Psychology Paper: Memory - Essay Example

So when the link between the concept, the word and the visual representation of the word is weak, we tend to find difficulty in remembering the entire word even if we remember everything connected to it. You can see this happening in quiz shows. For example, there is a question like, what is the smallest fish in the world. The contestant can remember that the word starts with a letter P but can’t remember the entire word, which is Paedocypris. And because the contestant can’t answer the question, he loses a point, or even the entire game.

This sin of memory, most often, causes embarrassment, especially when the person forgets a name at the point of introducing him to another person. Misattribution means misattributing the source of the memory. This happens when we remember seeing an event when in fact we only read it. This is also called a binding error when we incorrectly link a content of the memory with its context (Begley). This happens when we unconsciously transfer a memory from one form to another – like reading it and seeing it.

This sin of memory impacts me negatively as it makes me an incompetent source. When I say that I heard a trivia from the teacher but in fact I only heard it from a classmate, it makes me a useless source since I am saying something that didn’t happen in reality. . Some will remember it as a Tuesday and some a Wednesday. And the influenced brains of the other classmates will most probably follow their seatmate’s answer. In reality, the class had that exam on a Thursday. Suggestibility, then, makes me very susceptible to false memories, and this may cause trouble especially when the information is very important or vital to a situation.

It does not only impact me negatively but it also impacts other people negatively, especially when I insist that something happened the way I believed it to happen. Persistence happens when a traumatic event or a situation where you had negative feelings cannot be erased in your mind. It is believed that stress hormones strengthen the brain’s neuronal circuit that contains the memory (Begley). For example, as a kid a very big and menacing dog jumped in front of me snarling. Because of this, I find it hard to forget the picture of the big dog thus, causing me to fear dogs, in general when I was a kid.

I always remember the snarl and the look of that dog even if other dogs are in front of me and not baring its teeth. Persistence affects me negatively as it causes me to have a general fear of dogs when in fact there is nothing to fear every other dog. Bias is a sin of memory that selects either the good part or the bad part of a situation. We have the tendency to rewrite our memories depending on how we’re feeling at the moment (Begley). So when someone asks me about the falling out between me and my bestfriend that happened years ago, I tend to remember the not so happy days that signified our falling out.

Those are my instant memories. Bias makes me an unfair person as we had good times together but I fail to recall it at