...Recovering memories after a traumatic experience is a controversial issue that researchers study for a long time and there are opposite opinions on that matter. Some psychologists believe that after having an appalling experience as children, the mind in order to protect us repress these memories and we can only recover them in older age. Others though oppose to this opinion that such experiences can never be forgotten. One question that arises is that if repressed memories can be recovered or are they after years false memories. Having this in mind Richard J. McNally and his colleagues have contacted many studies, in order to examine which are the mechanisms that may be responsible for people to either repress and recover memories of trauma or create false memories of trauma. For their studies they used four groups of women. The first was the “repressed memory” group. In this group, the subjects were women that they thought they had been sexual abused as children but had no memories of it, just some indications. The second group was the “recovered-memory” group. In this group, women said that even though there was a long period of time that they had not thought about their abuse they...
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...revealed about how the different areas of the human brain support cognitive function. I will also discuss the characteristics of primary memory, the process of memory from perception and retrieval and the unreliability of memory retrieval. Phineas Gage Phineas gage is known as one of the most famous documented cases of brain injury. This brain injury occurred on September 13th, 1848 while Gage was working on the railroad excavating rocks with a tampering rod in the State of Vermont. An explosion occurred on the job-site that caused a tampering rod propelled at an extremely high speed to enter and penetrate Gage’s skull. This tampering rod entered his skull under his left cheek bone and exited through the top of his head; it was later recovered with bits of brain matter and blood on it. The amazing thing is that throughout this horrific accident, Mr. Gage never lost consciousness, in fact, by January of the following year; he had started to live a normal life. However, it was noted that around this time, Mr. Gage was considered to be suffering from some major changes in his personality. What Phineas Gage’s Accident Reveals about Cognitive Functions “Cognition refers to the higher order functions that are needed for learning and interacting with a person's environment. Each human brain is capable of multiple cognitive functions, such as memory, attention, executive functions and language. Each of the cognitive brain functions is highly interconnected, with an exchange of information...
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...Journal 6 Trauma and Memory Brain in a Search for the Living Past written by Peter Levine is a fascinating book that explains the fluidity of memories combined with the different ways in which they are stored. I enjoy that it is well written incorporating science in an easy to read manner. He highlights the reconstructive process stating that it is continuously adding, deleting, rearranging, and updating information. Understanding that memory is not concrete is extremely important to a counselor. Comprehending that our mood at the time of the event effects how the memory is stored increases our understanding of our clients when they relay details of the past. Helpful memories are ones we learn from and move on. Ordinary memories change over time. Traumatic memories are static. Realizing that there are explicit (conscious) and implicit (unconscious) memories were valuable because we must remember that the body knows what happened even if the client cannot remember the event consciously. This will help us to understand why a client may be reacting abnormally to certain situations. It allows us to hypothesis are they reacting to smells, touch, visual or sounds. We can then ask the client questions that may assist them to clarify. When you feel anxiety what do you notice? Is there a smell? What does the environment look like? Is there...
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...Witnesses rely on their memories to testify as to what they believe is a true account of the event. However, memories have been found to be fallible with no guarantee of corresponding with objective reality (Johnson, 2001). Research has found that false memories (FM), where a person recalls an event that did not occur and mistakes it to be a true representation of that event (Gleaves & Smith, 2004; Johnson, 2001) exists within the realm of eyewitness testimony (ET) (Loftus, Miller & Burns, 1978). This raises the issue of how well does ET reflect reality. Some theories that explain FM include the source monitoring failure theory (Johnson, Hastroudi & Lindsay, 1993), activation monitoring theory (Roediger, Balota &Watson, 2001) and fuzzy trace theory (Brianerd & Reyna, 1998; Reyna & Brainerd, 1995). Due to word count limitations, this paper will explore the concept of FM using fuzzy trace theory, source monitoring errors and the misinformation effect to explain how FM occurs in the context of ET and why ET can never the representation of the complete truth. The FTT proposes that there are two parallel memory traces, the verbatim trace and the gist trace (Brianerd & Reyna, 1998; Reyna & Brainerd, 1995). The verbatim trace stores information item-by-item and is a verdicial representation of an event. The gist trace stores a generalised meaning based representation of an event. The FTT proposes that verbatim trace decays quickly whereas the gist trace lingers in memory longer resulting...
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...This study hypothesized that the hippocampus, amygdala, and dorsal striatum were involved in different types of memory. The authors stated previous evidence to support their hypothesis, such as previous studies showing memory deficits from posttraining stimulations of the hippocampus, amygdala and dorsal striatum. They hypothesized that the hippocampus is involved in the acquisition of information involving relationships among stimuli and would aid in the processes of memory and identification of multiple spatial locations. The amygdala was hypothesized to be involved in memories formed from Pavlovian conditioning, which involves association of a neutral stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus and gives the same unconditioned response. Lastly...
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...itEyewitness Testimony - Evidence given by a witness to a significant event such as a crime or serious accident. - The evidence usually takes forms of personal identification or verbal account of what happened. - Problems can occur at any point in the memory process: 1) Acquisition: Information the person perceives Poor viewing conditions Focus on weapons 2) Storage: Information the person stores in memory Misleading information Source misattribution errors 3) Retrieval: Information the person retrieves at a later time Best guesses in line-up identification Leading questions - Inaccurate eyewitness testimony can have very serious consequences leading to wrongful convictions. - Why eyewitness testimony may be unreliable? * The role of anxiety: Baddeley 1997 reported that 74% of suspects convicted in 300 cases where eyewitness identification was the only evidence against them. Anxiety may lead to unreliable remembering depends on number of factors. * Research on ‘weapon focus’ Loftus 1979: P were exposed to one of the 2 situations; 1- They overheard a low-key discussion about an equipment failure. A person then emerged holding a pen with grease on his hands. 2- They overheard a heated and hostile exchange between people in the lab. After the sound of breaking glass and crashing chairs, a man emerged from the lab holding a paper knife covered in blood. P were then given 50 photos to try and identify the person. Findings: 1- Accurately identified...
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...main plot lies the book’s main themes of depression, loss of memory, and post-traumatic stress disorder. The main point of this essay is the misinterpretation, treatment, and our thoughts toward individuals suffering from amnesia, trauma, and depression. The themes researched for the novel “We Were Liars” by E. Lockhart are depression, loss of memory, and PTSD. Information obtained after investigating these themes are,...
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...Recovering memories of childhood abuse. In recent years, the explosion of reports of childhood abuse in men and women has raised questions about the nature of memory for traumatic events, the occurrence of amnesia for childhood abuse, and the validity and accuracy of recovered memories. According to researchers most people who were sexually abused as children remember all or part of what happened to them although they may not fully understand or disclose it. However, others argue that repression and dissociation is far from clear, their use has become idiosyncratic, metaphoric, and arbitrary. Many clinicians accept recovered memories of childhood abuse as essentially valid reports of early experiences, and clinical work with recovered memories has proved to be useful in some patients. Recently, however, a number of investigators have questioned the validity of recovered memory of childhood. A heated debate has emerged regarding therapists' role in the retrieval of previously unremembered memories of childhood abuse. However, despite evidence that memory content can be influenced by suggestion, emotional arousal, and personal meaning, the bulk of memory research actually supports the accuracy of memory for the central components of significant events. Research evidence shows that it is not for people who were sexually abused in childhood to experience amnesia and delayed recall for the abuse. And according to this article has shown that over time memory for events can...
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...abuse from recovery of memories. Most incident occurred after years of not declaring and only recollected during adulthoods, hence, this post a question - How reliable or accurate is the recovered memories? This recovered memories may only be repressed due to shocking incident and later from the unconscious mind, the memory surface out to the conscious mind side. This theory is the key foundation for psychoanalysis and many psychotherapists have readily accepted ( Bruhn, 1990) Memories We have to know that human mind consists of short-term and long-term memory, in this case, we’re looking at long-term memory which break down into 3 main classes. Procedural memory, is...
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...Repression of memories has been a controversial topic that has been argued for many years. Many people support the myth as it has been imposed in many cases, specifically legal convictions. Although researchers have found methods to refute the myth, individuals still belief they have repressed a memory of a traumatic event. This has recently been seen in 2007 in the Colorado vs. Marshall case. Marshall Adam Walker was accused of sexual assault to a seventeen year-old as he claimed that he made three boys pose nude for videos. He was sentenced to 24 to life in prison. One of the boys claimed to recover a repressed memory of the event while watching a movie (“Legal cases (53)”). This student’s claim made an influential impact on the perpetrator’s...
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...Chapter 6: Analyzing Consumer Markets GENERAL CONCEPT QUESTIONS Multiple Choice 1. ________ is the study of how individuals, groups, and organizations select, buy, use, and dispose of goods, services, ideas, or experiences to satisfy their needs and wants. 1. Target marketing 2. Psychographic segmentation 3. Psychology 4. Consumer behavior 5. Product differentiation Answer: d Page: 150 Difficulty: Easy AACSB: Analytic Skills 2. The fundamental determinant of a person’s wants and behavior is the person’s ________. 1. psyche 2. national origin 3. culture 4. peer group 5. family tree Answer: c Page: 150 Difficulty: Medium AACSB: Analytic Skills 3. A child growing up in the United States is exposed to all of the following values EXCEPT ________. 1. achievement and success 2. activity 3. efficiency and practicality 4. the importance of the group in daily life 5. freedom Answer: d Page: 150 Difficulty: Medium AACSB: Reflective Thinking 4. Which of the following would be the best illustration of a subculture? 1. A religion 2. A group of close friends 3. Your university 4. A fraternity or sorority 5. Your occupation Answer: a Page: 150 Difficulty: Hard 5. Based on information provided in the text, which of the following trends has lead to increased household consumption? 1. Growing female economic power ...
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...------------------------------------------------- Study skills From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Study skills or study strategies are approaches applied to learning. They are generally critical to success in school,[1] considered essential for acquiring good grades, and useful for learning throughout one's life. There are an array of study skills, which may tackle the process of organizing and taking in new information, retaining information, or dealing with assessments. They include mnemonics, which aid the retention of lists of information, effective reading and concentration techniques,[2] as well as efficient notetaking.[3] While often left up to the student and their support network, study skills are increasingly taught in High School and at the University level. A number of books and websites are available, from works on specific techniques such as Tony Buzan's books on mind-mapping, to general guides to successful study such as those by Stella Cottrell. More broadly, any skill which boosts a person's ability to study and pass exams can be termed a study skill, and this could include time management and motivational techniques. Study Skills are discrete techniques that can be learned, usually in a short time, and applied to all or most fields of study. They must therefore be distinguished from strategies that are specific to a particular field of study e.g. music or technology, and from abilities inherent in the student, such as aspects of intelligence or learning...
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...Critically discuss the psychological evidence that helps to explain the use of evidence given in court by children under the age of 11, (usually described as ‘child witnesses’) In the past 20 years the number of psychological studies on child witnesses and the competency of them being interviewed as well as the evidence being given by them has grown from very few quality studies to several thousand. Issues such as suggestibility, the effects of individual differences and the effects of long delays on their recall have been brought up and discussed in these studies. (Memon, Vrij & Bull, 2006) Traditionally, most Criminal Justice Systems have been reluctant to accept the testimony of young children, believing that they make less reliable witnesses than adults do. Although in recent years the balance has shifted and the evidence of children is now much more likely to be accepted. (Ainsworth, 1998) All witnesses defined as a child at the date of the trial, and irrespective of the nature of the offence, are automatically classified as vulnerable and this eligible for a range of protective special measures to enable them to give a testimony in court. There special measures include in-court screens, live TV link, removal of wigs and gowns and provision of any necessary aids to communication. (Raitt, 2007) The issue of children’s competency to testify in court has changed from the presumption that no minor is competent to the belief that all children are competent...
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...Thesis Statement Example 1 In this example of thesis statement, the emphasis of the study is to find a correlation, either positive or negative, between Mozart’s music and short term memory. This is an example of a research paper with data observation and analysis. The observations were recorded by running ANOVA and Post Hoc tests to compute values for the variables. The goal was to find a positive correlation between the two variables. For that a hypothesis was tested that was proven to be negative. Alternatively, this proved the scientific validation of the null hypothesis i.e. “positive correlation exists between short term memory and listening to Mozart’s music.” The actual thesis statement is both precise and straight to the point yet some explanation has been given to elaborate the details of the study. Thesis Subject: The Effect of Mozart’s Music on Short Term Memory Sample Thesis Statement: The thesis statement is created from the essential question i.e. “is there any presence of a positive cause and effect relationship on the memory status of the students who listen to Mozart’s music, as it is propagated in the theory of Mozart’s effect”. The hypothesis tested for this study is, “Listening to Mozart’s music has no effect on human memory”. Thesis Statement Example 2 This is an example of a research essay thesis statement. While writing a thesis statement for a research essay you have to strictly take a for or against approach and then justify your argument. For...
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...Prevalence Cramming is often done the night before an exam; in Japan this is known informally as one-night pickling (一夜漬, いちやづけ ichiya-dzuke?). In Commonwealth countries, cramming usually occurs during the revision week (week before exams), also known as "swotvac" or "stuvac". Over a longer term, cram schools exist in various countries, often designed to impart large amounts of information over the course of a year or longer. The pressure to excel academically has led to cramming behavior among students as young as five years old.[2] Cramming as a study technique H.E. Gorst stated in his book, The Curse of Education, “as long as education is synonymous with cramming on an organized plan, it will continue to produce mediocrity.” [3] Generally considered as a negative study technique, cramming is becoming more and more common among students both at the secondary and post-secondary level. Pressure to perform well in the classroom and engage in extracurricular activities in addition to other responsibilities often results in the cramming method of studying. Cramming is a widely-used study skill performed in preparation for an examination or other performance-based assessment. Most common among high school and college-aged students, cramming is often used as a means of memorizing large amounts of information in a short amount of time. Students are often forced to cram after improper time utilization or in efforts to understand information shortly before being tested. Improper...
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