Throughout this course, I’ve learned about numerous different concepts and ideas involving the field of psychology, but the area I took the most interest in was the involvement of memory in psychology. During this course, I’ve learned that our memories are what identifies us during our youth and when we reach full adulthood and without those memories, we are lost as to who we are, and the history that defines us as well. I also learned something very interesting, those memories that leave an everlasting footprint in our minds can also assist us memorizing new content as well. The concept associated with this theory is called “The Memory Palace” or the “The Method of Loci”.
Loci is a Latin word which roughly translates to “place” or “location”.
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The reason why I find this method so important is because of the technological evolutions that are happening all around us. We have smart phones, smart refrigerators, smartbooks, and even smart houses that do most of the remembering for us. Which in my opinion makes our memory skills weaker; I can recall a time where we could remember numerous phone numbers off the back of our head now phones and social media has filled that gap for us. Some people can’t even get around their own neighborhood without using a GPS nowadays. Which is the reason I feel that methods such as the method of loci are important for people to learn because if we cannot remember the little things how are our brains supposed to remember the most important …show more content…
For example, most parents these days complain about their children spending way too much time playing video games, but you can also incorporate video games into the loci method as well. I can guarantee most adolescents have this one game their exceptionally good at, and when tested they know every corner of that stage by memory. Now if we would ask the child to think about his favorite level with his eyes closed and incorporate a different set of numbers at various checkpoints in the video game while he carries out completing the stage. I can almost guarantee subconsciously that he can remember if not almost, all the numbers we threw out the various checkpoints for the simple fact is we are not creating a new memory we are just overwriting it so the brain has to do less work.
“The memory system functions when the memoriser can walk through the structure (palace) in his mind, from site to site (background to background) in their sequential order, and thereby connect up the signifying items (images) placed here. This facilitates the recall of a memorised sequence of events.”. (Bewernick, 224) In my opinion, I believe this quote is significant to the topic at hand because it simplifies the process of the loci method for everyone to understand. It displays what’s necessary to utilize the method and it gives an explanation as to why the recall
This just shows how unreliable memory is, and even then it is one of the most important things in our lives, and it is certainly important in the book, in a way is hard to understand sometimes, because memory is such a complex thing, that humans are still making studies on.
False memory occurs when an event that never happened is remembered or it differs from reality. This effect can be created using a Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) list. Each list contains 12 words associated with each other, and a critical non-presented word (CNPW) or lure word. Following the presentation of a DRM list, a recognition test shows that participants claim to confidently remember the lure word in great detail, although it was not presented. According to the spreading activation theory, the presentation of a word activates its semantic network, which includes the lure word, during encoding. Therefore, the presented word and the lure word are encoded. Consequently, the more this semantic network is activated through associated words, the greater the false encoding of the lure word. The DRM list activates the critical lure word 12 times. False memory, such as a participant misidentifying a lure word as a presented item, is a consequence
The mammalian brain contains several different memory systems, which can be divided into declarative and non-declarative memory systems. Declarative memory can be further divided into episodic and semantic memory, and non-declarative memory can be divided into priming, associative learning, and procedural memory.
Roediger, H. L., & McDermott, K. B. (2000). Tricks of Memory. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 123-7.
Human memory is flexible and prone to suggestion. “Human memory, while remarkable in many ways, does not operate like a video camera” (Walker, 2013). In fact, human memory is quite the opposite of a video camera; it can be greatly influenced and even often distorted by interactions with its surroundings (Walker, 2013). Memory is separated into three different phases. The first phase is acquisition, which is when information is first entered into memory or the perception of an event (Samaha, 2011). The next phase is retention. Retention is the process of storing information during the period of time between the event and the recollection of a piece of information from that event (Samaha, 2011). The last stage is retrieval. Retrieval is recalling stored information about an event with the purpose of making an identification of a person in that event (Samaha, 2011).
When we asked the question of how we remember, forget, and learn has been the topic of lots of discussions. Examining how importantly the successes and fails of our memory skills affect our lives, this interest seems exceedingly justified. We count on our memories for lots of what we do like whenever we do identifying, appreciating, and responding right according to the objects and persons we interact in our environment and to the actions in which we take part in writing, speaking, reading, or else communicating in thinking, reasoning, and problem solving, and also to recall the past about our experiences. That is our memory, which holds, and allows us to use, the knowledge we have get about ourselves and the life and that catches the ways in which we have configured to the world so as to better cope with it. There is so much we de...
Farrants, J. (1998, September). The 'false' memory debate. Counseling Psychology Quarterly. Retrieved September 14, 2000 from ProQuest database (Bell & Howell Information and Learning-ProQuest) on the World Wide Web: http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb
In daily life, memory is used all the time. When we go to buy things, we would remember the list of items what we are going to buy. At school, we would also need to have revision in order to remember the materials for examination. Or even, when we meet friends, we would also need to recall their names. Thus it is important to know and understand how we remember such things so that we can effectively recall them when necessary. Obviously, we do not need to remember the exact position or order of things in daily life. We would have our own pattern for remember and retrieve information (Ashcraft, 2010). This is named as free recall, which items recalled in any order (Francis, Neath, MacKewn and Goldthwaite, 2004). However, many researchers found that the probability of recalling items (such as words, letters, or numbers) does in fact depend on the items position in a list. The most striking finding is that words at the beginning and end of the list are often easier to recall than those words in the middle of the list. Thus, when the results of a free recall experiment are plotted on a graph; a u-shaped serial position curve can be obtained. This is often referred to as the serial position effect that is affecting our memory (Smith, n.d.).
The first issue that needs to be addressed however is what exactly is memory? “ Without memory we would be servants of the moment, with nothing but our innate reflexes to help us deal with the world. There would be no language, no art, no science, no culture. Civilization itself is the distillation of human memory” (Blakemore 1988). The simple interpretation of Blakemore’s theory on what memory is that a person’s memory is at least one of the most important things in their life and without it civilization itself could not exist.
Bernstein and Loftus start off describing the first approach, which is Focusing on group of memories. This first study consists of subjects studying a list of items like words, nonsense syllables, pictures, tones, etc. (Loftus, Bernstein, p.370, 2009). Subjects will then try to recall what they studied or try to recognize which items were presented. These two are called recall test and recognition test. In these studies scientists tend to manipulate the information in different ways. The subjects in these kind of experiments, typically falsely remembered recent memory. Cognitive scientists have turned to neuroscience in hopes of learning what the brain can reveal about memory and cognition (Loftus, Bernstein, p.371, 2009).
Memory is the tool we use to learn and think. We all use memory in our everyday lives. Memory is the mental faculty of retaining and recalling past experiences. We all reassure ourselves that our memories are accurate and precise. Many people believe that they would be able to remember anything from the event and the different features of the situation. Yet, people don’t realize the fact that the more you think about a situation the more likely the story will change. Our memories are not a camcorder or a camera. Our memory tends to be very selective and reconstructive.
Learning and memory are fascinating. The world could not function without either. They both are used in many different fashions in a wide variety of places. Learning and Memory have been carefully studied by professionals but are also well known and used by the common people on a daily basis. I am one of those common people, a student who is constantly learning and making the most of my memory. Since enrolling in The Psychology of Learning and Memory class I have come to the realization that I encounter situations in my life that exemplify the very concepts I have studied. I have also learned that it is beneficial to apply the lessons learned in class to my everyday life. Positive reinforcement, learned helplessness and serial recall are a few among many of the learning and memory models that have come to action in my life and in my final reflections surrounding the course.
Mnemonic devices are techniques used for improving memory. These techniques are frequently used to memorise lists of words. The most common mnemonics are the keyword method, the method of loci, the peg word system, acronyms and acrostics. Each mnemonic has a different purpose, some mnemonics work better than others do at certain tasks. Some are also more successful than others in effectively encoding information into long-term memory (Sternberg, 2009).
Learning to tie shoes and ride a bike requires the encoding, storing, and retrieving of past observations of the procedure. With a lot of practice, children master these skills so well that they are able to remember them the rest of their lives. Memory is the storing of information over time. It is one of the most important concepts in learning; if things are not remembered, no learning can take place. As a process, memory refers to the "dynamic mechanism associated with the retention and retrieval of information about past experiences" (Sternberg 260). We use our memory about the past to help us understand the present. The study or memory in psychology is used in different ways, as well as there are many different ways to study how memory works in humans. In psychology there are many tasks used to measure memory, and different types of memory storages that human's use, such as sensory storing, or short term storing. There are also a lot of techniques that humans use to improve their memory, which they can use to learn, such as mnemonic devices. All these things can be classified as important issues in the study of human memory and ways of learning.
The sites of memory tell that we must create archives, preserve memories because the memories will not occur again naturally. Memory becomes a history with each passing moment. In modern societies today, memory is archival through recording, taking pictures. With the advent of modern technology, people are creating memories and preserving them as well. As today it is very difficult to draw a line of distinction where we can say what to remember and what not to. The prediction is impossible what we should therefore remember. “Memory transforms from historical to psychological, social to individual, from repetition to creating re-memories.”(Nora: 15)