Memory (Cognitive Psychology)

The word intuition has a certain glow to it, something luring and secretive, as if just taking it in one’s mouth would suffice to undergo it. Most people would like to be intuitive if the word is taken in the sense of being in the position to gain knowledge in a direct and immediate way. Calling a person intuitive suggests that he or she has a capacity to see things that are not apparent and to look right into the heart of matters. It reminds of having insight in the etymological sense of the word.  The article discusses the role of intuition for insight. Creativity provides heuristic solutions to problems that are intractable if approached in standard, algorithmic ways. Intuition is claimed to occur during the incubation phase (Wallas 1926) and to crucially depend on embodied memory and unconscious processing of memories, such as reconstruction and recreation. Two suggestions as to how memory contributes to intuition, and by which processes are analysed and compared: Barsalou & Prinz’ (1997) and Langley & Jones’ (1988).    It is argued that context-independent knowledge and contextual information, embodiment, and personal investment are equally important for intuition and creativity. Then, two theories about the processes that occur during incubation are discussed. Both suppose that intuition depends on memory and that it is not a conscious process. The first one concerns operations on mental images, the second describes how insight results from indexing and retrieval. Both processes are argued to be essential for insight. This means that reconstruction and recreation of memories play an important role to intuition, both during incubation and in recall.

Ancient Greek people adored the Titan goddess Mnemosyne. Mnemosyne was the personification of memory, of remembrance, sense-making and eloquence. Today we might call her the goddess of consciousness. Mnemosyne was also the daughter of Heaven and Earth (Ouranos and Gaia). She was the mother of the Muses and therefore the source of all divine inspiration in the world. She was invoked in the dream incubation rituals at the Asklepion Sleep Temples, so that supplicants would remember their dreams. She was called upon at Oracles and Mystery ceremonies as a psychopomp. She guided souls on their journeys through life, dream and underworld.

No doubt there was an archetype that predates Mnemosyne, but she stands as an enduring symbol of memory as consciousness which is just as valid in today’s world and will continue to be relevant, as long as conscious beings exist.

What are we without memory? How do we make sense of the world around us if we have no recollection of our past? No awareness of our place in space and time. What exists beyond the sphere of time’s influence. Once we transcend the cycles of day and night, the rotations of the planets, the pulsations of stars and vortices of galaxies? What happens to time when we dive into the quantum realm? Is this where we go when we die?

Working Memory provides a mental work place to support everyday cognitive activities that require both processing and storage. It has been found to be associated with a range of cognitive functions. Recently, a strong link between working memory and learning has been reported. This finding can be implicated in learning disabilities. It is likely that limited working memory functioning of children with learning disabilities hampers their learning skills; possibly because of the crucial role played by working memory in learning process. The current paper reviews working memory functioning in subtypes of learning disabilities (Dyslexia, Dysgraphia and Dyscalculia) and provides a detailed account of pattern of deficit seen in working memory in the three subtypes of LD. Review of literature suggests that working memory functions differently in children with LD than normal achieving children. Children with LD often fail to learn because high working memory demand of the learning task often exceeds their working memory capacity. Some researchers suggest that working memory deficits are not entirely a capacity deficit, rather a strategy deficit. Evidences suggest that learning performance of these children can be improved by teaching appropriate strategy to reduce working memory load of the task, and through remedial training. Failure to identify working memory problems at early stage and rectify resultant learning problems may leave the child struggling with this invisible handicap and can even lead to dropout from school.

Conspiracy theories, or in general seriously distorted beliefs, are widespread. Large number of books and articles has been written on this subject from psychological, sociological and political science perspectives. How and why conspiracy theories transpire in the brain is still more a matter of speculation rather than of hard science. In this paper one plausible mechanisms is investigated: rapid freezing of high neu-roplasticity (RFHN). Emotional arousal temporarily increases neuroplasticity leading to creation of new associations, pathways that spread neural activation. Using the language of neurodynamics a meme is defined as quasi-stable associative memory attractor state. Depending on the temporal characteristics of the incoming information and the plasticity of the network, memory may self-organize, creating memes with large attractor basins, drawing in many accidental patterns representing concepts and memories. Creation of such memes with numerous fake associations distorts relations between stable memory states, redefining world-view. Simulations of neural network models trained with competitive Hebbian learning (CHL) on stationary and non-stationary input data show the formation of distorted memory states. Short learning with high plasticity followed by rapid decrease of plasticity leads to memes with large attraction basins, distorting input pattern representations in associative memory. Such system-level models may be used to understand formation of strong attractor states of the neurodynamics, representing distorted deeply settled beliefs.

«Maquémilitarycoup!».Anethnographicapproachtothememoriesof
a work community in the Argentine dictatorship through Oral History
This contribution deals with the stories and memories of the Fiat Concord working- class community during the last civic-military dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983). We propose to reflect critically on the fieldwork that consisted of the compilation of memories of workers who lived during the dictatorship. e focus is placed on the “historian's kitchen”, highlighting the way in which the research was built. Two elements stand out: the assumptions from which the work originated and the ability of oral sources to make historians rethink their initial research questions and challenge and review the assumptions that prevailed at the beginning.

HSAM or Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory is a rare memory phenomenon in which a person displays a near perfect recollection of events and experiences from their lives. These individuals have been recognised as having a thorough understanding of the calender and its patterns. The rigorous criteria for HSAM diagnosis involves using calendar dates and public events to establish memory details. Individuals with HSAM also often exhibit behaviour that means they spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about their past. There are less than 100 confirmed cases around the world, but many will tell you that they remember being in the womb and have lucid dreams all the time.

I believe HSAM offers us an incredibly valuable insight into how the world of sleep and dreaming is implicated in memory function.

This year I have been very privileged to be introduced to Rebecca Sharrock - a young woman with HSAM. I am currently conducting an interview for print with her about her experiences within the dream state - and how her memory super powers infiltrate her sleep. Her experiences are very extraordinary and I think exploring this condition is a must for any sleep scientist or dream researcher.

Rebecca is joining myself and author Anthony Peake for his Monday afternoon (3pm UK Time) Consciousness Chat Show on January 11th. I would be delighted to see you there and you will have the opportunity to ask Rebecca your own questions.

Rationale: Memory plays a central role in the psychedelic experience. The spontaneous recall and immersive reliving of autobiographical memories has frequently been noted by researchers and clinicians as a salient phenomenon in the profile of subjective effects of classic psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin, LSD, and ayahuasca. The ability for psychedelics to provoke vivid memories has been considered important to their clinical efficacy.

Objective: This review aims to examine and aggregate the findings from experimental, observational, and qualitative studies on the acute modulation of memory by classic psychedelics in humans.

Method: A literature search was conducted using PubMed and PsycInfo as well as manual review of references from eligible studies. Publications reporting quantitative and/or qualitative findings were included; animal studies and case reports were excluded.

Results: Classic psychedelics produce dose-dependently increasing impairments in memory task performance, such that low doses produce no impairment and higher doses produce increasing levels of impairment. This pattern has been observed in tasks assessing spatial and verbal working memory, semantic memory, and non-autobiographical episodic memory. Such impairments may be less pronounced among experienced psychedelic users. Classic psychedelics also increase the vividness of autobiographical memories and frequently stimulate the recall and/or re-experiencing of autobiographical memories, often memories that are affectively intense (positively or negatively valenced) and that had been avoided and/or forgotten prior to the experience.

Conclusions: Classic psychedelics dose-dependently impair memory task performance but may enhance autobiographical memory. These findings are relevant to the understanding of psychological mechanisms of action of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy.

Keywords: Autobiographical memory,; Episodic memory,; Memory,; Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy; Psychedelics,; Recovered memory; Semantic memory,; Working memory,.

Environmental and facility warning signs are displays that are placed in public areas to warn people of potential hazard. This chapter examines empirical research on warning signs and organizes this research based on the stages of (a) noticing, Cb) comprehending, and (c) complying with the warning. Additionally , this chapter identifies gaps in warning sign research and suggests possible topics for future research.

Event concepts are unstructured atomic concepts that apply to event types. I provide arguments for the existence of such concepts and offer an account of the role they play in the guidance of skilled action and the formation of what I call when-beliefs and where-beliefs. The account I offer allows us to explain how organisms that do not possess linguistic capacities are able to form seemıngly complex beliefs about the world. I argue that many of our beliefs may not be essentially linguistically structured, including seemingly complex beliefs such as the belief that Olga played chess in the kitchen yesterday. Instead such beliefs can be explained in terms of creating a link between an atomic event concept and positions on cognitive maps. Such beliefs should not be thought of as propositional attitudes.

This paper advances a new and updated understanding of memory that should also change the coordinates of the memory enhancement debate. Instead of thinking of memory as a storehouse, we should think of memory from a narrative perspective. This view allows for a better understanding of the process in which we actually construct our memories by elaborating meaningful summaries, rather than adding discrete elements. I argue that this new way of thinking about memory makes most of the memory enhancement technologies we have or will have in the near future much less ethically problematic. The main idea is that (biological) memory interacts with memory enhancement in the creative and re-elaborative way it ordinarily does. To conclude, I discuss some cases to illustrate the previous points.

Tobias-Renstrøm and Køppe (2020) show the several conceptual limits that new materialism and postmodern subject models have for psychological theory and research. The present study continues in this discussion and argues that the applicability of the ideas of quantum-inspired new materialism depends on the theoretical perspectives that we consider for analysis: be it the first-person perspective referring to the subjective experience of a human subject, or the third-person perspective, in which a human subject is observed by an external observer. While the arguments of new materialism are in accordance with the analysis of the act of observation performed by an external observer, some problems arise when trying to theoretically approach the first-person subjective experience of a human subject. For example, new materialism fails to explain why human minds can maintain the awareness of a subject's identity throughout their lives and to recall the memories about their past personal experiences.

Nonverbal symbols such as pictorials are increasingly being recommended and used to convey warnings and other safety-related infonnation. Although fully redundant text and pictorial messages often facilitate performance, it is unknown what may result when textual instructions are accompanied by an incomplete set of pictorials, in which each and every textual item is not supplemented by an accompanying pictorial. To evaluate the practice of communicating information using various pictorial and text formats, fictitious yet realistic-appearing medication instruction sheets were created that presented eight dosing instructions in the following fonnats: Text alone , pictorials alone, fully redundant text and pictorials, text with four instructions accompanied by pictorials (incomple te pictorials) , and no instructions (control). Following exposure to one of the instruction sheets, participants were given a free: recall test on the content of the medication information. Results demonstrated that insuuctions from the fully redundant text and pictorials format were recalled more often than instructions from the other formats. Also, the fully redundant text and pictorials format was given higher ratings than the other formats, whereas the pictorials alone and control fonnats received the lowest ratings. An age-related decline in recall was observed, with older adults recalling far less infonnation than undergraduates or younger adults.