Meaning

Today we did another experiment on memory. This time we have a competition to remember the word. The competition went like this. First Mr. Peter will tell us 20 words which we have to divide into 2 different categories which is A which is to count the syllable and B which is to state whether the mood is a pleasant mood or an unpleasant mood. The results of the experiment were very interesting because there was a very large range of score from 6 to 19. It is also interesting to see that most of the words that are remembered tend to fall into category B which is to remember the word by its mood. This study linked to what we have learned in that lesson about memory. We stated that external events are input as sensory memory which can then be encoded into our short-term or long-term memory as part of an automatic processing. The memory kept in our short-term memory can be recalled to be use. However there is another stage of memory which is the long-term memory. In order to encode something into our long-term memory, different method is required. This method is called effortful processing which involved rehearsing over and over to encode the short-term memory into our long term-memory.

Method of Memories

Today during psychology class we did an experiment to test each of our memory. The main focus of this experiment is to explore each of our short-term memory. The experiment started by Mr. Peter will tell us a combination of number and after he finished saying out the combination then we will have to write it down. Each turn the number on the combination will increase. The contest ends if you get any number wrong in any combination. To calculate the score you then count the number in that combination u got wrong and that is your score. After the experiment we found out that there are many variations in score but the average of our class was 6.5 so most people were a little between +2 or -2 from 7. This show that most of us can only remember things for a short period of time because most of the things we see will be registered into out short-term memory.

Our First Memory

As we are going to start our study on the Cognitive Perspective, we are asked by our teacher Mr. Peter Anthony to think of our first memory since memory is a big part in this Cognitive Approach. After digging into my memories and some rewinding effort, I was able to come up with one memory which I believed to be my earliest. My first memory occurred around the time when I was about 3-5 years old, it is a picture of myself climbing up the 3 story shelf to get my toy car which is on the highest story of the shelf. However my attempt turns out to be a failure and I ended up falling from the shelf and hurt one of my leg when I was on the second story of the shelf. Because of the pain I started to cry and then my maid which is in the next room come rushing in and saw me on the floor crying holding on to the ankle of my leg. She quickly called my parents, and before I knew it my mom was next to me applying some liquid pain-reliever on my ankle.

After everyone in our class share their memory, we discuss about the psychological idea behind these memories. We come up with the conclusion that our earliest memory should be around 4-5 years old because our brain are not that developed when we are 3 years old to remember any exact detail of the memory therefore the memory before 4 years old should only be a reconstructed idea. We also conclude that most of the time our memory came from incident that have an emotional impact on us and what is even more interesting is the fact that half of the class’s memories are negative while the other half is positive.