These articles explain how gender and cultural differences affect the way and how long we retain memory. For example, Psychologists Agneta Herlitz and Jenny Rehnman in Sweden discovered that women can remember more about everyday events than men. The results of their experiments indicated that women do extremely well in verbal episodic memory tasks and men were better than woman at visuospatial processing. To get to these conclusions the psychologists made an experiment in which three groups of participants where presented with black and white pictures of hairless, asexual faces and described them as ‘female faces,’ ‘male faces’ or just ‘faces.’ The results show that women could remember the ‘female’ faces better than they could remember the ‘male’ faces. This shows us how gender affects memory in different ways.

Psychologist, Michelle Leichtman, tries to explain how different cultures have particular factors that may shape memory. She ives many examples. One of them is that if you ask someone tha comes from the Unisted States, a country that focuses a lot in their history, about the earliest memory they have they might tell you about some event when they were about 3. But if you ask the same thing to an Asian, a culture that values independence more than personal history, they will probably tell you about a memory they have when they were 4 or more. So, according to this we can observe that how long you retain a memory may vary depending on your culture. These discoveries have been results of studies made in the past. Mary Mullen and Harlene Hayne both did studies trying to find how differences between cultures affect memory. Mullen asked 700 Caucasians and Asians about their earliest memory and found an average difference that Caucasians’ memory was 6 moths earlier than Asian’s. Then Hayne found that Maoris’ culture helped them retain memory longer than Caucasians. To explain this Michelle Leichthman and some colleagues investigates and found that high-elaborative mothers talk a lot to their children about the past, while low-elaborative mothers don’t talk much about the past. So, they found that Maori mothers are high-elaborative mothers compared to Asian mothers. This explains to us how culture can affect our memory.

Alzheimer’s disease is a problem in the brain that affects your memory. The symptoms develop slowly and get worse through the years to a point that it interferes with daily activities. This disease is progressive and irreversible it slowly destroys memory and thinking skills and eventually the ability of completing basic tasks. When the disease is advanced the patient can no longer respond to the environment, they might become mute or stop eating. Alzheimer’s is the most common form of dementia. Alzheimer’s is not a normal part of aging but as you get older the possibilities if having the disease increase. Most patients with Alzheimer’s are 65 or older. Alzheimer’s is one of the leading causes of death in America, but the most frightening part of the disease is that there is no current cure. Although there is no cure, there are some treatments that help slow down the worsening symptoms and improve the quality of life for the patients. The most common early symptom is having difficulty remembering new information. As the disease develops other symptoms may appear such as forgetting basic things you have done for your whole life. Another example of a symptom of a patient in the severe stage of Alzheimer’s is that the person may not be able to recognize his father or daughter. This disease is one of the priorities for many labs; it has been killing people for many years and will keep on doing if scientists don’t find a cure for it. It may be terrifying but it is the true, Alzheimer’s is an average person’s fear of getting older.

Native Language Connects To Consumers' Emotions

In our world we are exposed to several languages each day. For example, television ads, billboards, ads, ect… All of these are presented in different languages. What authors Stefano Puntoni, Bart de Langhe, and Stijn van Osselaer, found out was that we perceive out native language more emotionally that foreign languages. These authors that studied bilingual and trilingual populations tested different slogans with consumers and found differences in how the messages were perceived. They reached the conclusion that it was not that they did not understand, or understood less the message in a second language, instead it had to do with memory. This means that the words in a consumer’s native language made the person unconsciously relate that word to a memory they had. Because we mostly have memories with words of our native language, the message containing that language we use the most and have most memories about is perceives more emotionally. Their tests also prove that this effect was found more on woman than men because woman have more efficient memory of emotions. This does not only help us understand why we feel more related to a message using our native language, but also this tells us that we should communicate to consumers using their native language because they will feel emotionally related.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081215111433.htm 

New Understanding Of How We Remember Traumatic Events

Neuroscientists and researchers at the University of Queensland discovered a theory that explains why it is so hard for us to forget traumatic events. The experiment consisted of many studies, lead by the Queensland Brain Institute,  of the amygdala. The amygdala is the part of the brain associates with the processing of emotions. After several studies, scientists discovered a cellular mechanism causing the formation of memories doing with emotional events, which occurs with a certain stress hormone that is present in emotional events. Dr. Louis Faber and her colleagues in the University of Queensland also show how adrenaline in the brain controls the chemical and electrical pathways that are responsible for memory formation. That is why our deepest memories are snapshots of high emotional impact. The new mechanism discovered, helps us understand how these memories are formed. Also, the discovery opens doors to further investigation of anxiety disorders and post-traumatic disorders. 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081028103111.html

Some short memories Die Suddenly instead of Fading Away

This experiment was conducted by researchers of the UC Davis Center for mind and brain. What researchers Weiwei Zhang, a postdoctoral scholar, and Steve Luck, a professor of psychology, were trying to prove was that short memories dies suddenly and did not fade away as scientists have thought for decades. Their experiment consisted of two tests, each given to 12 adults. On the first one, 3 different colored squares flashed in the computer. Then a color wheel appeared and the three squares also appeared but this time they were colorless and one was highlighted. Afterwards, the subject was asked to recall the color of the highlighted square and was asked to click on the area of the wheel that matched the color. They repeated this 150 times. The results were that the people that did remember the color clicked very close to the color in the wheel and for the ones that the color had disappeared from their memory, clicked on a random color. This means that memory does not fade away instead it goes away suddenly. The second test was similar but it used shapes instead of colors. Luck said, “[They] either had the memory or didn’t have the memory. The memories did not gradually fade away”. This information helps us understand about memory retention and formation. And it is basic for everyday life because it provides a mechanism to help us avoid the confusion while trying to make decisions based on weak memories. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090429091806.htm

What is Memory?- How does it Work?

1. Sensory memory is the first level of memory. Sensory memory retains the brief impression of a sensory stimulus after the stimulus itself has ended. The sensory memory holds a short impression of sensory information even when the sensory system does not send any information anymore.

2. You lose concentration in class during a lecture. Suddenly you hear a significant word and return your focus to the lecture. You should be able to remember what was said just before the key word since it is in your sensory register.

3. Sensory memory corresponds approximately to the initial 200–500 milliseconds after an item is perceived. The capacity of sensory memory was approximately 12 items, but that it degraded very quickly (within a few hundred milliseconds).

4. A system for temporarily storing and managing information required to carry out complex cognitive tasks such as learning, reasoning, and comprehension. Short-term memory is involved in the selection, initiation, and termination of information-processing functions such as encoding, storing, and retrieving data.

5. The “magic number” is a highly cited paper in psychology published by George A. Miller, it argues that the number of objects an average human can hold in working memory is 7 +/- 2.

6. To explain chunking I’m going to use an example. Fourteen letters is difficult for most people to store in their short-term memory. But you can use a technique called chunking to increase the capacity of STM. Instead of trying to remember 14 letters you must first chunk the letters into larger units that can help you remind them quicker as 6 chunks instead of 14 letters.

7. Between two and three

8. Acoustic

9. Long term memory’s capacity is unlimited because it never fills up and it is permanent. It has infinite capacity.

10. In 1968 Atkinson and Shiffrin proposed a model of human memory which demonstrated two distinct memory stores: short-term memory, and long-term memory. Later a third memory store was added: sensory memory. This model categorizes memory.

11.

a. The sensory stores are sensory systems, not memory systems as most people think of the term "memory."

b. The three-box model suggests that there is nothing in between short-term and long-term memory. However, evidence shows that information can reside somewhere between the extremes of active attention and long-term storage. Memories can be "warmed up" but outside of attention. In other words, intermediate levels of activation are possible.

c. The three-box model implies that there is just one short-term system and just one long-term system. In reality, there are many memory systems operating in parallel (for example, different systems for vision, language, and odor memory). Each has short-term and long-term operations.

d. The Atkinson-Shiffrin model does not give enough emphasis to unconscious processes. Unconscious activation is shown with a tentative, dotted arrow. Modern researchers find that unconscious and implicit forms of memory are more common than consciously directed memory processes.

12. It is an influential theory of memory proposed by Craik and Lockhart which rejected the idea of the dual store model of memory. This popular model said that characteristics of a memory are determined by its location. Instead, Craik and Lockhart proposed that information could be processed in a number of different ways and the durability or strength of the memory trace was a direct function of the depth of processing involved. There model contains shallow processing which leads to a fragile memory trace that is susceptible to rapid forgetting. And deep processing results in a more durable memory trace.

13. Maintenance Rehearsal is the process of repeatedly verbalizing or thinking about a piece of information. Your short term memory is able to hold information about about 20 seconds. However, this time can be increased to about 30 seconds by using Maintenance Rehearsal.

a. For example - late at night, you have been out partying all night, you get back home and you are hungry. you decide that it's time for pizza. So you pick up the phone and call information to get the number of a local pizza delivery place. When the operator gives the number, you say the number over and over so that you don't forget it in the time it takes to hang up and dial the number. This process of repeating the number over and over is maintenance rehearsal. It won't help get the information into long term memory, but it will help keep it in short term memory a little longer.

14. Elaborative rehearsal is a memory technique that involves thinking about the meaning of the term to be remembered, as opposed to simply repeating the word to yourself over and over.

a. For example, you need to remember the term "neuron." In order to permanently commit the term to your memory, you look up what it means (it is a nerve cell), find out its purpose (transmit information from or to the central nervous system), look at a diagram and study its parts, and think about how it relates to things that you already know (like how different it is from other kinds of cells, assuming you are familiar with other cells). If you do this several times (rehearsal), then you will be more likely to remember the term.

15. Craik and Lockhart

http://www.alleydog.com/glossary/definition.php?term=Maintenance%20Rehearsal#ixzz12vjX5Qk6

http://penta.ufrgs.br/edu/telelab/3/elaborat.htm

How Does Your Memory Work?

The video made me notice that memory is the most remarkable trait I posses. I take memory for granted because luckily I have always had the gift of remembering most things. As we grow up memory becomes fundamental almost as common as breathing. What I learned through this video is that there are many consequences to the loss of memory and unfortunately there are many human living without being able to remember a single thing. As life goes by many memories we have from childhood start falling apart. Our memory shapes our personal identity, our perception of life, it shapes us. From birth our brain is changed by our experiences. Our memory stores a collection of vacations, friends, books, movies and all of our experiences. Unluckily, those who have memory deficiency are not able to have a past or a future; they only live in the present. By the age of nine, if your memory is working well, you gain the ability of time travelling in your mind. What is special about humans is that we are the only animal that knows about yesterday and that is why we want to keep living. Memory also gives you the ability of abstract thought and imagining things because of your experience.

Memory also gives us the skill to plan. We can think about actions in the past and therefore consider actions in the future that help us survive. We should be grateful for having a well-working memory because it will help us to survive, develop, speak, problem-solve, prove and many other abilities that come up through the pressure of memory. All of these abilities are not offered to people with memory discrepancy.