Memory: Week 5 First Impression

--Original published at BillardnBlog

My personal study habits vary depending on different things. The way I would prepare for an exam might change due tot the subject and material needed to learn for that test. It may also depend on how the professor makes the exams and what are the key details needed to learn. For the most part when I study I read each chapter that will appear on an exam. I like to make sets on quizlet for terms, people, and smaller details. If you don’t know, quizlet is an online source that you’re able to make flashcards of your information and look at other people’s sets. I take my own notes along with the ones provided in my lectures. My biggest limitation in studying is my procrastination. I tend to cram in as much studying as possible the night before an exam. I need to improve upon time management so I can space out sections to study throughout a week instead of studying four chapters in one night.

Specifically for this class’s first exam I did again try and cram as much studying as I could the night before. I worked with another student in our class and we went through the entire study guide given to us and wrote down all important information on the white board in the study room we were working in. We also looked up a few videos to help remember stages in the more difficult theories. After taking the exam I have an idea of what the professor finds most important in the material. As we work toward the next exam I know to pay more attention of specific psychologists and their studies or theories. I will most likely make a quizlet for the psychologists in the chapters discussed along with what they are known for. I will take more of my own notes while reading in the book to get more specific details that we would not cover in lecture.

Study Habits (Memory)

--Original published at MentzersBlog

When it come to studying I do not do much of it. Since in college I have been doing better with studying and reviewing my notes. The method I have been doing is rewriting my notes down in a notebook. I been using this method because I heard if you write it down that it gets imprinted into your memory. After I write my notes down I reviewed them briefly. I realize now that I need to review my notes more than just once and to study longer and harder. My exam grade reflexes how much studying I do and I didn’t do well on both of my exams so far. I would say my strength on studying is my organization. When I study the content I make is neat and in order. I also use stars to have the most important content stick out to review those more to remember for my exams and quizzes. In general I need to improve my study habits to achieve better exam scores and overall better knowledge of the course.

Week 5- Memory

--Original published at Site Title

There are many memories we hold dear to us. Ones that no matter how old we get, we will always remember. So the question is, what ties us to these memories and what makes a simple event so memorable while others are dismissive? Memories are not created equal some hold more weight than others, often these ones are associated with a particular emotion. I believe an individual is easier to recall moments or days in which they experienced an extreme emotion then an ordinary melancholy day. Emotions are what enhance our ability to remember. When we associate feelings of happiness, sadness, and anger with a particular event they become etched in our minds. Big life steps or life changing events like moving, weddings, and a first child tend to be vivid memories too. Your mind remarks important milestones in your life and holds them with more weight then others. You can’t remember everything so it’s important for your brain to filter the important events that shaped you or defined you in some way and disregard the others. This makes me question however, why do we remember certain dreams but forget others?

To talk with individuals all over the world from different aspects of life would be interesting. I would be curious to hear some of the memories they recall vividly and have them indicate the emotion they felt on that day and at which extent on a scale that feeling was at. I know this wouldn’t give a cause and effect but its hard to perform an experiment in which you would put humans through extreme emotional distress. Surveying individuals may be the best research method in this case. Looking how hormones, released when expressing certain emotions, affects recollection of memories could be vital as well.

Week 5 First Impression

--Original published at Site Title

My study habits quite honestly are all over the place and I have yet to find a method that works best for me. I usually spend the day before the exam cramming which I know is not something I should do. But for the last exam I actually starting studying a week or so in advance and I did little sections at a time. Once I remembered and understood something I would move on and try something else. Every so often I would go back to the other topics and quiz myself and the more I got right the more confident I became with the information. For the things I had more difficulty remembering, I would try writing them out a few times or talking out loud and walking myself through everything. I consider these my strengths because I can do different methods and just make the best of it. I think the thing that really helped the most was getting together with someone the day before the test and running over all the content and helping each other through whatever we didn’t understand. When the person I studied with didn’t understand something and I did, I would walk through it which in turn helped me remember it better. As far as my weaknesses go, I have a tendency to get distracted extremely easily when I’m trying to study so next time I think I need to make sure I find a quit space with no technology or people talking. Besides that, I think that if I keep mostly everything the same from studying the first time, I should be able to get good grades on the next exam.

First Impression Post-Week 5

--Original published at Lynsey Wissler's Blog

Study Habits

Lynsey Wissler

My current study habits are not ones that anyone taught me or that I learned from anyone else. My study habits are what I have developed over the years and have tried to make work for me the best as possible because I do not have any other option. How I studied for the first exam was by splitting the materials up by days. I evenly divided the study guide and assigned certain days to the information. After those days, the final day I did a group study session reviewing the information and watching youtube videos to help understand the concepts even more. The day of the exam I also spent time before class reviewing the concepts that I struggled with.

For the next exam, I plan to stick to my studying “schedule” more firmly. I also will begin seeking help from others before the night before and watch more youtube videos. The videos really helped the information stick in my mind because they gave me an alternative way to think about the concepts, making it easier to remember them.

Overall my strengths are being able to lay out all of the information and find different ways of remembering it. My main weakness is not getting distracted and having the ability to stay focused and get the studying done that needs to be done.

Week 5 First Impression – Memory

--Original published at Em

Not all memories are created equal because of memory decay. To the best of my understanding memories are on circuits. Memories are created by reoccurring patterns. These patterns are electrical impulses powered by imbalanced in ions? Not quite sure. When we are learning or creating a long term memory we strengthen these connections. I am not sure exactly how my suspicion is rerunning the memory through to strengthen recall. Then perhaps more myelin is applied I think this would just speed up the recall. Memories can be short term or long term. These circuits are rewired so to speak. Memories are forgotten biologically it can be hypothesized. This could be evolutionary. If every little detail was remembered then there would never be a new experience. Memories also are not completely unbiased memories are stronger than others because cause of timing. I believe many people have stronger memories than others are a common life changing event for example 9/11 was a communal life changing event. Everyone’s life is very unique but this was common group for Americans. People from a certain age all remember 9/11 because this was uncommon event. If you were in college classes were dismissed. My family for example lived on a military base and and went to the beach that day then we could not return to our house. Everyone can immediately recall where they were because it changed daily activities and was unfathomable. The event itself is unforgettable and changed united states policy. Huge events share memories. This is called light bulb memories.

Week 5 First Impression Prompts – Memory

Hand writing on a notebook

Because of the exam this week, the schedule for blog posts is a little different. The first impression posts for this prompt will be due by the beginning of class on Wednesday, 9/27. The refinement posts for this prompt will be due Tuesday, 10/3, at noon. Regardless of which prompt you choose, please use the Tag “Memory” on your post:

Option 1:

One of the topics we will discuss related to memory is study habits. For this post, critique your current study habits. Discuss what do you do well and what do you need to improve. In particular, I want you to discuss how you studied for the first exam in this class and share any changes you might make for the second exam to improve your preparation. We will see how closely your ideas reflect what the research says about improving your memory for learned information.

Option 2:

Not all memories are created equal. Some seem to be so powerfully etched in our minds that we can recall them almost perfectly later in life. For example, many people from my parents’ generation know exactly what they were doing when President Kennedy was assassinated. A more recent example would be what you were doing when you heard of the terrorist attacks on 9/11 in 2001. Then there are all the personal life events we remember “like they were yesterday.” Why do you think some memories are so much stronger than others? Explain your theory and propose a way to study how accurate these powerful memories really are.

I look forward to seeing what you write!

Header image: CC by Flickr user Caitlinator

Toward a New Understanding of Mental Health

--Original published at Site Title

I have always been very interested in mental illnesses and the cause of them. Given that mental illness is starting to be a more popular topic of discussion, I thought it would be a good idea to learn more about it. The Ted Talk that I chose to watch discussed the knowledge we have about different diseases is the reason why fewer and fewer people are dying from the diseases. For instance, from the research and studies done on heart attacks fewer people are dying from them. The speaker from this Ted Talk is saying if we can have as much knowledge about mental illness as we do with other diseases, we can save more lives. Ninety percent of suicides are due to a form of mental illness. One in five people suffer from a mental disorder. The brains of people that suffer from mental illnesses differ from people who do not have a mental illness. The behavior of someone with mental illness is the last thing to change. The speaker was talking about early detection of the mental illness to prevent the behavior or self-harm that may be a result from the illness, such as suicide. If one waits until the person with a mental illness starts to show behavior of that mental illness it might be too late.

The thing that I found most interesting is that the brain is so complex. He says it is the most complex organ in our body. Humans are so intelligent because of our complex brains, but are we intelligent enough to fully understand the complexity of our brain? That question is literally mind boggling to me. I found the presenter trustworthy, he didn’t really have any new findings. It was more of a public service announcement about mental illnesses and scientist will have more information about it in the near future. People’s lack of knowledge of the brain causes difficulty to detect a mental illness prior to someone showing behavior of that mental illness. At this point, we can’t detect mental illness without someone having the behavioral signs of mental illness. If I were to do research on mental illness, I would have to know where mental illnesses come from. The reason why there isn’t a lot of information on mental illnesses and the cause of it is because it’s a hard topic to study. I would get people who suffer from mental illness and ask them different questions that would stimulate different parts of the brain. I would compare their MRI scans to MRI scans of a group without mental illness to see what the causation of the mental illness is. How does the brain with mental illness differ from the brain that doesn’t have mental illness?Having more knowledge about the brain and mental illness can help us detect if someone has mental illness before they start showing behavioral signs. If we can detect the problem sooner, we could save more lives from suicide.

Ted Talk: How We Read Each Other’s Minds

--Original published at Site Title

Rebecca Saxe begins this “Ted Talk” with examples of how children, five and three, would react to a plastic figurine in a skit of how they might react leaving a sandwich on the ground. Both children saw that the pirate did not want to eat a dirty sandwich, but the five year old blamed it on the second pirate moving the food, while the three year old blamed it on a more natural cause such as the wind in this example. This proved that a part of the brain, the RTPJ effects how a human thinks of other’s behaviors. It’s not truly mind reading like the title might imply, but it is in fact a pretty good guess of how one might react. The situation was given similarly to an adult population and increased the risk factors. This situation included putting poison in a friend’s coffee, and how someone might be lead to believe it is the person making the coffee choosing to do this, unless it is stated that the friend didn’t know that the sugar was disguised as poison; then her actions were excusable. Saxe then briefly describes how scientists have the technology to magnetically shock the part of the brain controlling these thoughts into thinking differently on who their is to blame in this situation. Some people who thought it was the friend’s fault changed their initial answer after getting the magnetic shock to their brains. This was so interesting to see because this is based in someone’s morals, and the development of these ideas from a three year old all the way up to an adult changes drastically; but can also be manipulated in a way that one might blame things differently altogether.

Impression post week 4

--Original published at Site Title

The video that I chose to watch for this impression post was how we read each others minds by Rebecca Saxe. The reason why I chose to watch this video over the others is because I’m always curious what other people are thinking about me, or if they can read my mind. Also I find this topic very interesting because I try to read other peoples minds as well. When I’m in public I look around and observe people and their facial expressions. If they have a smile on their face I assume that they are happy or just received good news. Or if I look at someone with an angry face or a frown I assume that they just bad news or failed a test or something. But is that what they’re really thinking ? This talk basically was about regions of the brain and why people think about thoughts and when they develop these skills in their lifetime. In addition this video talked about regions of the brain that allow us as people to read some ones mind or at least try too. The part that I found most interesting about this talk was that there’s actually a small part in your brain that allows people to read someone’s mind called the RTPJ. This region is located above and behind your right year inside your brain. Children begin to develop this region from ages 5 to 3 and start too realize that other people have false beliefs and don’t think the same way that they think. Overall I thought the speaker that I watched was very trust worthy because of one main reason. She showed an example of a kid and it made a lot of sense and was actually very interesting the way that children think. It shows that both the cognitive system, the mind, and the brain itself is slowly getting smarter as the child gets older. If I were to conduct my own experiment, I would get a group of children about 10 kids that are all age 5. I would get them all in the same room and show them a video that is very simple and easy to understand but in the video it would show a cartoon about 5 minutes long and the cartoon would be about a kid riding a bike and he fell off and got injured. I would then stop the video and ask the children what they would do if they saw this in real life. This would give me a good understanding of how kids feel and how much sympathy they feel for the person that got injured.