PS 200 Unit 5 Seminar

PS 200 Unit 5 Seminar

Kaplan University

The state of mind and emotional state we are in can affect how well we remember the details of an event. Emotions are said to be a factor in whether we can recall a memory at the time we try to. Trying to put ourselves in the same mood we were when we experienced the event has sometimes been helpful in recalling details of the event.

Emotions affect memories in several ways, emotionally stimulating experiences are remembered better than boring ones. Pleasant emotions are typically recalled better than unpleasant emotions. Strong emotion can damage memory for experiences that were less emotional as well as information experienced during that time. It is not the significance of the information that helps the memory, but the emotional arousal.

Another aspect of emotion is mood. There has been plenty of research done on how mood affects memory, mood affects what is observed and encoded. This is indicated in two effects: mood congruence, meaning we remember experiences that duplicate our current mood. So when we are depressed we will remember negative experiences. The second is mood dependence: which suggest that remembering is easier if you’re in the same mood you were when the event took place (Buchanan, 2007).

Amnesia is most commonly caused by brain damage such as, trauma to the head, stroke, or neurological disease. One form of amnesia known as retrograde amnesia, which is loss of memory of events that happened before the brain damage. The other form of amnesia is anterograde amnesia, which means the loss of being capable of forming memories for things that happened after the brain damage. Anterograde amnesia affects the short-term memory and retrograde amnesia is the loss of long-term memory. (Matlin, & Farmer, 2016).

Autobiographical memories are your memories of experiences and things connected to yourself. Autobiographical memory explains significant characteristics of our memory for life events: We sometimes make errors nut our memory is usually right for a selection of information. When people make mistakes, they usually involve peripheral details and detailed information about everyday happenings, rather than vital information about important events. Our memories sometimes mix together information from several sources, so that we have a unified memory when it is retrieved. Research concerning autobiographical memory shows that our memories are mostly correct, but we make errors on some information and we sometimes blend information from different experiences. (Matlin, & Farmer, 2016).

Reference

Buchanan, T. W. (2007). Retrieval of Emotional Memories. Psychological Bulletin, 133(5), 761–779. http://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.133.5.761

Matlin, M. W., Farmer, T. A. (2016). Cognition, 9th Edition. [VitalSource Bookshelf Online]. Retrieved from https://kaplan.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781119177678/