Friday, October 11, 2013
Week 7 Post 2
After reading Chapter 12, I now feel like I have a better
understanding of memory. While reading I learned that memory is affected by
development (Berger, p. 326). That being said, I feel that as we develop and
grow are memory is constantly increasing. One of the first forms of memories
that we have is sensory memory. This type of memory is formed by our senses
whether it is through hearing or seeing things. Sensory memory starts early on in
life and will continue to increase throughout childhood to about age ten. After
age ten it should be about the same as people enter into adulthood (Berger, p.
326). Soon the sensations of memory become perceptions allowing our brains to
pick certain information to transfer to our working memory. This type of memory
will grow as our brains begin to develop and our life experiences increase.
Needless to say, working memory has constant mental activity and is achieved
between the ages of four to about fifteen years old. During these years is when
our brains better develop the phonological loop and the visual-spatial
sketchpad. Both of these areas of the brain are very important and help to
improve sensory memory because they focus on storing sounds as well as storing
sights (Berger, p. 326). After working memory is developed, long-term memory
begins to store all of the information that is learned. Not only can this type
of memory store things for years, but it can also retrieve information to
explain past experiences that were very emotional (Berger, p. 327). In my
opinion I believe memory is a fascinating subject to read and talk about. Memory
constantly is developing and changing just like us.
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I feel that my strongest sensory memories come from smell and taste. I can smell, for example licorice, and I can remember a time my grandma and I made anise cookies on a weekend morning. Even this week, I tasted something that reminded me of something from my parents house. When I tasted it I knew that it was familiar to me but I had to think back to my childhood to remember specifics, that is when the information is transferred to working memory. My sensory memory is strongest from when I was early elementary school age, at least I feel that these memories are the clearest and I can remember the most details. .
ReplyDeleteThe human memory is incredibly extensive. The text says that by middle childhood, the brain can store a very large amount of information. On page 327, it mentions that storing information is not solely based on memory, it depends on the ability to retrieve the information. I remember in my very first psychology course, my professor said that often when people cannot recall something they say that they have "short-term memory loss." This leads people to think that they have premature signs of dementia; however this may not be the case, he said that this occurs because we did not encode the information into our mind. I recently watched a TED talk instructing people how to remember infinite amounts of information. The lecturer said he used himself as a subject in an experiment where he had to enter a memory contest. Through his experience, he interviewed other contestants and found how to successfully use their strategies. He said he took their advice so seriously, he competed and won the contest. In his talk, he said that it does not matter how large the amount of information is, the human brain is capable of storing it. The strategy he used was to make connections to each piece of information, so it can easily be recalled. I have taken his strategy and applied it to my studying and I have found that this method works pretty well.