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Memory is a very important and beneficial for us as we go through our lives but it can also let us down. There are seven memory sins according to Schacter’s Seven Sins of Memory which are:

More specifically, they describe how traumatic events trigger "a surge of stress chemicals" that impairs the prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and hippocampus (Hopper, 2014). Impairment of these brain regions affects what "is most likely to get encoded into memory," thus altering the ability of trauma survivors to accurately recall the events and details of traumatic events (Hopper, 2014). They cite "research" on brain physiology as evidence of their claims. For example, the authors cite "recent studies" to suggest the hippocampus enters a "super-encoding state" during a traumatic event, thus increasing the vividness of specific memories (Hopper, 2014). The specificity of such a "super-encoding state," however, also means that other memories are not encoded in our memory—thus, the appearance that trauma survivors have fragmented and incomplete memories. In conclusion, the authors state that an increased understanding of brain physiology may have implications on the admissibility of trauma survivors' statements in

Anyone reading Joshua Foer’s “The End of Remembering” can assume that he knows a lot about the brain and how it works. After all he graduated from Yale in 2004, and later went on to become the 2006 United States Memory Champion. With Foer’s interest in mental athletes he decided to do a journalism project to study them. This project would end up being the result of his book, Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything from which “The End of Remembering” is one of the chapters. In this chapter Foer’s lays a solid foundation of the development of writing. He also includes historical views of remembering and how we learned in terms of our memory. Foer not only gives historical views but supports his claims with science

Every act of remembering is also, intrinsically, an act of forgetting. Giving preference to particular details of an event lessens the immediacy of others. Thus, memory is its own, unique narrative culled from an almost endless sea of details present, and sometimes not present, in the original event. Memory is the past, reformulated and interpreted through the lens of the present (Huyssen 1995). When an event is commemorated through a physical act of memory, the narrowing of possible details becomes even more finely tuned, limited by the physical scope of possibilities for bodies in a three-dimensional space.

Human memory is a complex cognitive structure, which can be defined in many ways. One would argue that memory is 1.) The mental function of retaining information about stimuli, event, images, ideas, etc. after the original stimuli is no longer present. 2.) The hypothesized storage system in the mind that holds this information is so retained. A clear distinction is made between different types of memory systems and can be divided into subclasses.

The author’s purpose was arguing that people’s memories could explain the facts in their life. McGlone wanted to let reader knew that memories was a key to solve some mysterious things. In this essay, he argued that recent advances in cognitive psychology have cracked open a code book that historians can use, even on memories two hundred years old.

For better or for worse, our memories contribute to a significant portion of who we are. That said it is unthinkable for most to call one’s memories into question, however there is strong evidence which suggests that our memories are not as steadfast as we may think. Many have home videos from their childhood to display or even corroborate one’s memory. But unlike a home video accurately and definitively presenting events from the past, our memory is highly suggestible and scarily inclined to fallacy, in spite of unwavering self-assurance that our own memory is precise. This assuredness however does not always correlate with accuracy. False memories are semantic memories that are recollected usually through therapy, but are factually incorrect.

Memory is defined in our textbook Mastering the World of Psychology, as the process of encoding, storages, and retrieving information. There are three processes in memory. The three processes are encoding, storage, and retrieval. The first process in memory is encoding. Encoding is “the process of transforming information into a form that can be stored in your memory.” The second process in memory is storage. Storage is “the process of keeping or maintaining information in your memory.” The last and final process in memory is retrieval or retrieving. Retrieval is “the process of bringing to mind information that has been stored

And therein lies the problem. The fact that our cognitive system processes raw data in order to make better sense of it is a probable cause of the aforementioned lapse in our memory. This experiment aims to study whether the information processing in our cognitive systems leads to the formation of false/illusory memories, and if so, what are the possible reasons as to why these false memories take shape.

Students were an average of 20 years old with a standard deviation of 2.44. About 46.5 per cent of the participants were in their second year of university with a few students in their third or fourth year. Out of the 142 participants, 26 were female and 78 were male. Not all students reported their information, and as a result, there may be discrepancies. Since this experiment was a requirement for the Cognitive Psychology course, the participants were not specifically selected for the study.

Memory is a key part of everyday life in society, without the proper ability to remember it makes daily life practically impossible. Paul Connerton’s book How Societies Remember, covers a wide variety of the functions of memory. However, I will be focusing on Connerton’s approach to social memory, connections to historical reconstructions, and how memories are sustained. There are many different classifications of memory, Connerton uses theories from cognitive, personal, and habit memory to explain the different daily use of memory. I would have liked to see more input for my class discussion, in addition I would have liked to discuss the difference between habits and rules more in depth.

Your temporary inability to retrieve a memory is the most common cause of forgetting. Sometimes, we desperately try to recall a piece of information such as your old office address or the actor’s name in your favorite film. You fail to recall it. But, after some time you recollect it without any difficulty. You may recall the office address when someone mentions a landmark next to the building. Here, forgetting occurs because the piece of information you seek is temporarily inaccessible. When you get the right retrieval cue, you can successfully retrieve the information you seek. [ref] Loftus, G R, Loftus, Elizabeth F.Human Memory: The Processing of Information. Psychology

The seven sins of memory are transience, absentmindedness, blocking, memory misattribution, suggestibility, bias, and persistence. These are all considered failures of memory. Daniel Schacter, who was the chair of Harvard University’s psychology department, taught these rules.

Memory makes us. It is, to an extent, a collection of unique and personal experiences that we, as individuals, have amassed over our lifetime. It is what connects us to our past and what shapes our present and the future. If we are unable remember the what, when, where, and who of our everyday lives, our level of functioning would be greatly impacted. Memory is defined as or recognized as the “sum or total of what we remember.” Memory provides us the ability to learn and adjust to or from prior experiences. In addition, memory or our ability to remember plays an integral role in the building and sustaining of relationships. Additionally, memory is also a process; it is how we internalize and store our external environment and experiences. It entails the capacity to remember past experiences, and the process of recalling previous experiences, information, impressions, habits and skills to awareness. It is the storage of materials learned and/or retained from our experiences. This fact is demonstrated by the modification, adjustment and/or adaptation of structure or behavior. Furthermore, we as individuals, envision thoughts and ideas of the present through short-term memory, or in our working memory, we warehouse past experiences and learned values in long-term memory, also referred to as episodic or semantic memory. Most importantly, memory is malleable and it is intimately linked to our sense of identity and where we believe we belong in the world.

The human capacity for memory is unknown, and the process for remembering is an invisible, and therefore, an unsubstantiated concept. A discussion regarding the concepts of short-term, working, and long-term memory precedes an explanation of the encoding and retrieval in the memory processes. An evaluation of the variables associated with encoding and retrieval provides an understanding of the results from an online self-administered memory test. Although online memory assessments provide an entertaining experience, the concept of memory and the factors influencing memory are too complex to depend on such assessments and individuals questioning their memory related abilities should seek the guidance of a health