Constructive Nature of Memory Essay (Critical Writing)

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For a long period of time, the analyses of human brain have captivated most scientists and they have discovered various extraordinary abilities of the brain. Specifically, scientists have extensively analyzed the human memory through various approaches such as theoretical ideas, experimental finding and conceptual frameworks. In spite of conflicting and vast knowledge regarding memory, there are specific aspects that most scientists and psychologist can agree. One of the most imperative observations is that people memory is not perfect.

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This suggests that the human memory is prone to errors, distortions and illusions. Secondly, is the idea that memory is constructive. This idea suggests that bits and pieces of information are collected and put together to come up with a comprehensive idea. In addition, this suggests that when an individual recall previous events at a later time, they have to reconstruct and recreate their memory to come up with a complete memory.

There are various problems that are associated with the constructive nature of memory. The process of memory retrieval is not only reconstructive, but it also involves other strategies that would assist in retrieving the original event or memory. Since not all information’s are stored in the long term memory, it becomes easy for most of important information disappear from the memory.

This creates a room for an individual to fit any information that may seem correct or possible to the previous event. In addition, prior knowledge is also known to facilitate memory, and at the same time hinder retrieval of the past memory because of its own reconstructive process. Furthermore, information is also forgotten because of gradual disappearance and transience that is information fades away quickly from the memory.

Thirdly, absent-mindedness and blocking prevent people from remembering something that they know but they can’t retrieve. Another challenge that faces the constructive nature of memory is the misattribution and biasness. This suggests that some people cannot remember where an event took place or heard what they had. Furthermore, most people tend not to remember painful experience or event.

These factors significantly influence the process of retrieving information from the memory. I have experienced several occasion with memory failures and inaccuracies. During examination period, I tend to forget most of the things that I have read, but remember them immediately I leave the examination room. In worse situations, I tend to confuse words that sound the same or have somewhat same meaning.

The knowledge of previous notes and knowledge usually have significant effect on understanding the current knowledge. Amusingly, sometimes I usually brush my teeth after I have already brushed them. This usually occurs when I am absent-minded or when my mind has been blocked trying to remember whether I brushed my teeth. Now that I am aware of the constructive nature of memory, it will significantly influence the way I encode and view my memory.

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The brain is capable of classifying and sorting tasks activities in a systematic manner without confusion. The process of classifying objects is a complex, but imperative part of our every facet of life. The process of classifying object is important in my life because of several reasons. Classification skills are very important for many activities in higher learning institution. It would be virtually impossible for an individual to do practical activity without classifying objects in their field of study.

Many fundamental skills such as organization, thinking, word retrieval and note taking requires the brain to be effective in comparing and categorizing object for effective learning to take place. Currently, classifying plays an important role in my career especially in psychology. Classification skills therefore help me to improve my skills in classifying objects, observing patterns and learning hierarchal relationship of things.

Generally, everyday people are forced to classify objects such as colors, organizing playing things and coming up with new ways to simplify their work. Without classification ability it would become very hard for individual to comprehend and associate with other effectively in the society. Most careers like science and mathematics require individuals to have excellent classifying skills to enable them have good picture of the world. Furthermore, classification enables us to understand the relationship between different organisms in the society.

There are various factors that can affect the way a person classify objects in the environment. One major cause of poor classification ability is the development of health issue and diseases that attack the brain. An example is the pick’s disease which is rare and attacks the brain causing destruction of nerve cells. Some of the common symptoms of this disease include loss of speech and the ability to classify objects in the immediate environment of an individual.

A person suffering this disease may have difficult in speech, thinking and have behavioral changes that do not conform to the general society. Other symptoms include over-activity, wandering, inertia and poor etiquette. These symptoms make a person have poor relationship with people in the society.

In addition, the disease is associated with progressive non-fluent aphasia and semantic dementia. A person suffering from this disease has difficult in studying since they can differentiate things in class. Furthermore, the person cannot associate with other students effectively because of their poor etiquette and over reactive behavior.

There is various way of representing events, objects or things, which include either verbal representations or depictive (pictorial) representations. Both presentations differ in a number of ways, which some scholars argue that verbal representation is convectional. This means that there may be no similarity between the sentences, text or words with the object represented by the presentation. In other hand, pictorial representation is mostly based on the object depicted and picture.

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Most scholars argue that representation of picture is more natural and convenient than representing by verbal means. In addition, most people are capable to remember pictorial representation easily than verbal description of the object. The next section will briefly describe an object.

The object is made up of wood and come in different shape, color and size. It has four stands that support it from the ground. Furthermore, it has a horizontal plane surface that is well furnished and smooth. It also has a vertical surface that is attached on one end of the horizontal plane surface.

The vertical surface is slightly inclined away from the horizontal plane surface that is both the vertical and horizontal surface meets at an angle more than ninety degrees. The vertical surface is made up of different patterns and shape.

From this description, pictorial representation produces a higher heterogeneity among individuals. Verbal representation seems to facilitate prediction and judgment from an individual perception. Pictorial representation improves the individual understanding of the object quickly than the verbal representation. Pictures facilitate reasoning and learning since they act as external memory aids, which allow quick processing of information in the memory.

Speech segmentation is considered to be the process of identifying boundaries between phonemes, syllables and words. This term is both used to imply the mental process and natural language acquisition process in an individual. During speech segmentation, individual must take into consideration semantics, grammar and context. Speech segmentation enables an individual to break continuous stream of sound into units that can be easily recognized and understandable.

Speech segmentation is considered as a necessary step in auditory language processing. Speech segmentation occurs in language that people are familiar with since it becomes easy for them to understand the language. It is very difficult to have speech segmentation in language that a person is not familiar with since identifying boundaries between syllables, words and phonemes is not possible. For example, it becomes hard to hear the different words in Chinese since the speech signal sounds continuous with no physical breaks.

McGurk effect is an occurrence that shows relationship between vision and hearing in speech perception. In McGurk effect, the images and visual representation perceived by a listener distorts how they receive sound from the individual who is talking.

If a person receives poor auditory information, but good visual information they may be experiencing McGurk effects. After viewing the video on McGurk Effect the initial syllable that the person is saying is “fa”. The syllable changes to “ba” when eyes are closed and the movement of the mouth also plays an important role in determining the syllable.

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According to the McGurk effects auditory illusion is created when the mind prioritize the visual information over the auditory information, which in this case the mind decides to listen to what it sees as the correct information.

Aphasia is a condition where an individual is characterized by total loss or the ability to communicate either through written word or verbally. An individual suffering from aphasia may have difficult in writing, speaking recognizing shapes and communicating with others. The cause of the aphasia ranges from brain injury during accident to when the brain lacks enough oxygen. Some diseases like brain tumor, infections and alzheimers are known to cause aphasia.

Broca’s aphasia occurs as a result to the damage of the frontal lobe of the brain or frontportion. A person with Broca’s aphasia may be unable to use speech or may have difficulty constructing sentences. The reading ability of a person suffering from aphasia becomes hard, and they usually become stressed since they are aware of their condition. Wernicke’s aphasia is caused due to the damage on the side portion of the brain or the temporal lobe of the brain.

Individual with Wernicke’s aphasia like to speak in long uninterrupted speeches, which do not make any sense. They usually have difficulty understanding other people speech, and have poor reading ability. Their writing skills are maintained although they may write abnormal things. Unlike Broca’s aphasia, people suffering from Wernicke’s are not aware of their condition and language errors.

The sudden understanding of problem or concepts is usually referred has the “aha” moment. In most cases the insights remain for a long period of time in an individual mind long term memory. Most scientists argue that if individual gain knowledge through insights they are in good position to remember more things and knowledge from past experience. Everybody experiences the insightful moment through different way and pattern.

As soon as a person realizes that a particular problem cannot be solved by them in their path, they seek alternatives or other means of solving the feat. Once they discover new way to solve the problem they experience the “Aha” moment. Secondly, a person may be using unnecessary knowledge and constraints in solving their problem without success. Once an individual relaxes they come up with new knowledge and ideas to solve their problems.

Constant relaxation enables the individual to internalize and separate chunk information from required information. After trying to solve a mathematical equation for a long period of hours, I decide to relax for some few hours. After relaxation I found it easy to simplify the problems without difficulty that I experienced early.

Confirmation bias is the tendency of people to believe information that favors their prediction or hypotheses. Individual show this tendency when they selectively remember information that favor their prediction on a particular matter. Research show that most people are biased especially when it comes to court proceeding. Confirmation bias would play a significant role in perpetuating stereotypes in a number of ways.

Individual tend to test hypotheses in one side that favor their prediction, through searching evidence that would favor them. People should search for all relevant evidence that may support their hypotheses or disapprove them. This would provide a clear judgment that is not biased in one direction or favors only one person.

This selective attention on specific information causes some evidence to be sidelined or overlooked by an individual. On top of that, illusionary correlation is the attribute of a person to observe correlation between data sets which actually does not exist.

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IvyPanda. (2019) 'Constructive Nature of Memory'. 27 March.

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IvyPanda. 2019. "Constructive Nature of Memory." March 27, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/constructive-nature-of-memory/.

1. IvyPanda. "Constructive Nature of Memory." March 27, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/constructive-nature-of-memory/.


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IvyPanda. "Constructive Nature of Memory." March 27, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/constructive-nature-of-memory/.

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