as shown below:
Number of students wit more A than B
3
Number of students with same A and B
4
Number of students with more B and A
9
To conclude this experiment, more people were able to remember the words related to meaning compared to both the numbers of students remembering more A words and number of students remembering the same exact A and B words combined. The graph is bimodal because there were two modes, which are 10 (the least) and 15 (the middle).
Memory VDOThe content of the video is mostly the things we already learnt in class, for instance, the pieces of information we can obtain (5-9, average of 7) or the idea of information being grouped up in a chunk.
Philip Zimbardo constructed all sorts of experiments, both on himself and on the audiences to prove his statement. The amount of information we remember depend on many factors, i.e. concentration, motivation, etc. To improve one’s memory, psychologists suggest chunking. Instead of remembering 7 pieces of information, we can remember 7 chunks of information making the numbers add up more.
Your memories also depend on who you are and what you already know. Some of the subjects that we are totally interested in, information on those subjects can be remembered much more easily than those that we have to interest in. Long-term memory can also be lost through retrieval. Retrieval is when information is lost through lack of practice.
Demonstration on Short-Term Memory (with words)
The second experiment we did in class was concerning with words. Numbers of words were recited in a list and we were to write down as many words as we can remember. There was however a confusion in the classroom because we all related this experiment to the previous one and we confused, thinking that we had to remember the words in order. However, because the whole class was confused, the results may have only affected our overall performance but not the individual’s performance, making the experiment still accurate.
Research says that the result usually acts like a serial affect where the graph curves down by the middle and curves back up by the end. This was because most people tend to remember the first few words being recited and the last few words being the ones they just heard. The word “night” was recited at least three times, making it the word with the highest number of people being able to recall the word “night”. A strange thing though was how people heard the word “sleep” without it being said. This is called constructive memory, how these people imagined they heard the word because they related it with other words being said, i.e. dark, bed and snoring. Psychologists said that if people chunk words together, it may be easier to remember; therefore, the words turn and toss should have been remembered together (meaning that the people to remember the word turn are most likely to remember toss. However, this was not proved in our experiment.
The lowest number collected was four whereas the highest was twelve. The mean of the data however, is two: proving the theory in the previous experiment that people can remember around seven pieces of information.
Demonstrating Short-term MemoryWe did an activity in class which demonstrates each of our abilities to remember numbers. The numbers were recited starting from three digits and increases with different arrangements each time. According the psychologists, normal people can remember about seven (plus or minus two) pieces of information for each short-term memory. The result of the class clearly proves the point. The most information that the students were able to obtain were nine digits whereas the least was five.
There are several ways to improve one’s short-term memory in terms of capacity. One way is to relate the numbers into a story or something which reminds you of the numbers (i.e. birth year or telephone numbers). Or, you can try to separate the numbers into chunks, or in other words, group it. This experiment does prove that people’s capacity to remember numbers are somewhat similar depending on each people’s strategies.
"Cognitive Learning"My First Memory
My most blurred and unsure memory is probably when I was around three or four years old. My family and I went to Hong Kong and were walking on the street. Suddenly, I saw this poor looking beggar on the side of the street and my father tossed a coin to that beggar. Once I saw that I walked over to the beggar and took away her can full of coins. She swore at me in a language I don’t understand and my dad tried to grab it out of my hands while I refused. I ran away and my brother caught me in time, took the can from my hand and I cried. As I thought, before writing this article, I was doubting whether this memory was the incident I remembered or if it's a scene that I've been told. As I expected, this incident was probably not the real memory I had because our brains were only programmed to remember the things that happened to us at the age 4-5 and this happened to me when I was 3. When we did the memory analysis in class, we ranked the memories as either negative, positive, or neutral. To my surprise, most of them were either positive, or negative. The explanation is that we tend to remember things that are involved with our emotions because they are more significant. The things that stand out in our minds are obviously those more remarkable ones.
