Tag Archives: Memory

Effect of Memory on Visual Perception

Posted on by

Memories May Skew Visual Perception

ScienceDaily (July 22, 2011) — Taking a trip down memory lane while you are driving could land you in a roadside ditch, new research indicates. Vanderbilt University psychologists have found that our visual perception can be contaminated by memories of what we have recently seen, impairing our ability to properly understand and act on what we are currently seeing.

“This study shows that holding the memory of a visual event in our mind for a short period of time can ‘contaminate’ visual perception during the time that we’re remembering,” Randolph Blake, study co-author and Centennial Professor of Psychology, said.

“Our study represents the first conclusive evidence for such contamination, and the results strongly suggest that remembering and perceiving engage at least some of the same brain areas.”

to read more, go to:    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110720091542.htm

Episodic Memory Linking

Posted on by

Neural Signature of ‘Mental Time Travel’: Memories Formed in the Same Context Become Linked, Evidence Shows

The research was conducted by professor Michael Kahana of the Department of Psychology in the School of Arts and Sciences and graduate student Jeremy R. Manning, of the Neuroscience Graduate Group in Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine. They collaborated with Gordon Baltuch and Brian Litt of the departments of Neurology and Psychology at the medical school and Sean M. Polyn of Vanderbilt University.

Their research was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Theories of episodic memory suggest that when I remember an event, I retrieve its earlier context and make it part of my present context,” Kahana said. “When I remember my grandmother, for example, I pull back all sorts of associations of a different time and place in my life; I’m also remembering living in Detroit and her Hungarian cooking. It’s like mental time travel. I jump back in time to the past, but I’m still grounded in the present.”

to read more, go to:    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110718171359.htm

Internet Searches Affect Memory Patterns

Posted on by

Is Google Messing with Your Mind? Search Alters Memory Patterns

Jennifer Welsh, LiveScience Staff Writer
Date: 14 July 2011 Time: 02:00 PM ET
computer, internet, google, yahoo, search engine
Search engines are making people more likely to rely on computers to “remember” things for them, computers and online search engines have become a kind of external memory system that can be accessed at will — and that human memory is adapting to it.
CREDIT: Simon Cataudo

Whether the Internet is making us smarter or stupider may be up for debate, but new research shows that search engines are changing the way we learn and remember things.

People are using the Internet as an external “expert” to be accessed at will. This phenomenon, called transactive memory, isn’t new; it’s been around as long as humans have communicated. We’ve always relied on experts within our group (which used to be other humans) and, with the invention of the printing press, stored information in books. In those cases, we had to remember only who or what held the information.

to read more, go to:    http://www.livescience.com/15044-internet-google-influence-learning-memory.html