Retrospective Memory Essay

In Hunger of Memory, Richard Rodriguez situates his individual experiences with education in such a way as to expose what he sees as the fallacious logic behind bilingual education and affirmative action. He uses arguments to propagate the systematic problems with such programs. His autobiography explains in great detail the entangling problems all American children face by instituting bilingual programs and affirmative action endorsements.

In the last half century several theories have emerged with regard to the best model for human memory. In each of these models there was a specific way to help people recall words and

This had led psychologists within the approach to explain that memory is build up of three stages: encoding (where information is received), storage (where the information is held) and retrieval (where the information is recalled if necessary.)

Memory is the process of encoding, storing and retrieving information in the brain. It plays an import role in our daily life. Without memory, we cannot reserve past experience, learn new things and plan for the future. Human memory is usually analogous to computer memory. While unlike computer memory, human memory is a cognitive system. It does not encode and store everything correctly as we want. As suggested by Zimbardo, Johnson and Weber (2006), human memory takes information and selectively converts it into meaningful patterns. When remembering, we reconstruct the incident as we think it was (p. 263). Sometimes our memory performance is incredibly accurate and reliable. But errors and mistakes are more commonly happen, because we do

Discuss how memory can be explained with reference to models of memory and research into Eyewitness Testimony.

Human memory is flexible and prone to suggestion. “Human memory, while remarkable in many ways, does not operate like a video camera”

Yamashiro et al. (2014) measured RR (convergent remembering), NN (convergent forgetting), and DM (discrepant memory) as functions of degree of separation and these were measured from what the participants mentioned in their journals. The RR convergence had both individuals remembering and retelling the story. The NN convergence had both individuals forgetting the story. The DM convergence had one individual knowing the story while the other did not. The first week there was no significance between direct, indirect, and unconnected pairs within the RR, NN, and DM groups. Directly connected pairs are individuals that had conversations at any point of the trial. Indirectly connected pairs were the individuals that greater than one connection at any point of the trial. Unconnected pairs are those who did not interact at all. The DM is more likely to occur comparted to NN and RR in week two. This study suggests that conversational influences effect collective remembering more and is widely spread across social networks than collective forgetting. Individuals having conversations about a story triggers the memory of the other individual and allows them to have a share view of the past. This study also examined direct connect verse indirect, and Yamashiro et al. (2014) results show that both direct and indirect connects are effect by mnemonic convergence (RR, NN, and DM). An

involved in memory storage. The hippocampus is a place in the brain that is used to

memory is not only prone to decay, but it is also vulnerable to the influence of post-event

Doctors and scientists dispute the exact role of the hippocampus, but agree that it has an essential role in the formation of new memories about personally experienced events. Some researchers prefer to consider the hippocampus as part of a larger medial temporal lobe memory system responsible for declarative memory. When a long-term, declarative memory is made, certain neuronal connections in the temporal lobe are strengthened, and others are weakened. These changes are fairly permanent, however some may take weeks or months before they are complete

Prior to the early 1970s the prominent idea of how memories were formed and retrieved revolved around the idea of processing memory into specific stores (Francis & Neath, 2014). These memory stores were identified as sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory. In contrast to this idea, two researchers named Fergus Craik and Robert Lockhart proposed an idea linking the type of encoding to retrieval (Goldstein, 2015). This idea is known as the levels of processing theory. According to this theory, memory depends on the depth of processing that a given item is received by an individual (Goldstein, 2015). Craik and Lockhart stressed four points in supporting their theory. First, they argued that memory was the result of a series of analyses, each level of the series forming a deeper level of processing than the preceding level (Francis & Neath, 2014). The shallow levels of processing were believed to hold less importance and are defined as giving little attention to meaning of an item. Examples of which include focusing on how a word sounds or memorizing a phone number by repeating it over and over again (Francis & Neath, 2014) (Goldstein, 2015). The deeper levels processing involve paying close attention to the meaning of an item and relating that meaning to something else, an example of which would be focusing on the meaning of a word rather than just how the word sounds (Francis & Neath, 2014) (Goldstein, 2015). The second point Craik and Lockhart

Although visual art is looked upon differently by all, everyone has a either a favorite piece or at least something that catches their eye. Personally, I don’t have a piece of art that I would label my absolute favorite, but during a Spanish research project found that Salvador Dali’s work really stood out. “The Persistence of Memory” painted in 1931 by Dali, a highly renowned surrealist painter, is among the most interesting works I have ever seen. Even though the painting itself is rather simple in quality at first glance, what Dali’s must have been thinking about while creating this work is strikingly complex. The painting is attractive to me because it deals with the concept of time, something

Memory is defined as "the persistence of learning over time through the storage and retrieval of information." Our memory can be compared to a computer's information processing system. To remember an event we need to get information into our brain which is encoding, store the information and then be able to retrieve it. The three-stage processing model of Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin suggests that we record information that we want to remember first as a fleeting sensory memory and then it is processed into a short term memory bin where we encode it ( pay attention to encode important or novel stimuli) for long-term memory and later retrieval. The premise for the three step process is that we are unable to focus on too much

Specific purpose: to increase my audience's understanding of how memory functions and how it affects them.

Craik, F. I., Rose, N. S., & Gopie, N. “Recognition Without Awareness: Encoding and Retrieval Factors.” American Psychological Association. (2015). 1271-1273.Web.