You probably know of the person. This person constantly makes poor life decisions despite the negative consequences, like driving while drunk or getting high before class. This person does not have great organizational and planning abilities, maybe he or she blows off important events in order to drink or do drugs. He or she can’t delay the pleasure of getting high or drunk until later, and instead needs immediate gratification from the drug. This person thinks he or she can cram an entire semester’s worth of studying into a few hours, or shows up to a movie set high and expects to preform perfectly. Is the person you’re thinking of dependent on alcohol, cocaine, methamphetamine, or some other drug?
Substance-dependent and an addict, but not everyone is both!
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Have you ever tried to keep up with your day by switching between all the things you have to do? Of course you have. Multi-tasking and even just trying to focus our attention on one out of the million stimuli in the modern world are just part of everyone’s lives. The system that makes this possible is called working memory. Working memory is what takes in all the stimuli of the environment, organizes it, attends to it, and decides whether to rehearse or try to remember the information or whether it simply should be thrown away and forgotten.
Working memory is made up of 4 main parts. First off there are the two “slave systems.” These are the visuo-spatial sketchpad and the phonological loop. These are basic holding areas for incoming stimuli, the visuo-spatial sketchpad holds visual information such as maps, while the phonological loop deals with stimuli such as read words, numbers, or auditory stimuli. These segments simply take in the information, it is up to the other systems to choose what happens to that raw input. Read more…
Most people know that there are extreme cognitive deficits associated with DAT, otherwise known as Alzheimer ’s disease, but what is the nature of these struggles? What do those with DAT have the most trouble on, and what is the biggest cause of the troubles? It turns out that those with DAT have the biggest deficits in attentional tasks, and a lot of their memory issues stem from an inability to focus and maintain attention. In 1998 “Sentence Comprehension Deficits in Alzheimer’s Disease: A Comparison of Off-Line VS. On-Line Sentence Processing” looked at and tried to analyze the reasons behind memory deficits in DAT individuals.
The experimenters wanted to test whether the problems were stemming from a lack of syntactic knowledge, or the knowledge of how words form into sentences correctly, or from a working memory deficit. Working memory is the system that holds information in short term memory, deciding whether to attend to it, rehearse it, and transfer it into long term memory or to just throw it out. The better a person’s working memory, the better they can learn and pay attention to what they are looking at. Read more…
Most people don’t enjoy taking tests. Tests mean stress, late nights, and coffee – lots and lots of coffee. However, not all tests have to be bad. What if, in fact, some tests were helpful?
Testing, when used as a study method, benefits later retention – a phenomenon known as the testing effect (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006). In other words, students who take tests, rather than simply rereading their notes, while studying tend to do better on their actual exams (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006).
So what does this mean? Instead of merely rereading your notes or textbook, try taking some practice tests. Look for tests that offer immediate feedback, as immediate feedback provides even greater benefits in terms of performance on later assessments (Roediger & Butler, 2013). It doesn’t matter if you find a short answer or multiple-choice practice test; as long as you answer questions and receive feedback, you will be studying and absorbing the material more effectively than if you were just rereading (Smith & Karpicke, 2013). Search the textbook and its website. You’re bound to find something! Read more…
With the holidays quickly approaching, many of us will be reuniting with family members at our grandparents’ houses. Someone will inadvertently spike the punch and then you’ll have grandparents, aunts, and uncles a little on the tipsy side. We’ve all heard that a glass of red wine each day is beneficial for your health but how true is this for the older folk in our family? Is it only red wine that has these effects? Several studies have suggested that it can actually be good for the elderly to have a few drinks per week. Alcohol is protective to the cardiovascular system due to its anti-inflammatory effects. This can in turn have positive effects on the health of the brain, which improves cognition (how quickly we think, how well we remember, etc.). Can alcohol be used as a sort of protective substance?
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Many say that college is the time to relax and make memories before the work begins and the soul dies. However, the average and uncreative college student will spend these precious four years binge drinking cheap beer and making a mockery out of the fine sport that is Ping-Pong. I say, why aim for a hangover that will eventually leave you when you can have a stolen exit sign from the Alfond Complex that will be your lifetime companion? Yes, fellow Colby students, it’s about time that we bring it up a notch and follow the philosophy of Nate Ruess from the indie band Fun, which encourages youth to “set the world on fire.” While you “set the world on fire,” it is best not to be seen by others. However, that is a hard feat to accomplish, as dorms are usually high traffic areas. It is best to expect the presence of witnesses to the crime and take the proper precautions. This how-to article will teach you the proper ways to steal exit signs while decreasing the chances of being identified by eyewitnesses.
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It’s not exactly a secret: when presented with the choice, students overwhelmingly avoid testing and exams like the plague. It’s not something we all met up and agreed upon; but rather a fundamental truth that we feel in hearts, bodies, minds and souls: we would rather get gingivitis than study for and take an exam. I’m sure many professors can begrudgingly attest to this.
However, like children that don’t want to eat their vegetables, we students can’t deny the overwhelming research that has shown that testing is, in fact, one of the best approaches to boosting memory. Unlike children that don’t want to eat their vegetables, though, I will not make you sit at the dinner table until you agree that you love taking tests. I will, however, provide you with several reasons why you should learn to love them (or even just kind of tolerate them), extracted from recent findings by Dunlosky et al (2013).
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(Treadwell, 2012)
As the older population grows in numbers, there is an increasing social urgency to find ways to maintain or even improve one’s cognitive health. As we age, declines in memory, attentional control, speed of processing, and problem-solving abilities are expected and are considered to be typical of normal, healthy aging. Past studies have shown the links between participation in cognitive, leisure and social activities with improved cognitive ability, as well as a decreased risk of Alzheimer’s Disease. However little evidence has been found on whether sustained lifestyle engagement can help to maintain or improve cognitive function. This study by Park et al. (2013) sought to examine the impact of sustained engagement on the cognitive abilities of older adults. This study is called the “Synapse Project” because unlike normal cognitive training, in which participants come in for an experiment that typically last a few hours or a few days, the participants in this study agree to make a lifestyle change in that they are learning new, demanding real-world skills in a social environment. This allows us to see the true effects of the acquisition of the new skill over time on the participants’ cognitive abilities.
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Everyone has to get old, and if you aren’t old yet, you likely have an older friend or relative in your life with whom you are close. Many seniors, like my grandmother, complain that their memory is failing them in their old age. Nani forgets where she placed her keys, has trouble recalling recently-learned names, and sometimes even forgets childhood facts. It can be difficult watching someone you love lose bits and pieces of their memory, and it’s even more upsetting to hear their sadness when they talk about how much they think they’ve lost. Because of these difficulties associated with age, and because there is such a fear in our society of this inevitable course, it isn’t surprising that there is lots of incredible cognitive aging research being conducted. One of the more interesting articles recently published investigated not only memory ability in healthy older adults, but metamemory ability.
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How reliable are your memories? Before I took Cognitive Psych, I never considered this question. In fact, I assumed that most of what I remembered was true, even things from my early childhood. Now that I know about suggestibility, I have begun to second-guess what I know about many of my past experiences. Suggestibility occurs when, without realizing it, we include information from others in our memories. This can lead to changes in memories, and sometimes the creation of non- experienced, or “false” memories.
There are two basic types of suggestions. A personalized suggestion is one that indicates that something may have happened specifically to you in the past. General suggestions, on the other hand, suggest that something happened to many people in the past. For example, a personalized suggestion could involve your grandmother saying, “you always used to wear those green overalls when you came to visit me,” while a generalized suggestion may involve reading a magazine article that says green overalls were very popular among children in the late 1990s. Research has shown that personalized suggestions create false autobiographical memories, which can affect behavior. Memories are very important in guiding our behavior. For example, if you remember a negative event associated with a certain place, you are more likely to avoid that place in the future. Generalized suggestions guide behavior as well, but not through false memories. In this case, a person may hear that something happened to others in the past and adjust their behavior to avoid experiencing it. For example, if you learned that many people got sick from eating raw cookie dough, you might avoid sampling the batter when making cookies so as not to get sick yourself.
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