Everyone has moments in their life that they wish they could forget. It could be that time that you the bridge gave out during your pictures on the water or the inevitable newspaper article written about it. But what if you could forget the whole thing happened and block out that embarrassing moment out of your memory forever?
Have you ever walked into a room and subsequently forgotten why you entered the room in the first place? Or have you ever misplaced a valuable item, say your iPhone or favorite sweatshirt, and tried to retrace your steps by visiting all of the places you think you last had it, only to come up empty-handed? If these sound like common occurrences, there is something easy you can do to help reduce the number of these painful experiences!
Ever wonder how accurate eyewitness accounts actually are? Picture yourself sitting in a room conversing with police officers about a crime that you witnessed earlier that day. Will you be able to remember every detail of the event and people involved? Was all of your attention focused on the crime and no other factors? How can we be sure that every memory of the event is even true? Eyewitness accounts in general have been a topic of concern for these very reasons. Many defendants are proven guilty based on eyewitness accounts; some of which consist of distorted/untrue statements. To read more about this topic, click here. Due to these issues, there is a growing interest in researching eyewitness testimonies in psychology, especially in the cognitive field. Read more…
Sleep has been to known to be a critical element for the functioning of humans. Today, in fact, I awoke early to go to the gym after getting a less than satisfying night’s sleep when I was met with the classic dilemma: get out of bed and be a productive person or let the comforts of my bed envelop me and fall back asleep? I chose the former, reluctantly. On days following a poor night of sleep I will pass by nearly everyone (friends, strangers, familiar faces) without really noticing their presence––the only thoughts to which my mind attaches are the idea of taking a nap or waiting for nightfall to come. Generally speaking, sleep patterns can have a profound effect on our physical, emotional, and cognitive capacities. But can sleep actually affect performance when we truly need to focus, such as at a crime scene? The authors of the following study sought to investigate how sleep can affect memory recall. But before I delve into the study, it is important to mention past research on the glaring imperfections of memory recall, as well as the relationship between sleep and memory.
A memory is an event we remember from our past. We have memories of the first time we rode a bike, the time we graduated high school, our first boyfriend/girlfriend and even memories of where we were on 9/11. We believe that our memories are true recollections of what happened, and that what we remember is accurate. However, this isn’t always true; memories are fallible even under the best conditions. In fact, false memories, implanted memories and misinformation are very likely to distort our memory.
Imagine that your plane has crashed into the ocean, and you are forced to swim to a deserted island located hundreds of miles away from civilization. All your luggage and the plane’s survival kit have sunk to the bottom of the ocean, and you only have the clothes on your back and the few knickknacks in your pockets. As you sit on the beach exhausted and anxious for a future rescue, you begin to fear that you won’t survive.
Don’t worry! The unfortunate LOST-like situation described above is just an example of the kind of scenario that participants are asked to imagine during the survival-processing paradigm task, which is used to observe some of the complex and adaptive functions of memory. During the task, half of the participants are asked to imagine themselves in a survival type situation like the described plane crash whereas the other half are asked to imagine themselves in a non-survival based situation like moving to a foreign land. While envisioning, all Read more…
That face. I know that face. How do I know that face? Do I wave? Do I know them that well? Everyone has had that experience where they recognize someone’s face, and you may know absolutely nothing about the person, but you know you’ve seen their face before.
How can we recognize people’s faces so easily? Facial recognition is a highly specialized process, and is incredibly accurate. Facial features such as the eyes, nose, mouth, the distance between features, and the shapes of features help us to identity a person’s face. But when we are in a very emotional situation, are we still as good at facial recognition as we are in regular situations? Read more…
Jury duty: two words that strike fear into even the most masculine of men. Often when people get their jury duty summons they spend inordinate amounts of time trying to figure out how to get out of it whether by claiming to be wildly biased (a rather conservative approach) or by creating a whole character of crazy a la Liz Lemon dressing up as Princess Leia and claiming, “I don’t really think it’s fair for me to be on a jury because I can read thoughts.” Either way, these tactics are often unsuccessful and you would most likely be better served by giving truthful answers to the qualifying questions than anything else.
In reality, if you know yourself and your mind, the truth might actually get you out of jury duty while also helping the court avoid a possible wrongful conviction. Although some cases are easily decided, the most ambiguous cases increase chance of wrongful conviction and application of heuristics in damaging ways. A heuristic, which is a mental shortcut that our brain creates in order to allow us to make quick decisions and judgments, is applied automatically when we approach a decision. However, because these heuristics may embody socially unacceptable implicit attitudes and beliefs, these automatic decisions can and often are overridden by controlled thinking. However, these heuristics may still be applied when the individual is using cognitive resources on other tasks. Research has shown that three factors play an important role in the jury member’s determination of defendant guilt: prejudice, working memory capacity (WMC), and cognitive load.
In the classic film The Sound of Music, Maria teaches the Von Trapp children primarily through song. If you don’t recall the words from the song that starts “Doe a deer a female deer…” you might be sorely missing an important part of your movie education. The song is pretty catchy after all. Once someone starts singing it, I can’t seem to get it out of my head. It turns out music can be helpful beyond just having something to dance to. It can really help us remember things. In fact, some studies may suggest that learning through song can actually enhance one’s memory. The most basic example I can think of is learning the alphabet. The alphabet song is pretty catchy and helps kids to better remember it. An interesting question then is: how far this musical benefit extend? Can music potentially help older adults or even adults with Alzheimer’s remember more? In Simmons-Stern et al.’s “Music-based memory enhancement in Alzheimer’s Disease: Promise and Limitation” one of the central questions is: To what extent can music enhance memory function in individuals with Alzheimer’s disease (AD)?
It has never been a secret that consistent exercise is one of the keys to living a balanced, reduced-stress, healthy lifestyle. If you are someone who works out often, you are probably familiar with the feeling of relaxation and lowering of stress that comes after a workout. It turns out that working out reduces emotional distress and provides resilience to stress and physical exercise plays a role in the prevention of many chronic diseases, including cardiovascular disease, depression, and hypertension among others. Basically, an increase in physical activity and exercise results in an improvement in general status of health. In general, the more physical exercise done, the greater the health benefits for the individual.
http://www.builtlean.com/2013/01/08/cardio-vs-weight-training/
Researchers at the University of Illinois were interested in comparing the health benefits, specifically on working memory, of differing forms of exercise. The two forms of exercise the researchers were interested in were acute aerobic physical exercise and resistance exercise. Read more…
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