Intro to Cognitive Psychology Week 7

 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, compared to maybe weeks of practice for biking, every season when I ski for the first time again in months, I am not as good as first. It takes me times and several practice runs for my procedural memory to remember how to ski again. In this way, my experience with procedural memory as far as skiing is very different to something like learning and remember how to ride a bike.

     An example of episodic memory in my life are memories of my vacation trips across the country with my family. Examples include trips to New York City and national parks like Yosemite. These trips, despite having so much detail and covering so much time, usually in weeks, are held very clearly and distinctly in my mind. I believe this is because there is a strong emotional aspect to many episodic memories. In this case, I have strong positive emotional associations with these trips and so I look back on them fondly and remember them very vividly. In the same way, I'm sure many people would also have instances of episodic memory that they remember very well but could have negative associations, such as public embarrassment or even traumatic events. My memories of trips to places with my family to have time off and enjoy time together is a classic example of episodic memory.

    An example of semantic memory in my life is my knowledge of how to use Google Drive and its various applications like Google Docs, Google Slides, and Google Sheets. There are some elements of procedural memory here, such as doing basic functions automatically like opening documents or organizing files. But as I dive into more complex functions like typing up reports, making flashy and engaging slideshows and presentations, or inputting data and computing functions in spreadsheets, I need to engage my semantic memory and think and remember how these applications work and what I need to do to complete my work and use them to their fullest potential. Semantic memory can be a simple fact that is known as remembered, such as the letters in the alphabet, the seasons of the year, and the months of the year. But like these facts, my knowledge of how to use Google Drive applications consist of information that is known and recalled, primarily in an informational way.