Section 7-1: Flashbulb Firsts

Story time! The following describes my earliest vivid memory... I will use this story in the next two sections to   expand upon some of my thoughts in the field of memory.

-Courtesy of blogs.attask.com-

While I have glimpses and fuzzy visions of memories occurring prior to this story, this one stands out as the first clear and precise memory. This memory occurs somewhere between the ages of 3-4 years old, though if I were to guess I would say it was more likely 4, as it occurs in a late summer night shortly after one of my birthday celebrations. I was wearing my matching dinosaur shorts and T-shirt, I had an awful unisex bowl cut (that I'm told was "the style" of the time) and I was sitting in my newly acquired fuzzy  foam big-bird chair. (a chair which would later be ruined and destroyed in a basement flood 3 years later) I was seated at a plastic child's table which was ill-matched to said chair, and it was thunder storming outside. I was about to sit down and eat a bowl of Liptons chicken noodle soup in a Cambells soup bowl (the blasphemy!) paired with a can of Canada-Dry gingerale in a glass cup. As lighting struck near to the house the power was taken out. After this I was given a flashlight so I could see my food, and continue to eat it in peace. In order to make things work I had to hold the flashlight directly over my soup with one hand and my spoon with the other. Lighting struck again, fairly close to the house creating a loud boom. The startling and unexpected noise caused me to lose my grip on the flashlight and drop it into the soup below. The soup, still being incredibly hot splashed onto my face and caused some minor burns. While this event was not especially life threatening in any way, it was still painful and the event would form my relationship with thunder for the next decade.

Not cool bro.
-Courtesy of gizmodo.com.au-

How does this story relate to the topic of memory? It demonstrates three different topics presented to us in the chapter. Firstly that of flashbulb memories, which are especially vivid recollections of specific events. Second, long term memory and its resistance to decay as well as susceptibility, through my remembrance of everything about the event except for the exact age that I happened to be and lastly it is in itself an example of episodic memory. This event also demonstrates some of the topics used in learning so we will come back to this story later and address those subjects.

Section 7-2: (Mini) Source-Monitoring Error.

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Did I say the next two sections would be regarding the story I just shared? My apologies. stay tuned though as the information will be relevant to upcoming sections.

The amount of memory errors I made while initially writing out this section is just baffling. I started out be reading, studying, and REVIEWING a chapter that would not even be mentioned in our curriculum. and then while doing my initial writing on the subject I kept confusing the chapter on learning for the chapter on memory and vice-versa. It's a good thing no knowledge is ever wasted, as I can now tell you all about opponent process color theory and trichromatic color theory as it applies to the colorblind. I also initially had trouble remembering which pieces of information originated from the chapter regarding memory and which pieces of information originated from the chapter regarding learning. thankfully this would not affect my performance on the related exam as that part of information was irrelevant (which may explain why I've had such a hard time remembering it.)

Section 7-3: Ha. Haha. Hahahahaha.

As previously discussed I like to use humor to bring in my focus while working on complex tasks such as exams or papers... as you may have already noticed a little bit of in the writings thus far. I don't know if what I am about to explain to you would be considered a genetic trait or something that has slowly and personally developed. I have a very unique method of encoding semantic memory into the long term, I use humor when encoding memory.

Everything is easier to remember with the power of N2O!
-Courtesy of thelaughterrevolution.com-

One of the most prominent examples of this is the 0% I "achieved" while writing my Social-8 notes. In my Social-8 class we were supposed to submit our own created notes for review after we wrote a text on the paired subject. In a test on which I received 100% my grade for the paired notes was 0%. It wasn't that I hadn't submitted notes, so why the disparity?

My notes made absolutely no sense to anyone that read them except for myself. If you pair this with the fact that I was a junior high student with a junior high sense of humor, my notes looked something along the lines of "In Soviet Russia: Iron man did battle with a Jew and won"... I will give you 10 internet-points* if you know what I am referring to in that sentence.

Here is a hint.
-Courtesy of englishrussia.com-

*internet-points are not a real thing and may not be redeemed for any physical reward.

"In the Russian elections during the Industrial revolution Joseph Stalin went to the polls against Leon Trotsky, a Jewish russian intellectual, and won by a landslide, Stalin was accused of rigging the polls but would never face any trials or charges in this regard, Stalin was also known as the man of steel due to the way he pushed ahead the Industrial revolution in Russia." Yes, that small sentence above actually contains all of the information prior in it for myself. It still does to this day, I wrote that in Grade 8 which for me was over a decade ago now.

I eventually had to plead my case to my instructor, and thankfully due to my consistently high marks when facing testing and my explanation of my absurd defining and phrasing contained within my notes I was eventually given a pass on these notes... despite their complete lack of helpfulness to anyone who did not have their brain wired exactly as my own was.

-Courtesy of it.pinellas.k12.fl.us-

Section 7-4: Organizational networks and connection.

In our psychology textbook we are introduced to two different types of information organizational networks. First is semantic networks, these networks suggest that the more closely two words are related to one another logically the easier that one word will serve as a cue for another similar word. (for example red and orange, which are both colours will be connected by a shorter path to one another than say, red and fire truck  The second organizational system, the connectionist model (or parallel distributed pathways) function based on how the neural network will handle the incoming information.

You could also call neural networks "Brainstorms"
-Courtesy of ideachampions.com-

In the text these networks are presented as two opposing viewpoints, and while I do acknowledge that semantic information networks can stand on their own, parallel distributed networks take cues from the semantic network and act in conjunction with the connectionist models. While semantic models of information distribution work in a strictly logical fashion (such as one would find in an encyclopedia or thesaurus), any other model of information processing will incorporate episodic memory into the network of connections. Human memory and computer A.I. function similarly in this sense. While it might be logical and part of a semantic network to connect the terms 'monkey' and 'banana' to one another, it would require a personal (episodic) experience to make a connection between the terms 'lamborghini' and 'banana'. Depending on the strength of this neural link, 'lamborghini' and 'banana' may become a shorter link to one another and a more readily accessible link than the semantic 'monkey' 'banana' link. You need look no further than the internet accessible A.I. that is Cleverbot to see an example of this network in action. You may find when you ask it a series of rational or logical question that should have a "straightforward" answer it may occasionally get an answer wrong. In the cases where this happens, it has been taught these answers by the outside world, thus the connection between the original semantic knowledge has become farther displaced from its source than the new or 'episodic' knowledge.

This picture has nothing to do with anything. I just like it... I also want to see if it sparks
any implicit memory for my professor. ('answer' in the next section, but it won't be implicit
anymore once I have given you the cue to trigger the memory.)
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