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Importance of memory in life
Importance of memory in life
Importance of memory in life
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Memory is very important in everyone’s lives. Without the previous memory, or memory of the past, probably most of people can’t even think about what the future has in store. People wouldn’t be able to remember what they did yesterday, today, or tomorrow. Without it, people can’t learn new things, or anything at all. Learning would be futile and void without memory.
I believe every human mind has the ability to learn many new things. Memory hangs on three following stages: encoding, storage, and retrieval. Basically, encoding is the stage in which learning new information and creating a memory piece. There are three main types of encoding: visual (picture), acoustic (sound), and semantic (meaning). Storage is the stage in which the memory piece is placed into a folder. Finally, retrieval is the stage in which it recovers the memory piece from where it was kept. The best analogy to this process is filing cabinet. Information is being typed on a paper. Then it is putted in the filing cabinet under right category and when the paper is needed again, it would be retrieved by someone. If ...
= Memory is the process of storing information and experiences for possible retrieval at some point in the future. This ability to create and retrieve memories is fundamental to all aspects of cognition and in a broader sense it is essential to our ability to function properly as human beings. Our memories allow us to store information about the world so that we can understand and deal with future situations on the basis of past experience. The process of thinking and problem solving relies heavily on the use of previous experience and memory also makes it possible for us to acquire language and to communicate with others. Memory also plays a basic part in the process of perception, since we can only make sense of our perceptual input by referring to our store of previous experiences.
In addition, knowing about our past and our present gives us wisdom to see into the future. According to a student essay from springboard the author recalls, “With barely any mental effort, memory helps us travel back in time to important events in our life; with its aid we can see our first day of high school, smell last winter's fire or taste yesterday’s lunch.” (Springboard 167)
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.
Definition of memory and it's functions is difficult to illustrate by a single sentence. Consequently we use several metaphors to describe memory implicitly. Our beliefs, perceptions and imagination influence memory. The fact gave rise to memory being described as a reconstructive process, explaining that memory is not an exact record of a particular experience. Instead we bring various components together and fill in the blanks with our predisposed schemas while recalling.
Sara Low was a flight attendant on the American Airlines plane to California when it was hijacked by terrorists on 9/11. In the article “On the Wings of memory, flight attendants story makes full article” written by Jan Ramirez, it discusses how much pride Sara’s father had for the flight attendant wings and how they resembled the service, training and so much more of this job. Sara’s her father then thought to start the Wings project, in honor of Sara’s courage and bravery serving as a flight attendant.
Can memories be biased? Researchers Postarino and Doyle-Portillio (2013); Bernstein and Loftus (2009); and Bartholomew (2009) found increasing evidence to suggest that the answer to this question is yes. Explicit and implicit memories are encoded differently, but it appears both can be fallible. Also worth noting, is that this can happen without a person conscious awareness. Kolb and Whishaw (2014) examined studies that gave participants a list of words, then gave them a second list. The second list contained some, but not all items from the first list, but many participants thought the word sugar was on both, when in fact it was only on the second. Similar words like cake, sweet, and candy were on the first so this seemed to confuse participants. This phenomena researchers refer to as false memory. False memory is different from a lie; unlike a lie, the individual in this case may give false account of the past truly believing that he or she is telling the truth. In other words, false memory can simply be defined as mental experience that is wrongfully considered as the truthful representation of the past. False memories can result in both minor and serious consequences Bernstein & Loftus, 2009; Bartholomew, 2009).
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.
Once we have learned something I believe that we will always remember it, we may forget about it at a certain time, but if we ever came across the information again, it will be retrieved from our long term memory. Just because we do not use all the information we learn it is still stored in your memory, so in all actuality we never really forget anything. If information isn’t stored in our memory then learning would be pointless.
How does memory affect the way in which history is viewed? Memory is based on a series of decisions on what is worth remembering and what should be forgotten. It is a process of suppressing history that is unbearable or difficult, yet it is also about reflecting on what is misunderstood. Memory is formed through several influencing factors and elements; Memory can be formed by the study of pop culture and icons, which often propose a reexamination of difficult and repressed memories. Memory is also influenced through exclusions and biases. These can be racially or politically motivated, but they could also derive from personal or cultural trauma. Recorded history such as textbooks, novels,
“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow…” Albert Einstein. We are constantly faced with flashbacks of our memories, euphoric or devastating; we learn to grow from those experiences. Memories can help people in their efforts to learn from the past and achieve greatness in the present. From personal experiences to literature, learning to accept the past and build for the future is what sets individuals apart.
Memory is one of the greatest gifts a person can have, even though they can cause people pain and bad memories occasionally. People will always have their good memories to look back on.
The United States fought in World War II in the 1940s. The Americans were on the winning side of the war, but not everything was perfect. Many social injustices occurred during the war, including the internment camps containing innocent Japanese-Americans and the concentration camps of Nazi-Germany. “Keep Memory Alive” by Elie Wiesel discusses the repercussions of the concentration camps and “The Uprooting of a Japanese-American Family” by Yoshiko Uchida describes the internment camps. Both stories were written describing the unethical treatment of a group of people that occurred in the 1940s.
Without memories, people would be nothing, memories that stick with everyone from the time it happened to the day they die, would never exist in people 's memories. Riding a bicycle for example, a memory that no one forgets, the first time we learn to do it with parents to when their kids are all grown up teaching their children how to ride bikes. Memories define each person, if someone’s childhood may have been
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 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.