Extending Reading:
"It's Magical it's malleable, it's memory."

1. What is the relationship between memory and selfhood?
:”We remember, therefore we are.” The article mentioned that our selves are created by the “creative blending and reblending of experiences and emotions.” So our identities are defined by our memories of those passed events and feelings. Some of us think that our experiences constructed our personalities; however, it is rather the memories of what we experienced that shaped who we are. Certain psychologists would say that memories are like “bedrock”; we remember exactly what happened. But later in the article you would find that memories are malleable that you can even create the false memory. Therefore, we can conclude that our sense of self is acceptable to changes.

2. What new discovery about memory do you find most interesting?
: The new discovery that I found really interesting is the new sophisticated Pet scan that are able to recorded the neural impulses that are the one that hold our memories. Another one that I am fascinated by is the drugs that might be use to prevent the certain diseases that cause memory loss. If the psychologists are able to prove that they can be used to prevent those diseases, one’s life might not be ruined. Therefore I think the drugs will be very beneficial.

3. What is the homunculus crisis?
: Homunculus crisis is the mystery associated when memories that psychologist could not be able to explain. Who is controlling our memories? Why do we remember a certain events, but not the other? Do we really have control on our memories?

4. Which theory of dreams finds support in the experiments by Lynch?
: Lynch proves that rats’ memories improved when they sleep. The brains would send particular patterns of impulses, which are called ‘theta waves’. Lynch’s experiment supports the biological dream theories; Vertes’s and Hobson’s. Vertes’s theory states that we dream because our brains prevent our body to clip into a coma stage by sending an impulse. Another one is Hobson’s, which states that our brainstems randomly send neural impulses.

5. How can some memories become indelible?
: There are some memories that are indelible, which mostly are the emotionally arousing experiences. Sometimes the brains might take that kind of situations as the “fight or flight” situation. Our systematic bodies would secrete the stress hormones, which surprisingly have effects on our neurons. They strengthen the storage of memory of that event. That occurs naturally because we need to remember those events in order to survive in the future. Therefore it all depends on the hormonal regulations.

6. How can amnesia and repression be explained?
: Many psychologists believe that amnesia and repression is the result of the malfunction of hippocampus. It is possible that the subjects remove their conscious in the repeated traumatic events, thus, the memory dissociates and eventually was lost. However, the repression might not even be true since sometimes, our imagination and perception could be confused because according the research, when we visually imagine something, there’s an activation in the part of brain that works when we percepts something. Therefore there’re a few explanations for amnesia and repression.

7. Explain the following statement: "Memory is more reconstructive than reproductive."
: Memories have often been lost through times. We build up our memories according to what we already know. We think it should happen that way, therefore, we thought it happen that way. Memory is not reproductive because we are not capable of remembering every detail of an event. It is rather reconstructive because we build our own memories according to the knowledge we already have and the clues we are given.

8. What new paradigm of memory is now emerging?
: The new paradigm of memory that is now emerging is that memories are reconstructed and they are the “blending of fact and friction.” We create and recreate our memories from “experiences and emotions”, and those memories shape us in some way.

9. After reading this article, what conclusions can you make about memory?
: My conclusion on memory is that they are extremely malleable and a very sensitive matter. Some events are stored as a good memory due to our hormonal regulation. Some are vague, because of amnesia or repression resulting from the traumatic events. Some are very indelible, while some are lost through time. After I finish reading this article, the only conclusion I could come to is that the memories are very flexible.

Memory is Often a Reconstruction

Today there’s another activity in class that shows us about how memories could be reconstructed. The teacher showed us a set of pictures, in which we were told to remember, and later we were given a sheet that describes each of those pictures, and we have to draw the images we have seen.

We found out that there’re two different sets of words given to students. And those words influenced how we draw the images. For example, one of the pictures that looks like a crescent moon, on one paper, it says that it is a “crescent moon” and on another one it says that it’s a “C”. Therefore people would reconstruct the images according to what are used to describe them. Those who received the paper that said it’s a letter “C” would draw a big letter “C” while those who got the paper that said it’s a moon, would draw an image that is more similar to the original one.

This experiment demonstrates that memories are often reconstructed to what we already knew. We know how a “C” is written therefore we assume that the picture that was shown before is more like a letter “C”.

The Rumor Chain Activity

Today in class, there was an activity in which we need four volunteers. We started off when Mr. Anthony told a story to the first volunteer and he had to pass it on to the next one, and so on. As a volunteer passed on the story to another one, the class closely observed how the story is changing. Some part of the story has stayed, some has been lost, some has never been mentioned since the first volunteer, etc. And through this activity we reckon three mechanisms:

Levelling: Simplifying materials
There’re a lot of details that have been lost during the volunteers passing on the story. For example, the “hijacker”, the radioed back to Bangkok International Airport, and so on.

Sharpening: highlighting or overemphasizing some materials
Some information are distinct, therefore we are able to remember and to pass on the right details. For example, the pilot throwing the microphone at the hijacker, and the kind of the gun that the hijacker was carrying (magnum), etc.

Assimilation: changing details to better pit the subjects own background or knowledge (schemas)
We change the details into something more familiar to ourselves. The first volunteer changed from the “hijacker” to a “terrorist”. They generalize the information they receive and change it to something else. A good example would be how they change the cockpit into a “pilot cabin”.

Demonstration No.3
“Meaning enhances recall”

In this demonstration, we were told to remember the words. However, this time there would be letters write at the bottom right corner, which determines what we have to do when we saw the word. If the letter was “A”, we need to count the syllable, and if the letter was “B”, we need to decide whether it’s unpleasant or pleasant.

The result was that there’s a wide range of numbers of words we can remember. That is so because:
+ Wide range of Individual differences, different ability to remember the words. There’re people that can only remember 10 words, and there’s a person who can remember 20 words. The results represent the bimodal distribution.
+ Due to the serial position effect, we are able to remember the first few words and the last few words better than the ones in the middle. That is also because of “inference”, in which new information interferes with the memorization of old memory or old information interferes with the encoding of the new information.
+ Another thing that we learn from this demonstration was that meaning enhances recall. We did what we were told to do, and most of us can remember more words that has a letter “B” on the right bottom corner. That is so because it is related the meaning of the words rather than just counting the syllables. Although I remember more “As” than more “Bs”, but the majority of the class is able to remember the “B” words more than the “As”.

Therefore we can conclude that by associating the meaning of the word to what we already know would definitely help us to remember the words.

“Remembering and Forgetting”

What I have learned from the video we have watched in class today is that people remember through the process of rehearsal, and we remember more about it when we are able to relate its context to who we are and what we already know. For example, schemas, which is what we expect from the certain subject, affects how we remember, because we expect things from this and that could distort our memories on that certain things.

Memories are separated into two parts: short-term memory and long-term memory. While long-term memory functions as the storage of memories and passed events/information, the short-term memory are active memories; it is what we are concentrating on. What we are paying attention to. That’s why we got another name for short-term memory, which is “working memory”. According to the research, long-term memories are stored in various part of the brain rather than just one part of the brain. However, the short term memory is stored on in a particular area of the brain. Therefore, if our neurons die, we would suffer from memory loss.

One way that would help us to remember is by chunking the context, in which I have already mentioned in the previous blogs. It improves our ability to remember the long lines of numbers. Another way is through mnemonic training technique, which could be done by associating two things together.

Demonstrating Short-Term Memory

In class, there was an activity where we were presented with numbers and what we need to do was remembering it. The result was that I could remember 8 digits of numbers. What I did was shrunk them in groups and remember it separately, similar to how I learn to memorize the telephone numbers. We learned that by setting them up in groups would definitely help us remember those numbers better. In conclusion, we found out that we can remember about 7 digits of numbers (in the range around 5-9).

Demonstration no.2

Another test we did in class demonstrates the serial position effect. While our teachers said out some words, and we tend to remember the first few words and the last few words. However, there’re two faults in the trend, which was with the word “night” and “pineapple”. A lot of us recognized the word “night” is because our teacher repeated the word 3 times. For the word “pineapple”, it stood out because it wasn’t related to any of the words said, and that is called distinctiveness. Thus we come to the conclusion that repetition and distinctiveness help with our memories.

What comes to my surprise was the average numbers of words we can remember. I can remember 9 words; however, the average was about 7, which is similar to the average digits of numbers we could remember in the previous test.

Another thing was that some of us think we remember the word “sleep” though it has never been said. This is the result of what we called “constructive memory” similar to what we called “dejavu”. I was one of those who think they heard the word “sleep,” because I thought since he was saying the words related to the scene of sleeping, then there should be the word “sleep”.

Unit 7: Cognition

My First Memory
It was when I was in Kindergarden, therefore I should be about 3-5 years old. I was sick and my grandmother was feeding me boiled rice, her own recipe. I remember that it was the best part of getting sick when I was still living with my grandparents.

______________________

Later on, my classmates and I share our memory with each other. We all thought our first memories were around the age of 3-4 years old. However, we can only memorize and recognize something when we were above 4 years old. Therefore, we came to the conclusion to justify our behaviors: either we were told about that incident or we saw it in the photographs. Another important thing that we notice was most of the memories was either negative or positive. Thus, we later learned that we tend to remember the emotional experiences more than any other events. That explains the trend of our first memories.