memories

Memory is used in all parts of our daily life. The concept of memory is used in nearly all actions that we take part of. It will help us in passing a test to recall certain elements in our lives. There are three elements that go into memory. The first task that goes into memory is encoding. Encoding is when you take in the information that you are attempting to remember. There are two ways to do this: the first being verbatim and the second is gist. Verbatim is the details of the situation and gist is the “essence of the event” (Siegler and Alibali p.228). The second element of memory is storage. The storage part is when the memory is store in your brain. The third part of memory is the retrieval. This is the actual recall of memories. These three parts are needed in order to have a successful memory.

One of my strongest childhood memories is of an accident that I had when I was in the first or second grade. I was playing tag with some friends when I decided to climb the jungle gym. When I reached the top of the jungle gym, I slipped and fell. As a result I received a cut to my head and had to be rushed to the emergency room. Without the use of autobiographical memories I would not be able to recall events from my own life. Although this memory of mine is one of my earliest, research has shown that individuals are able to remember events before this. An example would be toddlers remembering to kick their leg in order to make a mobile move. This is the very basic kind of memory. As children grow older their memory improves and gets better. Even recollection of memories before the age of four is hard to believe.

The recollection of memories for all ages can be altered to suit are own needs. The changing of memories is easiest among young children. Children are able to change their mind about what they remember because they are easily suggestible. Memories can be planted into children mind by the way that we ask them to recall the memory. The questioner can “trick” the children into thinking that something happen when in fact it did not by the way that they ask the question. Another way that children get memories confused is by having to image what happen. They will often confuse a new event with a past event. Or they will combine two past events into one. A third problem with children’s memories is that they can be influence with suggestion by others. I have this memory of taking my mothers keys out of her purse and starting the car when I was a toddler. Everyone swears by this event that it did actually happen. But since I was so young, how much of my memory was the telling of stories by my family.

The recollections of memories are not just needed by the individual, but often times by others. Sometimes children are needed to testify in court. With the ability to be easily suggestible and easily influence, society needs to create a standard for questioning children. As stated in the book, open-ended questions are the best way to question children. Children are less likely to please the questioner and create answers.

Memories are useful in all parts of life. Memories can benefit the person trying to remember things as well as others relying on that other person memory. As we grow older, we start to rely more on our memory. Memories in older people also are more important than anything else.