dec 5th blog post

On finishing Bourtchouladze's book i thought about the research on CREB and the idea of pharmaceutical applications for the information she and others have discovered. To me, her final notes sounded rather pessimistic for what would happen in the near future as a greater understanding of genes and memory is cultivated. In a certain degree, it made me think over the semester and everything i had learned about memory and how people treat and value memory. From what people describe as the horror of Alzheimers disease and the pain of amnesia it seems probable that any drug that could boost memory would be coveted by normal/healthy people to the same extent if not more that by sick/amnesiac people. Bourtchouladze herself made an interesting comment that points to this on p162 "They can learn, and they can even keep in mind the learnt task for an hour or so. but check on their memory five or six hours later, or the next day, and you will be surprised by their stupidity - they have no clue about the task whatsoever." In her own words she describes the difficulty of remembering and the creatures ignorance, as "stupidity". For someone who has spent so much time researching memory to have this kind of outlook tells me that regular people would jump on any memory drug. In fact, things like ginkgo biloba and ginseng have a regular market in America today for the reason that they were supposed to help concentration and memory. I even remember my mother talking to me about it when it first became popular, the twinkle in her eye when she was looking for it in small asian stores and wanted to pick up a years supply. It seems to me memory is a controversial issue because so many people want more of it, whether they have a generally good memory, or an obviously bad one. It also seems like it does not matter what type of job they work either, so that a scientist and a painter are both likely to desire greater memories. It seems that part of what makes memory so seductive is that it is understood as being synonymous with knowledge or wisdom. So having a better memory is good for remembering lists but also for not making the same mistake twice, or not forgetting a spouses birthday etc. This seems flawed given what i have learned in the class. How i understand it, the ability to remember does increase someones ability to associate. So if a someone with an exceptional memory cannot recognize the same dog from different angles, then their uncanny memory is not likely going to give them the wisdom to see patterns self destructive patterns of behavior in themselves or a connection between the kind of people they are attracted to and spousal abuse. This could easily extend to something like chess, because even if you can remember every single move you and your opponent have made, does not mean that you can predict what their next move will be. It is simply not enough to have remembered the details, things need to be analyzed, scrutinize and deducted. It seems to me that if memory enhancing drugs are produced any time soon the mad dash of healthy people to buy them legally or illegally is inevitable, and unfortunately ignorant.

November 28, Emotions and memory

It is also interesting to me that Bourtchouladze addressed the issue of fear within a community, and how it affects the individuals involved. A friend of mine is from an area of New York that’s been deemed bad and gang-filled. She gets embarrassed when she admits that she’s from a place that’s often horribly portrayed in movies. But she swears that it’s “not all like that”. And often defends her neighborhood. So it’s interesting to read about the opposite effect, or another one, in which the community also believes in these ideas and images conveyed to them. Once fear is placed in a community, it grows.

I was also interested in Bourtchouladze’s talk of emotional memory. Not particularly in relation to the amygdala, but in the events that cause a strong emotional state, thereby becoming engrained in our memory. I’m finding this relatable to the dance world specifically when we are audience members. As a freshman in the dance department, one of the biggest things they teach us is how to talk about dance, how to verbalize a kinesthetic experience, or how to speak to the emotions brought up by this experience as well. How do we react as an audience member as well as a performer? Thinking back to the many dance reviews we were forced to read and analyze, the most vivid descriptions were those that caused a strong emotional reaction. This is true as an audience member as well as a dancer onstage and off. As an audience member, we remember what we connect with; a certain part of the dance, an expression, and a movement we were drawn to. As a dancer, we remember the combinations we like, the ones that make us happy, and the ones we can attach an emotion or story to. In this sense, I think Bourtchouladze is right, the stronger the emotional reaction, the more likely we are to remember. The more we read about emotions and memory, the more relevant the connection between the two become.

Emotionality and Identity

Bourtchouladze addresses fear conditioning relative to context in a very tangible manner, introducing this concept based on the transformation of violence and retained level of fear in Washington Heights. I found this particularly accessible because a close friend of mine was recently provoked to move from this specific area after being mugged in her own apartment building. She spoke so highly of the neighborhood in prior years, remarking on affordability as well as the generally friendly attitudes of local residents. However, after this violent encounter, her mentality has shifted completely, and it is apparent that a certain and deep level of fear has been established. One can imagine how detrimental this can be to an individual’s everyday activity, not only mentally but physically. It confines her to remaining indoors at night, carrying mace for some reassurance of protection, and refusing to walk with valuable items alone. In other words, it restricts a person to become even more judgmental and cautious because there is heightened sensitivity to the external world. It seems that fear permeates or affects in some manner all levels of the Freudian structural theory, including the id, the ego, and the superego.

When Bourtchouladze discussed the amygdala as a region of the brain associated with emotional functioning and memory, one question was raised (though perhaps a bit naïve but I’ll ask nonetheless): In general, do women have a more highly developed amygdala than men? I realize this is based on the assumption and typical representation of women as sensitive or overly emotional, and men as more passive or indifferent, but I am still curious. I thought state-dependent memory was also a very interesting concept, and it concerns many of the ideas I’m addressing in my conference project examining the emotionality of autobiographical memory in relation to music. “Events that we learn in one emotional state may be remembered better when we revert to the state we were in during the original experience” (91). It made a lot of sense that the “personal significance of a flashbulb event—consequentiality—has a crucial role in the immunity of the memory for the event” (97); it seems that this concept in itself is what makes flashbulb events so vivid and perhaps integral to one’s sense of self. It seems that we psychoanalyze these events to the extent that they become engrained in our minds, and the way that we relay them to people can develop such regularity even though actual knowledge of the event can be perceived as esoteric and perhaps only relatable to a certain degree.

Kandel’s “In Search of Memory” details autobiographical accounts interwoven with historical context, balancing both personal and public memory and highlighting their interconnectedness. He characterized the matter at hand quite succinctly by identifying how neuroscience has tried to reveal the “ultimate mystery: how each person’s brain creates the consciousness of a unique self and the sense of free will” (11). This emphasizes the ongoing struggle to discover the mechanics of individuality—what a person considers specific—while simultaneously explaining personal freedom, something that is considered fundamental to the specific. I thought that Kandel’s inclusion of personal anecdotes made this book comprehensible; he didn’t limit the information presented to a purely academic discussion of psychology. Relocalization and neuroplasticity are truly remarkable phenomena; to think that the brain is so resilient in that neural pathways are capable of compensating for sensory, motor and cognitive functions.

Emotional States and Memory

Although it is only briefly mentioned in Bourtcholadze, I found the connection of emotional states to memory to be extremely intriguing and wished that it would have been discussed more in depth. On page 92 she briefly discusses an experiment in manic-depressive patients where the quantity of memory recalled is directly linked to a change in emotional state. I found it interesting that the patients who experienced the most major mood swings were able to recall the least. I do understand the rareness that such a violent swing will occur during the time allowed for the experiment, but I find that the simple idea of mood-dependent retrieval important when discussing mental disorders and wish that Bourtcholadze had taken more time to concentrate on this idea, instead of giving me just a paragraph. She does continue on to discuss how post-traumatic stress disorder effects recall of certain events, but I find a distinct separation between these two topics.

As others have mentioned before in previous readings, I too find the idea of synaesthesia incredibly fascinating. However, I found it strange that Bourtcholadze generalized in saying that synaestheics have difficulty in math when I think of my two friends who are synaestheics, who actually have more trouble with literature based work than something as concrete as math. These might be rare cases, but I’m wondering if Bourtcholadze over generalized in her statement. I think I take issue with this because she does not back up her brief statement with any real studies, so I find room to question. (pg. 109) She does make a logical conclusion to assume that synaestheics would have more ease with artistic expression than math, but where is her proof?

At the end of chapter 5, Bourtcholadze finally addresses an issue I've had with the study of both amnesiacs and people with extraordinary memory, proposing that understanding how these anomalies arise will help in greater understanding of how memory works and the different pathways it might take. I feel that in the studies of amnesiacs, the researchers often lose sight of the big picture, at least when they write up their findings. I found it refreshing to have these ideas stated outright instead of just implied.

November 28 Blog

Eric Kandel does an excellent job of detailing the development of the science of neurobiology in his book In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind while simultaneously giving an account of his own maturation as a scientist, especially concerning his interest in the science of memory. I was particularly impressed with the earliest steps that were taken to gain an understanding of neural science and was astonished as I read that these scientists were able to hypothesize such complex and detailed mechanisms of nerves, synapses, and impulses with such a limited foundation of knowledge. Though some of the conclusions seemed somewhat logical, such as Cajal’s interpretation of the shape of nerve cells by studying infant animals and using a staining method, other conclusion seemed to be more coincidental. For example, it states further that Cajal inferred that neurons interact through a synapse, in which the axon of one neuron communicates with the dendrites of another. Because it was not detailed in the book, I wonder how Cajal was able to determine this; considering that microscopy was not as well developed, I am curious as to which scientific methods, if any, he used, or if it was merely a “leap of imagination” as Kandel stated on the prior page.

I was also particularly interested in Bourtchouladze’s discussion of the amygdala being involved in emotionally related and emotionally explicit memory. On page 85, he describes a study in which patients with no brain damage, brain damage to the amygdala, brain damage to the hippocampus, and brain damage to both we analyzed in terms of recall and emotional conditioning. Patients with hippocampus damage had no recall but showed normal emotional conditioning, patients with amygdala damage showed accurate recall but no emotional conditioning, and patients with damage to both showed neither. Bourtchouladze comments on the importance of this finding, stating that the results “clearly demonstrate that the amygdala is indispensable for fear condition” and that “they illustrate the double dissociation between emotional and declarative aspects of memory.” While reading this, I thought about reading we had done in previous weeks concerning emotional memories and their higher recall, as compared with non-emotional memories, and I couldn’t help but assume that the amygdala is the key to this. I was also intrigued by the idea of emotional conditioning, which was discussed both in this book and in Kandel’s book, and wondered how a conditioned stimulus is represented within the brain in comparison with an unconditioned stimulus.

After such learning occurs, some sort of memory consolidation must occur to transform it into long-term memory. In Kandel’s discussion of the biological basis of the process, which supported the idea that the transformations necessary for learning and memory occur in the synapses rather than in the variety of cell, he discusses the idea of the number of synaptic terminals and active synapses changes. Specifically, he states that long-term sensitization results in a doubling in the number of synaptic terminals and an increase from 40% to 60% of active synapses, and when the memory fades, the numbers drop again. While this concept makes sense in terms of the words sensitization and habituation, I wondered what role the pruning of neurons and synapses played in the equation.

Habituation and Post Traumatic Memory Alterations

In the book, In Search Of Memory, Kandel discusses methods of Habituation, Sensitization, and Conditioning (pg 167). Habituation is when a subject is exposed to a stimulus so repeatedly and consistently that the subject grows accustomed to the stimulus and eventually begins to ignore it. This is something that we do many times throughout our lives. An example of how habituation to stimuli in our environment that might otherwise seem threatening can be seen through a wild animal’s reaction to a car opposed to a dog’s reaction to a car. Kandel writes about habituation that it “eliminates inappropriate or exaggerated defensive responses.” The dog no longer responds defensively to a speeding car, or in a large city, maybe even to a car horn which it encounters countless times a day. To habituation to something means to classify it as mundane and unworthy of notability. We are habituated to every rustle of the leaves that doesn’t seem abnormal. Without habituation we would be constantly unable to distinguish the important from the unimportant stimuli. Our reactions might commonly be inappropriately reactionary. We would live in a constant state of discomfort. Through habituation we achieve a level of stability in our world of expectations.

Though this stability and comfort we have learned to be shocked by what is unpredictable and new. If a situation arises which is extremely shocking and negative our system may be so effected by it that our memories and mindset may be altered as a result. This can be seen with post traumatic stress symptoms, discussed in Bourtchouldaze. She writes that traumatic memories so alter the way our memory records that they are extremely visual and they force other memories to be not recorded, such as route daily events (pg 101). The idea that someone’s memory can not only be amplified for a specific period of time, but that they way they remember is actually altered (made more visual) is really interesting to me. But even after reading about this phenomenon in both Schacter and Bourtchouldaze, I still wonder why exactly this occurs.

Furthermore, with regards to Kandel’s discussion of habituation, I started wondering if it is possible to be fully habituation to something that may otherwise cause symptoms of post traumatic stress. If someone expects a bad situation- if what would normally be classified as a traumatic event is part of someone’s world of expectations- then wouldn’t it seem that they shouldn’t exhibit post traumatic stress memory alterations? If a dog can become habituated to a car-horn over a period of time, can people be habituated to war or murder or something equally shocking? People seem to make the argument in the affirmative when they talk about desensitization and video games and America’s youth of today. But what about with actual events in people’s lives?

November 14th Blog

I was particularly interested in the section of the reading (which I believe was in Schacter) that discussed the idea that memories can be inaccurate, either because they were transformed over time or because they have varied from their original and true form. In the first instance, he gave an example of a girl who was traumatized by the memory of having her clitoris removed only to discover that it never actually happened and, in the second instance, gives an example of a man who thought his wife was present when he learned certain information even though she wasn’t. This made me wonder what is necessary to create such a false memory, particularly how rumination can become so powerful that it creates such a memory. I was also interested in the role the amygdala plays in this process. A study mentioned in the book showed that stress hormones can enhance memory, and I wonder if the stress that is induced during rumination is powerful enough to cause the brain to “remember” the thought as if it were real.

November 14 Post

Like Bailey, I was interested in Schacter’s “flashbulb memories” and how they tied in with some of the ideas in Pillemer’s chapters. Although it seems obvious, Pillemer is right (in my opinion) when he says that the stronger the emotions, the more vivid the memory. Even if the emotions were not your own, external displays of emotion have an affect on us, whether we realize it or not. This is probably true for someone like Bailey, who was not directly affected by the death of Princess Diana, but in watching others become affected, or have an emotional reaction, was actually affected. I remember where I was when I found out about Princess Diana as well. But more then that, I remember the news footage of people mourning and all of the memorials shown. I remember a friend’s memory of driving on the same road where Princess Diana’s car crash took place. I remember her memory because it was so vivid and because it was personal.

Pillemer is also right when he talks about personal memories having a greater impact as well simply because they are personal and true. It makes me wonder about dreams as well. Pillemer says that fabricated stories generally do not have a strong impact. I wonder if, because we know our dreams aren’t real, we lose some of the details and the vividness of them?

There are 22 bones in the head

In second grade my father, a family doctor, would come in one day a month to help teach our heath curriculum. We covered such subjects as oral hygiene and nutrition, nothing our teacher wasn’t more than capable of explaining, but he did add some color. His first day he came in, dressed in a suit, looking like a dad, introduced himself, and proceeded to jump around the room yelling, “there are twenty two bones in the head!” he must have said it 20 times while jumping on tables and desks and then calmly returned to the front of the class and told us that we would never forget that there are twenty two bones in the head for the rest of our lives. At the beginning of each subsequent visit he would ask the class how many bones in the head there were, and we would always answer correctly.

In light of this week’s readings I understand more than ever why I can understand why it is that to this day I run into classmates I haven’t seen in years who say, “Hey, twenty two bones in the head.” The initial “flashlight” memory obviously takes most of the credit, but I’m sure that the longevity of the accuracy of the correct number has a lot to do with the repeated reminders over the course of an entire school year. I’ve always wondered who out of that class still remembers that fact, and further, how they remember the event during which they were informed. I have a feeling that out of all of them I remember the actual incident best because of its personal significance. Eight year olds usually aren’t embarrassed by their parents yet, but that day I was. It is still one of my clearest memories from that time in my life.

To go in a totally different direction, I’d like to mention the other section of information in this week’s texts that most got me thinking. Pillemer discusses the differences between what and how males and females remember. In his comparison between how men and women learn I found that many of the practices associated with female learning are ones practiced at this school. Discussion and openness is not only allowed, but encouraged, and evaluations are, for the most part, based on explanation and contextualization of ideas in written form rather than on rote memory. This makes me wonder how and if men and women at Sarah Lawrence experience their education differently. Furthermore, it makes me wonder how institutions that rely more on lecture format deal with this same question. Could this difference in learning preference be the reason why there are still more men than women in math and sciences? Should we just accept that there are certain fields that men are generally better at than women, and vice versa?

Schacter

I found the Schacter reading very interesting because so many of the points that he was making using experimental data seemed to put into words what I experienced in my own life. The flashbulb memories section was interesting because I have always wondered about why they occur. I still remember where I was when I found out Princess Diana died, which is so weird because I had only heard about her once or twice before, and her death had no real affect on me or my life. Schacter talked a lot about how the emotional aspect of the event is what makes it stick out in your mind and what allows you to remember it clearly even after many years. He also briefly touches on how the rehearsals of the events are the other reason why flashbulb memories occur. I didn’t feel like he placed enough importance on that side of it. Many of the memories he talked about were momentous events that affected a lot of people. When something like that happens, there is a general sense among people that it is something that everyone will remember and be affected by.

When I heard that Princess Diana died, my mom told me at that same time that it would be something that I would always remember and then preceded to tell me about how she will always remember where she was when she found out that JFK was shot. This general ideal among a community about an event has to have some affect on individuals and their memories of the events. Maybe it makes them feel the need to have more vivid memories than they actually have so they are swayed in that direction, or maybe it just makes the event have more emotional weight than it otherwise would. Since my memory of the Princess Diana’s death definitely did not carry any emotional weight, this other aspect seemed to be a strong contributor to my later memory.

Kind of along those same lines, I had some trouble with the experiments about flashbulb memories that Schacter described. The experiments where the participants were asked to write down the situations that they were in when they found out about some traumatic event seemed like they would be very inaccurate gauge for some of what they were testing. If the person was told to write down what they experienced, then the added importance that was placed on the event would have an affect on their memories as well as their later recall of the memories. Also, the act of writing it down seems like it would aid in later recall, something which most people don’t do with their flashbulb memories. It just seems like the act of conducting the experiment would skew the results. There would be no way around that fact though, since in order to confirm the accuracy of the memories the subjects must first write them down.

Pillemer

In the chapter by Pillemer, I was most interested in the dual memory model. The idea that there are two parts to your memory, one which saves a picture of the event and another which saves the story seems very true to my experiences. When I remember an event, what first comes to my mind is what seems like a snapshot of the event. Right after that the stories of the event come flooding back. This theory also seems to describe many problems that I have experienced with my own memory and that have been touched on in many of the readings we have done. I have noticed in my own memory, that when remembering an event, I feel inclined to remember things a little differently than the probable reality because I factor into that memory information that I have since learned. Memories are perpetually chagned by experiences that have occured after them. This dual model seems to offer an explanation for how memories can seem so real to people even when they are actually a distorted reality. Whenever I have a visual image of an event in my head it seems like a valid memory, so then whatever story comes with it automatically seems credible. In that way, it seems that memories could get distorted all the time and people would not know because their visual image is credible. I wonder if other people have similar experiences with their visual and verbal memories.

October 31 Post

What interested me the most in the Pillemer reading were the differences between linguistic and non-linguistic memory. In a way it’s hard for me to separate the two, however I can see how they distinction is important when analyzing the memory of young children. Thinking about one of my earliest memories, and how what I remember the most was the overwhelming feeling of guilt, so much that I cried in pre-school. So remembering the emotion is to use my linguistic memory. However, now that I’m older, I am able to put the memory of that event, and specifically, that feeling in words. I can verbalize the feeling. So my question is, wouldn’t this memory now fall under the non-linguistic category? And when we do begin to develop a sense of ourselves, to form words and put memory into stories to relate to others, do all of our memories become non-linguistic? Even the idea that our parents place memories on us, or that their recollection becomes our memories would place that memory in the non-linguistic category as well?

October 31--Maternal Directing

Like Geoffrey, I found the concept of “maternal directing” of memories to be very interesting, particularly the idea that it has proven to be much more effective to fill in the gaps of what infants and children don’t remember rather than asking them questions in an attempt to probe their memory. This made me wonder what the infants and children are really remembering, the actually experience of whatever it is they are trying to remember or what their mother has told them about it. In this context, I assumed that the authors were talking about remembering events consciously and being able to recall them verbally, as opposed to unconscious influences, and, if this is in fact the case, it seems much more likely that children would recall their mother’s discussion of the incident rather than the incident itself. I do understand, though, that asking questions, especially the same one over and over again, will likely not stimulate a child to remember an event, I wonder if filling in the gaps is actually increasing the memory.

infant amnesia vs. adult recall

I found this weeks readings to be surprisingly interesting in regards to two major themes. The first of these these is that of "maternal reminiscing" [Nelson] or "maternal directing" [Harley]. The idea of the style by which mothers describe or talk about the past with their infants as being important to the infants later ability to remember things verbally, or to retell them in detail is amazing to me. Not only would i never have guessed that his was the case, but i was very skeptical of it as i read it. After going through all of the readings, it would seem that there really is a connection, and that the difference which is obviously mother to mother, can also be seen culture to culture. The example of cultures which promote oral history and the adults ability to remember their early childhood better is very intriguing. I also found it interesting that the big difference between style is presented as either filling in the gaps of the story the infant does not produce vs. asking the child baited questions in the hopes that they will remember. To me, the logical choice would be to do both, and i found it really surprising that filling in the gaps seemed to be so much more effective than asking the child more questions or giving them small cues in the hopes they would remember. Similarly, i found it rather strange that Pillemer claimed that mothers style of narrative taught children what was appropriate to remember and what is not. This did not seem to come up significantly in the other readings, but is something that struck me as i read it and i would like it if we could bring it up in class.
The second big thing that was interesting was the correlation between self recognition and autobiographical memory. While it seems obvious that being able to recognize yourself would impact your ability to remember things about yourself and what happened to you, it is less obvious that infants could have "verbal" or "autobiographical" memory before they were able to recognize themselves in the mirror [Bauer and Harley]. Not only is that counter intuitive, but it also means that the standard memory idea of implicit and explicit memory is in place and functioning form a very young age, and not something that develops at 3-5 years of age as the other readings were suggesting. It is important to realize that the explicit memory ability is likely developing over this time period as the frontal lobe is developing, but it not "turned off", it is more likely unreliable or incapable of handling significant detail. This idea actually goes really well in hand with one of my earliest memories in which i remember not being able to talk.
In terms of why adults do not remember these things very well, i found that while the different theories were compelling, they all seem to have a faulty assumption that was pointed out by one of the other arguments we read.

Infantile Amnesia

The main consensus reached by the authors of the articles we read this week was that infants and young children do have the ability to recall some incidents but that there are several factors that prevent them from being remembered in adulthood. Numerous studies have proved than very young infants can recognize their mother’s voice. The articles described many studies that had done variations on an experiment where the researcher performed a strange action with a prop, then gave the prop to the child to see if they would copy the action. Even after a time delay, infants could produce the correct action. As the age of the child increased, the time between initially observing the action and being able to correctly recall it increased. While these memories do not remain into adulthood, they can be remembered for long enough, proving that infants do have a functioning memory system.

The articles we read also discussed the differences between linguistic and non-linguistic memory. Pillemer describes these two systems as imagistic and narrative. Imagistic memories are made up of sounds, images, and emotions and while this system can be used throughout the life span, it is especially useful for young children who do not yet have adequate language abilities. The narrative system employs words, generally in the form of a story. Imagistic memories are experienced while narrative memories can be related in a coherent form to others.

These studies also discuss the importance of autobiographical memories. These can only be formed after a person has formed a sense of self, meaning that they understand who they are in relation to everything around them. The ability to report autobiographical memory is usually influenced by how parents encourage their children to talk about past experiences. Some parents ask leading questions allow their child time to elaborate while others simply ask the same question over and over again and then move on to another topic. It would be interesting to look at how much of an effect these parental styles have over time. Do these influences persist into adulthood and affect the way people interact with their own children?

Pillemer, to my delight, has finally introduced the topic of repression, arguing against it as a reason why children cannot remember their early years. Repression is one of Freud’s favorite explanations; he believes that early memories are forgotten because adults don’t want to remember the sexual nature of the earliest memories. Pillemer disagrees with this and argues that mental development has the most affect on when memories can be recalled. Early memories are formed in a way that is not accessible from the adult brain.

I was also intrigued by the last section from Pillemer’s chapter, Repression as a Failure of Translation. Here, he suggests that forgotten memories of trauma are not repressed; they are simply encoded in a way that the adult does not know how to interpret. Children often do not have a complete understanding of trauma and therefore, have no solid way of storing it to be remembered later. However, if this is true, then how exactly can these memories be recovered? If they had better linguistic skills or a more complete sense of self at the time of the trauma, is it more likely to be recovered/remembered later on?

Too much thinking. Again.

Between what I could not help but keep thinking was extraneous, redundant, and unnecessary evidence presented in “The Emergence of Autobiographical Memory : A Social Cultural Developmental Theory” by Kavush and Nelson, I kept finding points that opened up a whole new view of the article for me – one that I found, if slightly off-topic and idealistic, nonetheless extremely important. What I saw throughout their description of the development of the entity of autobiographical memory was a description that could almost simultaneously describe the development of personality. At the risk of possibly sounding slightly Freudian (though that may not be all bad?), I’ll point out some specifics that I found especially indicative of this. The first point in the reading at which this idea began forming in my mind was their discussion of childrens’ constructions of memories and concepts based on the “scaffolding” of these events by the adults (mainly mothers) around them. With memory in all its types being, more or less, the absolute most important component of the life of any human being, any event which is encoded in the mind of someone at the time when the memory is still in stages of the development that are not yet autonoetic but simply essential to functioning (as in, of course, a child) is going to hold extreme significance. As something that I can actually recall and relate to personally, the reinforcement of adults to children of the validity and correctness of the child’s recounting of an episode is just as important to the memory process as any other factor, and even more important to the later development of individual personality characteristics. As a theory: a child who does have their accounts and memories reinforced by their parents and other adults adapt a sense of self-confidence, even if it is not articulated as such at the time, and in accordance with the theory of autobiographical memory being a memory for important and life-defining events, this self confidence then has more potential at that time, in that instance, than it would at perhaps in a later point in the child’s development, to become salient in his/her personalities. Of course, I also do not mean this to sound like an over-simplification, either; the personality aspect of self-confidence was my main focus in the course of this reading because, in the way that I read this, it was alluded to, often, whether the authors intended for this or not. They even mentioned at one point that “’achievement of a cognitive self,’…is also characterized by a new self-consciousness, evidenced in inhibition, shyness, and embarrassment.” Also, the development of the component of autobiographical memory that is the ability of a child to see his or her own perspective in relation to those of others can also, again, by my theory, be a definite precursor for the natural characteristic tendency of all humans – to compare his or herself to others. And this idea brings me to the actual questions I wish to address based on all of these crazy observations – what makes some children eventually come to manifest these tendencies, and coinciding insecurities, more so than others? Is it whether or not the mother was elaborative or non-elaborative in the course of the child’s development, forcing the child not only have a somewhat lesser developed (at least at the time) memory in the case of the latter but also be at a loss for comparability by which to validate the things he or she remembers? (And, as another tangent, will this influence the level of creativity possessed by a child eventually? Will the child be more prone to self-doubt and subsequent confabulation and alternate forms of expression if their memories and ideas are not readily, or ever, confirmed by adults [assuming that if they were, they would develop more stringent ideas and concepts of the world, or at least be more apt to doing so]?) If the individual outcomes of autobiographical memory development truly is so dependent on social contexts, then why do children from the same families and upbringings so often turn out so differently, in many respects at that? Does it have to do with intelligence? And if so, in the correlation of memory and intelligence, what comes first, the chicken or the egg? Referring to the experimental task of toddlers needing a key to open a box, “Children who did not verbally recall this causal connection even when probed also did not evidence behavioral reenactment of the causal connection, being surprised when they could not open the box at the end of the event sequence.” At that age, is there any other way to measure intelligence than by memory? My questions are admittedly vague and scattered, but all this seeming circumlocution is, hopefully, pointing to my idea that there is much more that can be learned – and, more importantly, predicted – from the development of autobiographical memory than we may realize. Personality may be able to be evaluated even in the earliest stages of life. I may seem to be just further blurring already vague, scattered, and still developing realms of thought, but that seems to me to be utterly necessary. “Whereas memory for specific episodes is important for anticipating and predicting the environment autobiographical memory, as defined here, is about defining self in time and in relation to others.” That statement seems far too black-and-white to me. Are not all episodes remembered for a reason, an emotional reason, no matter how implicit?

Another observation I had, which is, I promise, less far-reaching and much less long-winded, is the author’s treatment of the retrieval of the very first memories of life. Within the text itself, there seems to be a very significant contradiction. It is empirically stated in the analysis of one of the authors’ experiments that children’s recounts of certain events, when they are prompted by interviewers to give them at several different intervals spread over months and even years, will consistently still utilize only the vocabulary that the children had at the time of the initial recount, even though their vocabulary has clearly developed immensely since that time. So with this in mind, how much faith can we put in the first memories at ALL? There was little or no language in the mental construct of all persons at the time that this first “memory” was “made”, so how can any later, especially adulthood representation or conveyance of this “memory” even qualify as a memory at all? It is at best misrepresented or exaggerated, and at worst completely confabulated. In the context of the role of language in autobiographical memory, I cannot see any way around this. The authors actually do seem to almost reach this conclusion, by stating that “the first recalled memory does not imply a now continuous autobiographical memory”, but do not explain why. I was only satisfied when I went on to read Howe and Courage, and found that my feelings on this topic were valid: they make clear that, if in either case that they propose for the reason behind infantile amnesia, the first memories are either irretrievable (if memory is in fact permanent) because the context of the initial encoding is too vastly different from the context of the attempt at retrieval, or the mental state of the person at the time did not support the memory being significantly encoded (if memory is not permanent) because, due to the massive and rapid attempts of the minds of infants and young children to instinctively take in every bit of information they can, there was simply not enough time and enough cognitive ability available. Yes, Howe and Courage. Yes.
And yet, the focus of their article was still not entirely what I was hyped up for. Infantile amnesia is a fascinating phenomenon, but when studying it simply in and of itself, and paying equal or less attention to what is actually remembered throughout these years, where are we getting? Not far. I’m open to and ready for much questioning and arguing (and probably general confusion) relating to all these observations, but in hopes of at least giving us all a place to start, let me sum up the above garrulous rambling into a single sentence: As long as both concepts are still present in every analysis, let’s focus less on what is forgotten and more on what is remembered.

Development and Socialization, or How I learned to Stop Forgetting and Conceive of the Self

Pillemer and I have made up. I'm totally into his stuff this week.
I think the his writing on the narrative memory system and linguistic development are incredibly important in terms of the development of the self and autobiographical memory. However, Pillemer's dualistic view seems a little too simple. While we are dividing and itemizing memory systems, I am more apt to side with Roediger and say that there are probably more like 20 to 25 different interactive memory systems working together at any given time. I at least wish Pillemer had accounted for other types of sensory memory (auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory) more thoroughly. Perhaps his idea of imagistic traces covers all sensory perception. Drawing the lines between the systems quickly becomes sticky, but nonetheless his distinction between encoding experiences prelinguistically and after linguistic/narrative skills have been acquired is very significant. In the context of verbal recall (which, as Bauer points out, is what most of this research is preoccupied with), linguistic mastery during both encoding and recall seems to be of the utmost importance. Early childhood memories are not filtered through a linguistic narrative lens and are “discordant with adults' purposeful recollective efforts.” Perhaps this is the same reason we often have a difficult time verbally recalling dreams. As most dreams do not unfold in a logical narrative manner, the dreamer, similar to the prelinguistic child, has a hard time recalling the jumbled, fluidly encoded images. Charlotte Doyle of SLC's psychology department places a great deal of importance on linguistically representing one's thoughts, justifying her requirement that all students post on the blog prior to every class by saying, “You haven't thought it until you've put it into words.” Nelson and Fivush have a lot to say about language's importance in development of the concept of self and memory. For instance, language gives the idea of the abstract construct of time and helps to organize memories into the narrative forms of autobiographic memory. More importantly perhaps, it allows children to interact with other people, strengthening their sense of self and their socially constructed notions of what and how one should remember.
This social/cultural theory is equally as important and inextricably linked to the Pillemer's narrative model. Harley and Reese say “The primary purpose of autobiographical memory is to share personal memories with others,” so of course we are talking about something that is largely social. At first, I was a little put off by how much sense this deterministic social/cultural model made. If I am simply a product of my social upbringing, and the way I represent all my memories and my concept of self are socially determined before I even have a concept of self, what hope do I have of achieving any sort of originality in my predetermined life? But I found the fact that children's unique styles of interaction with parents during memory talk influences how parents go about this talk to be existentially empowering. Then I felt unsettled again when, after reading that parents' memory talk styles have an definite impact on children's memories and personalities, I started to think about the effect of our teach-for-the-test educational system.
It is fairly obvious that events experienced prior to attaining a concrete sense of self would not be momentous. If something is not happening to what you perceive as you, you will be less likely to remember it—as Pillemer beats to death in the section of his second chapter that I didn't like. Without a concept of self, one is no better off than a third-party recipient of information (such as the atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima) or than the amnesiacs we've talked about being told of their own past as if it were secondhand knowledge. If one does not believe something to be important to their lives, it is not necessary to be encoded in long term memory. This sort of evolutionary view (where one remembers that which is critical to his survival, forgetting that which is not—as mentioned in the section of Pillemer's second chapter that I did like) carries over beyond childhood amnesia to, I think, any period or part of your life that you don't recall very well. If the events of this period are not vital to your current goals or emotional state, why would you remember them? In this light (and after reading the accounts of decent to impressive infantile memory), I side with Howe and Courage in that infantile amnesia is largely a chimera, a popular figment perpetuated by the relatively recent spike in childhood amnesia research.
One last note: What do you guys think about Howe and Courage's section about infants' memory traces being reactivated so much that instead of crystalizing the trace as a permanent memory, the repeated remembering actually (as I've posted before) exponentially perverts the memory to the point of furthering infantile amnesia?

The phenomenological account of TOT

The readings for this discussion generated several questions in my mind. Brown (1991) as well as Maril (2001) and Schacter (2001) provided explorations of this phenomenon leaving me thoroughly unsatisfied and confused; I wanted to know more about emotionality and if it was actually a necessary component of TOT. What are the conditions (on both a personal and social level) that produce a sense of urgency for the individual? Is TOT determined relative to the social environment, or is it conditioned by personal cognitive functioning? Although the various direct-access theories address some of these questions, the methodology applied does not seem conducive to accurate results. I considered the subject’s dependence on how he/she contemplates the target word, and that the shift from general to more specific detail represents a difference in how much—as well as in what way—attention is commanded to the target. The cognitive strategy comprises a process of breaking down one’s comprehensive analysis (schema) of a certain target. Subsequently, I questioned the role of familiarity and recognition. To have truly invoked a TOT, should the subject be able to recognize that he/she is familiar with the target word but for whatever reason he/she is unable to recall it presently? What exactly is the relationship between interference and TOT? I thought about how I have experienced TOT in the past, both subjectively and through interaction or observation of peers, and I realized that there was usually a strong resistance to admitting that one did not know or could not eventually recall the target word. There is something to be examined when considering the competitive nature that can arise when one is in a social setting (i.e. when multiple individuals are trying to recall the same target).

When Brown (1991) discussed investigations that have studied TOTs in children, I didn’t understand how scientists could even attempt to analyze this. During such early stages of linguistic development it seems futile to conduct such experimentation—how can one even tell if they kids are just having difficulty with pronunciation or if they are actually experiencing TOT?

By the time I had read these first three articles, I felt there was a necessity to establish distinct ramifications of the TOT state because there are too many gray areas. We must acknowledge that not everyone is going to experience it in the same way while establishing what exactly distinguishes it from a “feeling of knowing” state. I felt that TOT hinged on this sense of necessity to retrieve the information that is psychologically determined by the individual as well as his/her environment. The conundrum hinges on these two binary conditions: the desired information can remain in one’s realm of consciousness and remain accessible without extensive effort at certain times, but under other circumstances one can feel utterly helpless until it later arises, often when one’s attention is not focused on retrieval. It was not until examining Schwartz’s (1999) article that I felt these topics were appropriately addressed. He brings up extremely relevant aspects that must be considered; his discussion of Tulving’s (1989) critique of the doctrine of concordance is essentially what the other articles seem to gloss over. Tulving emphasized the difference between “the cognitive process of ‘retrieval’” and “the experience of ‘recollection’” based on the notion that one is representative of behavior while the other is of phenomenology. Theorists have often assumed that the cognitive processes involved in these are the same, but Tulving (and Schwartz) deny this. Positing that we are not consciously aware of this process of retrieval, Schwartz elaborates that it “may not be accompanied by a feeling that recollection from memory has occurred” (380). Phenomenology implies that feeling accompanies cognition, and it seems that approaching TOT in this light would be more appropriate. Schwartz concludes by support of metacognitive theories that although these processes may not be one and the same, experimental results have shown that they are most likely linked. He even states that this association “may occur only because of features of the external environment” (390). I think that further research should be conducted according to the metacognitive approaches. Clearly TOT can be invoked in laboratory settings, but I think it has a lot to do with how significant the target word is for the individual relative to their environment, and perhaps it is more appropriate to study this phenomenon as it manifests itself everyday. Realizing that one cannot recall a piece of information that was previously recalled is different from having a similar realization with an affective reaction. It all depends on how the individual attaches value and perceives such meaning relative to time and place.

Ironic Relief

Up to this point our class readings have mainly revolved around broad ideas in memory research—different levels of memory, recall and retrieval. We have also studied anomalies and irregularities such as amnesia and synesthesia. And while the ideas seem concrete at face value, truly understanding their nature has yielded less than solid results, and we are often left to rely on inference and interpretation. How ironic it is, then, that the study of such a frustrating experience as the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon could be so satisfying. I found this week’s readings “satisfying” for a few reasons.

Firstly, all the readings worked together by providing different viewpoints of the same subject. While Schwartz offered an array of theories explaining the etiology of TOT, the Maril study gave sound neurological evidence linking certain parts of the brain (the anterior cingulated cortex and lateral prefrontal cortex) to the processes of conflict detection and retrieval monitoring that accompany TOT. And Schacter does what he does best—presenting cognitive theory, neurological study, and human story together in a cohesive text. Just as there are many interweaving ways to interpret TOT data, there are many ways in which these readings support each other and enrich our overall understanding. Unlike many other subjects in memory research, TOT lends itself easily to examination in multiple fields of study.

And speaking of examination, TOT is a pleasure because it can be so well studied in the laboratory. The factors are not only easy to control, but also easy to calculate. The results are definitive—one either knows, doesn’t know, or has TOT, and factors such as time and cues are easily quantifiable.

Another reason why TOT study is so satisfying is because it tends to ring true. It is a universal phenomenon, meaning that everyone exactly what TOT feels like. Unlike other specific phenomena such as amnesia, we all have personal experience with TOT, which we can reflect upon when evaluating different theories. It is pleasing to find that the findings and theories of well-respected experts of psychology, neurology, and cognitive science match up with your own intuitions on the same subject. Even the technical psychological term, “tip-of-the-tongue,” is intuitive, having originated from colloquial usage. TOT study is utterly accessible.

While it is safe to assume that TOT is universal, it is evident from the readings that there are many differing views and theories on why it occurs. As someone with a lifetime of experience with TOT, which theories most ring true for you? How exactly do you explain this feeling with which you are so familiar?

October 24 Blog

Burke and MacKay’s ideas on retrieved information also intrigued me as I came to see it in my experiment subjects, and myself, in the TOT test. It was almost frustrating, this clinging to a familiar name even though I KNEW it was wrong. But when I would force it out of my mind, it was almost as if I was staring at a blank blackboard. I had nothing to go on. My other subjects felt the same way. One of them even told himself to, “forget that one!” I observed similar reactions to the TOT feeling that Catie did with her subjects. They would return and repeat the information they already knew about the actors, rather then try to cue up new information. This did not work for me in helping to cue up the name, but it did work for one of my subjects. This could be because I did get frustrated because I knew what I was doing, knew that I was simply repeating the same thing over and over, and thus getting nowhere. Who’s to say that if I just focused on the information instead of my feelings, I would have been able, like my subject, to retrieve the name.

An interesting topic came up this weekend with a few friends that relates to memory and how we view our own memories. One of my friends explains his memory as an office filled with filing cabinets, but the cabinets aren’t labeled, which is why he sometimes gets his memories mixed up and has a hard time retrieving certain ones. I thought that theory related to Augustine’s comparison between his memory and a great harbor. It also made me realize that I have never visualized my memory, or attempted to. Maybe this has something to do with my preference for auditory learning. Sounds and the way I hear things tend to make a greater impact then images. I have never thought of my memory as something else, or given it an image. I was wondering if this, giving memory an image, is common, and what types of images do we give?