The Great New York statesman said, “Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.” To psychologists it is an indication that learning has happened over a period of time and our ability to store it and recall it. Memory and memory loss has always interested me, ever since I was young, so I will be talking about different aspects of our ability to remember.
When I was younger, it always bothered me that I couldn’t remember exactly what had happened in my life while I was a baby. I have one memory of chasing my grandma around in the hospital while my sister was being born, but I’m not even sure if that’s legitimate. I remember seeing an old family video of the supposed memory, so I am not sure if I really remember the actual event or if I just remember the video. Some other things in my childhood have led me to an interest in memory. While in high school I experimented with different drugs, such as marijuana and LSD. I certainly not proud of this but it has led me to be thankful that I never got too wrapped up into drugs. I believe that my memory has not suffered from the minimal use but I have close friends that have obviously suffered memory loss due to drug use.
There are other things having to do with memory loss that have impacted me and left me to really appreciate my own health. The first time I met my girlfriend’s parents I went to a family reunion with them in Indianapolis, Indiana. We stayed with her aunt and uncle. While there I was never able to meet her grandma. She went with her parents for a brief visit and I stayed with her aunt and uncle. Upon returning her dad seemed very upset. They found out a few days earlier that her Alzheimer’s was getting worse. Her grandma wasn’t even able to recognize her or her own son. This made me sad and was my first experience with Alzheimer’s disease.
All of these things and more have added to my interest in memory. Other things that have influenced this would be instances where I’ve studied for tests for very long periods of time and then when it was time to take the test, I would come up short. I never understood this and still don’t. I understand that there are outside factors that influence our minds and how they work, so I want to be more conscientious about that. Getting enough sleep is definitely a factor that I want to consider when looking at reasons for forgetting things I’ve studied at test time. Automatic processing seems to have a lot to do with this. Whether or not it’s because of automatic processing difficulties that I am not good at remembering things I’ve studied it’s worth looking at for many reasons. I find it very interesting that automatic processing is so…automatic. I know that sounds obvious, but it’s worth it to really think about it. It is such an automatic thing for us to hear a word and instantly start thinking about things that remind of us of a certain word or memory. It’s fascinating how it’s possible for our brains to recreate the day’s events or just learning how to read. These are both examples of automatic processing. The brain is a fascinating thing. Something in our textbook that really jumped out to me was how complex our brains actually are. It’s easy for us to describe something very complex and vital to our everyday life, such as memory, in simple terms, but to really look into how our brains do what they do is a very fascinating subject. Learning about things like Effortful Processing (remembering and storing things with effort and attention) and the whole topic of encoding. It really is over my head when it comes to even learning about memory. It’s something that seems like I’ve just taken for granted for so long that it’s hard to give myself a new perspective on how my mind actually works.