Group 4 Members:
Donato Zevallos, Amanda Martinez, Lauren Pemberton, Gustavo Diaz, Nia McNeill
Donato Zevallos:
Two forms of long-term memory are an implicit and explicit memory. Both of these types of memory that we use are different from each other. Implicit memory is used when we are doing something without much thought and is usually physical, being already learned through past experiences. This means that we don’t really consciously think, we just act. Our Implicit memory is used almost all of the time. From the moment we get out of bed to brush our teeth, shower, and get dressed for school, to entering the building of City tech and pushing the elevator button that will take us to the floor we’ll need to go on, to just knowing our friends and professor’s name. These are all things we do without much concentration and is an example of implicit memory. As for explicit memory; it takes much more focus to perform a task and is more factual than physical. When we conduct ourselves in doing anything that takes concentration and effort we are most likely using explicit memory. We can use our explicit memory for school, to study, do homework or take a test, there all things we do consciously. So although implicit and explicit memory are both long term memory, they’re still different in ways.
Title: The Memory Illusion
Author: Julia Shaw
Date: June 13,2016
Amanda Martinez:
Memory can be defined as a system that stores information. Unfortunately, not all information is stored easily. Since humans are cognitive learners, we will only remember selective information. This means we will forget the rest. Amnesia is a type of memory disorder, that causes an individual to permanently forget information or memories. One type of amnesia everyone has experience is called “Childhood Amnesia”. This is the inability to remember the first few years of living. I can use a personal example when I was young I wondered away from my parents in an amusement park and got myself lost. Fortunately, I was found by a friendly couple that helped me find my parents. Although this sounds as if I remember this day well, I actually cannot recall ever getting lost. This is due to childhood amnesia. I may not remember this day because I was too young but my parents will always remember it vividly.
Who: Myself, my parents, two strangers
When: 19-20 Years ago
Where: Amusement Park
Lauren Pemberton:
Memory is something we always take for granted. Memory can be taken in from different perspectives. We often use memory without even realizing it. For example, every day we wake up and most likely we do the same thing such as brushing your teeth, eating, walking, putting on clothes. These examples are something that we were taught to do and from then we always remember how to do it. We don’t think of it as a memory but more of something we are required to do every day. Memory tends to be selective especially depending on the person. People often either block out a memory that happened because of how much it hurts while some people remember every single detail and can’t get the images out no matter how much they try. Sometimes a person recalls a situation and although they repeat it multiple times in their head they create an image of what they thought they saw and sometimes they are wrong. Our imagination plays a big impact on our so-called memory.
Title: The Memory Illusion
Author: Julia Shaw
Date: June 13,2016
Gustavo Diaz:
As much as we don’t want it to, there are many times during the day that memory fails us. The seven sins of memory are transience, absent-mindedness, blocking, misattribution, suggestibility, bias, and persistence. Every day when I get home I put my keys on top of my computer desk in my room so I can easily remember to take them with me the next morning. When I walked into my apartment Monday, September 26th my sister was watching the movie The Avengers so I immediately sat down on the couch next to her. About ten minutes later my mother called my phone and told me she needed help bringing up the groceries, so I threw my keys on the living room couch and went to help her. The next morning as I was about to leave my house for a psychology class I realize that I didn’t have my keys. I walked towards my computer desk and saw nothing, I started checking everywhere and my keys were nowhere to be found. I started to panic when I realized my mind was blank and I had no idea where I had put my keys. This is a good example of Absent-mindedness which occurs when there is a breakdown between attention and memory. My attention went from watching the movie to helping my mother with the groceries so quickly, that I didn’t care to memorize what I did with my keys in that moment. The memory randomly came back to me hours later while I was on the train back home.
Title: The Seven Sins of Memory (How The Mind Forgets and Remembers)
Author: Daniel L. Schacter
Who: Myself
When: Monday, September 26th, 2016
Where: My apartment
Nia McNeill
“Memory Manipulation,” also known as memory control, is the act in which a person can selectively change or modify their own memories or someone else’s to either make them believe something, suppress certain memories, erase them or give them a sense of nostalgia. In doing this, a person can make specific memories better or just completely dismiss them by filtering them. For example, when I was younger my parents got divorced and of course, for any child at a time like that it’s difficult to deal with. However, my memories lead me to believe that I handled the situation quite maturely, which according to my mother was not accurate. What I remember was when I reassured them that I would be okay and that it’s a part of life and I’m okay with it when in reality there were some instances where I tried to sabotage everything because I was angry. As my mom brought this up I slowly started to remember the truth. I guess it was something I chose to fabricate to make me feel better.
Title: How Easily is Your Memory Manipulated?
Author: John M. Grohol, Psy. D.
Who: Myself
When: 10 Years ago
Where: Home
Your group obviously coordinated its efforts and assured that all members made contributions and then documented them, so I will award the bonus of 25 points to each of your grades.
Each of you provided specific references, though as I will return to in a moment I am not entirely clear what some of those references refer to.
This was a first exercise, and the goal is progress, not perfection, but I believe that the task of the exercise was misunderstood to some degree and I apologize for my part in that. Each person reporting was supposed to provide an example of an observation that you made of something that demonstrates memory functions in action and as I go from one report to the next I am not always clear what that observation was.
Thus, in Zavallos’s report there are fine definitions, which is always a good place to begin, but what is then reported sounds more like examples from a textbook than personal observations. I’ll give a 37/50 for that in recognition of the work done.
Martinez’s report starts with definitions, too and then goes on to present an example of childhood amnesia. You should think about how you present the example, though, since it leaves the reader a bit unclear as to the status of the memory in question until the very end. Since the example is about something you actually remember, you should make that clear at the beginning. But since you actually do have the episode in your mind, you really need, then, to give the reader a reason for thinking that your memory is somehow not ‘real’. I have to put that word in quotes, of course, because it isn’t very clear how to differentiate ‘real’ memories from implanted ones, but since you’re claiming that the memory in question is implanted and not the consequence of something you directly recall you must tell us what the difference might be. For instance, is the memory not charged with emotion the way other memories are? Is there some little niggling feeling you have or some tiny voice in your head that you experience when you recall the incident that suggests there’s something different about it? As stated it isn’t clear why you think you don’t actually remember the incident. I’ll give you a 42/50 for this, since you fulfilled the basic requirements of the task.
Pemberton: I’m afraid your report also sounds more like a recap from the textbook than personal observations. You provide a number of things people tend to remember, but then you jump to telling how memory is selective and then how memory shifts as we repeatedly recall particular events. You need to provide examples you have observed of these phenomena in action to get full credit. I’ll give you 37/50 for this.
Diaz: You provide an interesting personal report here and fulfill the assignment. Your report would be strongly if you added two sorts of things to it: 1) Since you list the ‘seven sins’ of memory referred to in the text, tell the reader which particular sins may have been committed here; 2) Since you did find your keys and now have given a story about what happened in the first place, you should tell the reader how you came to construct the story and work out what happened. Was there really a memory still in your head, as you suggest at the end of your report? Presuming there was, what prevented it from coming into awareness when you needed it? I’ll give you 42/50 for this.
McNeill: Your report fulfills the requirements of the assignment. It’s an interesting and complicated report, though, since you tell the reader about a whole slew of memories that occurred, evidently, over a certain period of time. You provide an independent means – what your mother tells you – for corroborating the discrepancies between what you recall and what actually happened, which is very good. Your report would be stronger if you provided more details. This was obviously a painful set of experiences for you, so I would want you to be cautious about remembering and reporting them (especially in a public space like the OpenLab) but perhaps you could provide a specific example or two that demonstrates the discrepancies you realized existed when you talked about things with your mother. Without getting too self-revelatory, you might also speculate a bit about why the discrepancies might exist. I’ll give you 44/50 for this work.