I Remember When… :: Biology Essays Research Papers

I Remember When This paper was written by a scholarly person in a course at Bryn Mawr College, and reflects that students research and thoughts at the time the paper was written. Like other things on Serendip, the paper is not intended to be authoritative but is instead provided to encourage others to themselves learn about and think through subjects of interest, and, by providing relevant web links, to serve as a window to help them do so. Web links were active as of the time the paper was posted but are not updated. Theres a standing sendup in our family, or rather between my sister and I. It usu every(prenominal)y comes up at family get-togethers, about the time that were each trying to decide what to do, where to go, or what to eat. mommy will say something like, lets have that spaghetti casserole with turnip greens that I made at last summers get-together, we all enjoyed it so much. Jackie and I will exchange a look that says, gross, we hated that, and invariably Mom, seei ng the look pass between us, will say in utter seriousness, no, no. I DISTINCTLY REMEMBER. We all loved that casserole. What continually amuses both Jackie and I, is the degree of confidence with which Mom remembers the same event we do, but so differently. How can people be so veritable and yet so mistaken about events in our own histories? And yet, it happens time and again, and not just in my family. The observation that episodic memory retrieval is undefended to distortion has been documented thoroughly. Even the pattern of errors can be predicted with some reliability. (1) In order to situate episodic memory, its useful to know several distinctions in memory research. The most basic one is between brief and enduring memories, called short-term memories (STM) (or working memory, WM), and long-term memory (LTM). Within LTM, there are soft distinctions, such as between explicit and implicit, and declarative and procedural -- both of these distinctions have to do with consciousn ess about the memory. Explicit/declarative memory encompasses facts, figures, and all of conscious memory. Its what we commonly refer to as memory. (2) This type of memory is flexible, fast, and specialized for one-time learning. (3) Procedural/implicit memory is thought to be the most durable memory, and encompasses versed habits, skills and things that you know but dont consciously think about.