I found this weeks reading from Schacter especially interesting. It is always the most compelling to read about case studies to better understand a concept. While reading the case studies of the people suffering from severe amnesia, I realized how important memory is to every aspect of our lives, and how devastating it would be to lose parts of it. Even the people who retained procedural memory and some of their semantic memory were severely impaired. The loss of your episodic memory leaves you with no real sense of self, no way to make goals or plans for the future, and no way to relate to people and make new attachments and connections. You are essentially alive in a very stagnant state. It seemed so hopeless and depressing.
I thought it was interesting when Schacter talked about how some amnesic patients are aware of their memory disorders and some aren’t. It seems like it could even be a built in defense mechanism for the person to be unaware of their memory problems. When they are left unaware they are able to exist as well as they could with their brains being so compromised. It seems similar to other mental illnesses like autism. More severely autistic children are as content with their existence as possible. Less severely autistic children, however, are aware that they are unable to make the connections with people that other people make. They are aware that they are not “normal” and that they are missing out on parts of life that others take pleasure in.
I liked the way that Schacter talked about the experiments in brain imaging that lead up to our current understanding of the different parts of the brain and what mental processes occur in each of them. The PET scan and magnetic resonance imaging have really elevated our understanding of the brain in ways that were never possible before. Studies conducted using this type of technology to figure out what parts of the brain are responsible for what seems much more exact and scientific to me than the studies we talked about before like Ebbinghaus and Bartlett. These new technologies allow us to take out the human element which made the previous studies unpredictable and uncontrollable. It is now possible to follow the scientific method more exactly and hold most of the variables constant except the one being tested. To me, the results from these tests seem more accurate and reliable.
Another interesting part in Schacter was when he discussed the experiment done on priming where they showed participants a picture for just a second and then later the participants said that the liked that drawing over the other ones. I find that is true in my life also. If I have heard part of a song, even just playing in the background as I am doing something else and not focusing on it I always like it more later when I actually listen to it. When something is even a little familiar, I like it more than I would if it was my first time hearing it. At least for me, this seems to be true of most things in my life. Familiarity has a comfortable feeling which for me, becomes intertwined with feelings of enjoyment. Even places seem nicer when I have already been there, even if I don’t know that I have been there until I find out later. I wonder if that is true for most people.
5 comments:
A lot of what Bailey points at struck me as well. And likewise, most of the information that I found most informative I found in Schacter. The differences that Schacter found in his results by making seemingly minute changes to how the questions were asked was illuminating both to the research, and to my own interaction with the texts. I realized how subjective memory research results can be. A test may seem straightforward and the results obviously related to what the researcher is looking for, but assumptions about how memory works greatly affect how the researcher set up the test, and also how the results are interpreted. For instance, Schacter described how adding a new form of memory into the mix really shook things up. Every time something like that happens, the results of an experiment must be reevaluated. This is not easy to accept. If a study is conducted under the assumption that just one type of working memory exists, then the results will likewise refer to working memory as a single entity. But when later research suggests that other things are at play, and that working memory can be broken down into multiple components, previous results can seem globalized or even inapplicable.
As far as the effects of wording have to do with my own experience with the text, my differing reactions to the three readings seemed proof. I remember much more from Schacter than I do from either Bourtchouladze or the Wheeling, Stuss, Tulving article. Was it because it was longer? Was it because of the format, placing examples of actual cases in between conclusions and other data? Was it because Schacter is very present in his own texts? Does the fact that he himself conducted many of the studies make them more believable? Do his opinions about experiments and results affect my own? Even if I don’t think that they do explicitly, do they implicitly?
I found issue with Bourtchouladze’s chapter because it so obviously resembled Schacter’s. It seemed like she read his book, and then reworded it to make it her own. Maybe it was unintentional plagerism, but I lost trust in her writing because of it. And with the academic article, I think its unapproachable nature negatively affected my reading of it. After reading the flowing literary styles of Schacter and Bourtchouladze, the article seemed unbearably dry. Is this because I’m not very academically inclined? Maybe. Is it because im stupid and I need things spelled out for me? I’d like to think not. Maybe certain styles of writing induce better retention of material than others. Maybe the style of writing that best works for me works terribly for other people.
I was also really struck by what Bailey points out regarding extreme memory loss potentially leading to a somewhat content state of mind, rather than more minor cases in which the subject is aware of their poor memory. I was especially struck when, on page 137 Schacter says that when Fredrick doesn't remember playing golf with him the week before, Schacter "did not have the hart to tell him the truth". I was, at first, a little shocked by this. It seemed like it might be the "duty" of the experimenter to inform Fredrick of this failing of his memory. But as Bailey later points out, as Schacter does, that familiarity breeds a sort of confidence. If you have heard a song before, you will probably like it more than if you hadn't. By pointing out to Fredrick that he has played golf the previous week Schacter would be presenting Fredrick with a Notably unfamiliar world. Pointing out that Fredrick should feel familiar but doesn't. I guess it comes down to a moral dilemma to which i don't have an answer. do you tell Fredrick something which he has a right to know, but will upset him and be forgotten quickly, or do you let Fredrick continue leading his obliviously content lifestyle?
Addressing your point about people who lose their memory and are aware, vs. those who lose their memory but are not aware: you mention that it seems to be more adaptive to not be aware of your loss because of the decreased stress, shame, anger that is associated with that. I do not think however that this is the work of a defense mechanism, but instead that the people who do not realize that their amnesiac are actually in worse physical condition. This is because it is normal for someone to lose part of their memory, or one of their memory groups, but not all of them. the people who do not realize their amnesiac have likely suffered damage to multiple groups [esp. the frontal lobe]. Although i do agree that these people are "happier" about their condition, i think this "happiness" is shallow. In fact it only exists in the face of their extreme ignorance. That is, their lives are probably horrible, they just cannot remember the fact that their lives are horrible. Example: if they cannot remember that they are amnesiac, then it is likely impossible for them to perform the changes to their lives or patterns of behavior that would make their lives more sustainable as someone who cannot remember certain things. Also, they would never understand why someone could be upset with them, or the fact that they cannot be trusted with certain responsibilities.
I'm jumping on the Schacter bandwagon, too.
He writes about one amnesiac, “Gene's autobiographical knowledge is akin to the nonpersonal knowledge most of us have of other people's lives.” After reading this sentence, I realized the genius of having us read the Pillemer chapter just before the amnesia readings. What I dismissed a week ago in Pillemer's seemingly-banal chapter section now has tragic implications for amnesia patients. When one's memory of one's life becomes so disassociated with one's self that all memories turn into second hand knowledge, the self really dissolves—as others have already mentioned on this blog. Together Pillemer and Schacter's accounts really shook me. Thinking about amnesia through their images of nonpersonal knowledge led me, through a heightened level of empathy I suppose, to consider the very fine line between a “normal” functioning memory and the first steps of dementia. The scientific data presented by Wheeler, et al. and the autobiographical accounts in Schacter gave a good picture of what is going on neurologically and phenomenologically in these cases—so much so that in the debate as to whether it is better to know you are forgetting all your experiences or better to forget those instances of forgetting, I would say they are equally terrifying. How do you assign value to having tragic awareness of the breakdown of your self or to having to live every moment as if it is your first and only moment, as if you've just woken from a dream?
It does seem to be Wheeler et al.'s autonoetic consciousness and Bartlett's turning around on our own schemata that makes us "human."
I found Schacter's section on confabulation and how it relates to people being either aware or unaware of their amnesia quite interesting. He describes the case of BM, who was paralyzed by a stroke and unable to move her left arm yet consistently said that she could move it, she just didn't want it to. However, irrigation of her left ear caused her to stop confabulating and admit that her left arm was paralyzed and had been for several days. Eight hours later, after the affect of the irrigation had passed, she was back to confabulating but reluctantly admitted that she remembered the earlier incident when she had said that she could move her arm. Ramachandran suggests that some amnesic patients utilize selective forgetting to try to remain unaware of their deficit. Schacter does not comment much on this theory, besides saying that this selective forgetting is a mercy, yet stops the amnesiac from attempting to improve the quality of their life.
The idea that the brain is capable of formulating these, in some cases, quite complex stories in order to justify or explain things is so interesting. It seems to suggest that there is some kind of conscious unconscious in the brain that is quite aware of what is going on and active in the process.
Post a Comment