Zach Tran

 Zach Tran Intro to Cognitive Psychology 10/29/23 Learning & Memory PSA     Hello, dear student! Are you looking for just the right advice to do better in your classes? Feel like you're working hard, day and night, and yet you just aren't getting the results you want? Look no further! Today, I shall teaching you all about the intricacies of our mind and what it really takes to study hard, remember well, and perform to the fullest of your ability! This is no miracle cure, but with some research and practiced methods, we can work to let you be the best learner you can be!     First of all, active learning is key! In particular, active generation leads to better outcomes in learning than passive reception. I know it's tempting to just listen to lectures or read over your assigned reading once or twice. The material is dense enough as is, and you just want to get it through once. But passive learning is one of the most often mistakes that students fall to. Passi...

 Zach Tran Intro to Cognitive Psychology 10/22/23 My Own Memory      An example of procedural memory in my life is learning how to ski. Learning to ski was a very difficult process that took me many, many years to learn growing up, and I was lucky that my parents were persistent and kept me dedicated and constantly pushing myself. In this way, learning to ski is very similar to the common example for procedural memory of learning how to ride a bike, but also has many differences. Learning how to ride a bike is often described as something you never forget, which I think is a good description for procedural memory as a whole. And I agree, as even when I haven't ridden a bike in a long while, picking up a bike and trying to ride it again comes back instantly and easily. This is different to my experience with skiing. Usually I only ski in the winter season as it permits. Because skiing is so much more difficult, as shown as in my experience of taking years to learn it,...

 Zach Tran Intro to Cognitive Psychology 10/15/23 Technology & Working Memory     I believe that overall, technology and its rapidly developing advancements are leading to worsening memory in people. Technology means that people have more access than ever to information and assistance that makes it easer to solve problems and go day-to-day in life without having to remember all the information that we need. On the other hand, however, this overload of information and all the resources that we have access to can lead to worse memory as a consequence.     I believe short-term memory is impacted so significantly and in a negative way because all the information the we have access to. The internet and all of its resources, such as Wikipedia, YouTube, research, databases, and guides mean that whether it's doing a job or learning new things in everyday life, you don't need to remember things as much because the information is always at your fingertips. Regarding s...

Zach Tran Intro to Cognitive Psychology 10/9/23 Biases in Facial Processing      Biases in facial processing can refer to both systematic and unconscious preferences or distortions in the way that individuals perceive and interpret the faces of others. They are significant factors in everyday life for people that can affect how you perceive others both in noticed and unnoticed ways. These processes are affected by a combination of social, cultural, and cognitive factors. In this week's blog post, I will specifically be discussing the bias in facial processing of own-race bias.     Own-race bias is a cognitive phenomenon in which individuals show a greater ability to recognize and accurately identify the faces of individuals from their own racial or ethnic group compared to that of other racial or ethnic groups. In other words, when you have an own-race bias, you are more able to remember and distinguish the faces of people when they are the same race or ethnic b...

Zach Tran Psychology 3051 10/1/23 Multitasking     Generally I find that there are few things that I can definitely say that I multitask well when doing. As we learned in class, dividing one's attention between multiple tasks stresses your processing capacity and high loads and low loads can vary how much of your processing capacity is taken up. A task, however, for which I believe I can say that I can multitask moderately well in is doing intense but repetitive tasks while listening to music.     An example of this when I am working out and listening to music. Working out in this case involves repetitive actions such as repeatedly lifting a dumbbell, running laps at a track, or doing jumping jacks. In these cases, I would describe my exercise actions as being low load tasks. They do not take up as much of my processing capacity as other tasks might. On the contrary, often I will try to clear my head and think about little else as possible when performing these tasks...