Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
memory sensory research paper
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: memory sensory research paper
Are our memory and reasoning processes reliable? To answer this, we must first discuss how people experience similar situations differently. Ironically, we are using our reasoning processing to write this paper and the reliability of these processes is in question. If only our minds were on videotape, then we could fast forward and rewind, but then memory would be pointless.
We're all living in the same physical world, but when it comes to knowing what's going on around us is a different story. Two people can sit through the same event and remember it differently. This may be due to fact one's mind works like a filter through which memory is formed. We all use our experiences from the past to relate to our new experiences. Whether we are using our emotions or our beliefs, we're bound to perceive the past differently. It's inevitable for this to occur; thus, I believe that memory is not necessarily wholly reliable. We've all experienced a time when we confused a dream with real life. When this occurs, something or someone usually reminds us that the events in question were a dream and not reality. This is further proof that memory is not completely reliable since one can sometimes not tell the difference between the dreaming world and the real world.
The only accurate way to test our memory is to carefully design an experiment and analyze its outcome. This should involve a cam-recorder, someone to explain how the event occurred in their mind, and a panel of reliable judges to determine whether or not the individual remembered it accordingly. My guess is that their answer would be very close to what actually happened, but the intricate details may be a little off.
We rely on our reasoning processes and awareness to determine, among other things, the difference between fantasies and reality. Obviously, reasoning processes are at least partially reliable since there are so many inventions and scientific breakthroughs which would never have been discovered if not for the ability to reason. In light of this fact, reasoning processes, though not infallible since created by humans, are probably a bit more reliable than memory since memory has so many internal variables which to consider.
All of this has me asking myself a bigger question.
Humans have an incredible capability for thinking and memory. We can remember events from our past, for our future, and of things that have no relative meaning to ourselves. These memories can be traced back to different systems of our brains through a process of encoding, storage, and retrieval. As part of the retrieval process, memories can be remembered with or without their sources. As research has found, our memories are not labeled or tagged with their origin (Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay 1993). Because of this, our memory has developed a process called source monitoring. This is how we link our memories to the source that they developed from, usually using specific characteristics and general knowledge of the memory. For example, source monitoring includes identifying who told you something, whether or not you saw an event in real life, the time of the event and whether you told something to your friend or only thought about telling it. The source-monitoring framework for the process involved in pinpointing the origin of information by Johnson and colleagues, explains both vertical and distorted memory with a common set of principles. First, a specific memory consists of specific characteristics including spatial, temporal, and perceptual details. Secondly, the memories can differ in characteristics that can be used to find the origin. More extensive source monitoring can involve beliefs about memory and cognition as well as retrieving more information from memory and finding the source of the memory given these beliefs, other specific characteristics or general knowledge (Johnson et al. 1993). Sometimes these beliefs aren't always accurate. Because some people may be influenced by their personal ideologies during retriev...
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).
For cognitive neuroscientists who study memory, it is a commonly accepted fact that human memory is imperfect. People regularly forget, misattribute, or confabulate information that is presented to them. In his seminal review, Daniel Schacter (1999, 2002) notes seven sins of memory. However, the three most relevant to this study are insufficient attention, misattribution, and pre-existing beliefs and biases.
Have you ever wondered what allows us to be aware of the present? It is actually the past! Without knowledge of past information, we would be constantly confused during the present and incapable of almost everything. Hockenbury & Hockenbury (2012) describes memory to be, “…the mental processes that enable us to acquire, retain, and retrieve information”. Without the presence of either of these three processes, the other two would be obsolete. Many experiments have been conducted to better understand these processes and break them down into their basic components.
...pporting details. At the conclusion of the article, the authors share their thoughts on how it might be virtually impossible to determine when a memory is true or false. I also like their willingness to continue the investigations despite how difficult it might be to obtain concrete answers.
Minor consequences, might for instance, be confusing where one has placed something, like car keys. Such confusion can result in a simple inconvenience such as, the wasting of time. Although more serious consequence might for instance occur when one’s memory tricks the individual into giving false eyewitness accounts that might be costly to him, or other third parties. As such, it is important to critically analyze the dynamics of false memory formation and highlight methods that could be used to identi...
A leading researcher at the University of Washington, Elizabeth Loftus, is specialized in the area of memory. She has recently discovered that when an occurrence is recalled it is not always re-created accurately. Loftus’ research revealed that instead, it is a reconstruction of the actual event. Newly collected information in relation to the topic being re-called can interfere with the memory you’re attempting to recall resulting in inaccurate recollection of the experience. If not be newly collected information it could be from other sources, such as the previous times you’ve told it, experiences from a television episode, a movie, or many other factors. You may have even experienced this yourself when you’ve been in the same place with another person for an event but have two un-matching stories of how the story took place and what occurred.
Research has shown that even though information may be committed to memory, what is retrieved can be altered during the encoding process. It has been said that, “the recollection of memory can be manipulated and or large aspects of the event can be confabulated.” (Cain,1997). Moreover, the recollection of past experiences can negatively affect future decisions, opinions, and more significant outcomes such as an eyewitness. This type of impact is due to something called, “false memories.” False memories can be defined as “an recollection of an event that never actually occurred.” False memories are said to be normal occurrences and have little impact on lives. However, Loftus and Palmer argue something different. In 1974, Loftus and Palmer conducted an experiment to test out the theory behind “false memories.” Their aim was to show that language used in eyewitness testimony can alter memory. People in this experiment were asked to estimate the speed of motor vehicles using different ways of questioning. Loftus and Palmer asked questions in regards to vehicle speed because typically that is something that most people are bad at estimating. Therefore these people would be more vulnerable and open to suggestions. The procedure of this experiment involved participants watching a video of cars. Participants were asked what they had seen in regards to how that car came in contact with the other car. Loftus and Palmer used words like “crashed, collided, hit, and smashed.” Their findings concluded that the estimated speed was affected by the verb used to describe the cars’ contact with one another. It seem as if participants saw that the verbs as clues of the speed the cars were going. Loftus and Palmer also came to the conclusion that there could only be two reasons for their findings. Those reasons were Response- bias factors or the fact that the memory representation is alter.
There have been several experiments done to try to prove that false memories can indeed be formed. One experiment, for example, was tried with a 14-year-old boy. The boy was told four memories, one of which was falsely constructed but similar to that of a true memory. The memories that were suggested took place when the boy was about 10 years younger. As the false memory was retold to him, he was asked to explain in detail what he had remembered from that event. Surprisingly, he claimed to remember the event, even though it was falsely created by the interviewer and his brother, and went on to explain what he remember to have happened, details and all. After collecting everything he had said about the four memories, he was told that one of the suggested memories was made-up and he was asked to guess which one it may have been. When he couldn’t decide which one it was, he was told that it was in fact the memory of getting lost in a store. He was confused and had trouble believing the truth.
In recent years there has been a hot debate between "repressed" vs. "false" memories. Neurobiological studies show that both suppression and recall and the creation of false memories are possible. This paper evaluates the evidence but forth by both sides of the controversy and concludes that both are feasible and separate phenomenon, which occur at significant rates in our society.
Memory is one of the most critical parts of cognition. It is important because it is involved in almost every aspect of cognition including problem solving, decision making, attention, and perception. Because of this importance, people rely on one’s memory to make important decisions. The value of one’s memory in this society is so high that it is used as evidence to either save one’s life or kill one’s life during murder trials. But as many of the cognitive psychologists know, human’s memory can cause many errors. One of these errors is false memory which is either remembering events that never happened or remembering events differently from the actual event. This finding of false memory raised big interests among psychologists and general public and many researches were done in order to find more about the false memory. The constructive approach to memory, which states that memory is constructed by person based on what really happened in addition to person’s other knowledge, experiences, and expectations, supports the idea of false memory. Just like what constructive approach to memory states, the false memory can be created by person’s knowledge, common biases, and suggestions. The present study was done in order to demonstrate one methodology that biases people to create and recall false memories. The present study is based on Deese’s experiment in 1959 and also on Roediger and McDermott’s experiment in 1995. The participants will be presented with sequence of words visually, and then they would have to classify a set of words as either in the sequence or not in the sequence. Our hypothesis is that people will create false memories and recall distractor words that are related to the sequence of words presented significantly m...
Atkinson, R.C. & Shiffrin, R.M. (1968). Human memory: A proposed system and its control process.
Bartlett’s “War of the Ghosts” experiment (1932) is a classic example of false memories. The results of his study found participants would unintentionally alter the information of a story they read in a way that was more reflective of their own lives. Otagaar, et.al. (2013) examined false memories by developing non-believed memories in adults and children about taking a ride in a hot air balloon. The results of this study found that when the participants were asked immediately after reading a passage about this memory, most did not recall going on a hot air balloon. However, when the participants were called back a few months later, a higher percentage of participants recalled having experienc...
According to Sternberg (1999), memory is the extraction of past experiences for information to be used in the present. The retrieval of memory is essential in every aspect of daily life, whether it is for academics, work or social purposes. However, many often take memory for granted and assume that it can be relied on because of how realistic it appears in the mind. This form of memory is also known as flashbulb memory. (Brown and Kulik, 1977). The question of whether our memory is reliably accurate has been shown to have implications in providing precise details of past events. (The British Psychological Association, 2011). In this essay, I would put forth arguments that human memory, in fact, is not completely reliable in providing accurate depictions of our past experiences. Evidence can be seen in the following two studies that support these arguments by examining episodic memory in humans. The first study is by Loftus and Pickrell (1995) who found that memory can be modified by suggestions. The second study is by Naveh-Benjamin and Craik (1995) who found that there is a predisposition for memory to decline with increasing age.