Critical Thoughts on Attention and Memory
Attention and memory are two cognitive processes that we as humans often take for granted on an everyday basis (Chance, 2006; Mack, 2003; Strayer & Drews, 2007). People pay no mind to their ability to focus in on a certain aspect of their awareness or their capability to recall memories from childhood. In actuality, these processes allow humans to function safely, effectively, and efficiently as they move through the world. Attention allows us to make our morning commute without being distracted by the constant sights and sounds of cars, horns, and pedestrians. At the same time, memory allows people to find their way to their place of employment in the first place. While these processes seem simple, …show more content…
The human ability to keep track of past events and modify present and future behavior accordingly directly impacts how we relate to our environment and people in our surrounding world. As soon as babies are born, the sights, sounds, and social experiences that they encounter in any given situation directly impact how they will behave and think in the future. Before the readings, I had never viewed the human memory system as a cornerstone to individual identity. I suppose I felt as if our brains simply put together personal traits and assembled it into a whole, unique individual. To me, memory was a cognitive process that was used when taking a test or rehashing an argument with a friend, not a cognitive set of processes humans rely on a moment-to-moment basis. Further, I hadn’t fully realized how many different types of memory there were and how these types played into a hierarchy. Long-term memory, for example, not only includes implicit and explicit memory but explicit memory itself further breaks down to procedural memory. Without knowing it, these different types of memory impact the most deliberate and habitual …show more content…
This helps explain how two different people form two different memories of the same event. For example, during and after the terrorists on September 11th, 2001, millions upon millions of Americans were glued to their T.V. and computer screens, encoding just as many distinctive interpretations of what happened on that day. These interpretations and memories are so subjective because people pay attention to different bits of information at different times. As such, the single subject truth of any given event is lost amongst the attentional captures of multiple witnesses. Another example of an attentional capture is the cocktail party effect. This phenomenon occurs when an individual focuses their auditory attention on a single source of information, such a in a cocktail party where two guests are having a conversation amongst themselves. They have the ability to tune out the buzz around them. With that being said, one of the guest’s attention would likely shift rapidly if they heard someone else during the party talking about them. In essence, attention allows us to tune out the nonsense and focus in on what is important. Like memory, I feel as though attention is this automatic process that the average human being pays no mind to. It’s just another aspect of the human experience that is taken for