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Reflective Essay: How Memory Affects Behavior

941 Words4 Pages

When I was only a couple of months old my mom and I were stuck in an airport due to delayed flights. The only luggage we had was my diaper bag and a backpack full of baby toys. I was miserable and cranky the whole entire time which didn’t make my mom feel better. At the time I had no idea what was going on but now that will be stamped in my memories forever. Memories are a key aspect in life because they affect our behavior, help us recall events that have happened in life, and last help us learn. Furthermore memories are the events we have experienced in life and due to these experiences they take a toll on a person’s behavior. We may perceive a person has negative or pessimistic but without knowing them we can not assume their personality. …show more content…

Memories allow us to have past knowledge so that we can better understand and relate to people. The New York Times article states “...Kate McLean, a psychologist at the University of Toronto in Mississauga. “This meaning-making capability — to talk about growth, to explain what something says about who I am — develops across adolescence.” (Benedict Carey). This backs up the point that through memories a person starts to more about their inner self. Remembering embarrassing moments can in some ways teach you how to grow up so you never act that way again. Along with learning about yourself you learn about other people. Also in the poem Memory As A Hearing Aid the poem talks about a guy who grew up and slowly his hearing deteriorated. He opened with “Somewhere, someone is asking a question, and I stand squinting at the classroom with one hand cupped behind my ear, trying to figure out where that voice is coming from.” (Tony Hoagland). This allows us to feel as if we are him because everyone has experienced a time in class where they were so far back in the room the can not hear what is going on. Hoagland uses this to describe what his life is like because he is deaf. Although we may not be deaf ourself we can use a memory of a time from when we could not hear very well to better understand how he

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Life has both good and bad memories. We often like to remember the good ones, but recalling the bad ones and analyzing it could be more helpful because it can help us realizes the mistakes we made in past, and also why do we feel more negative about it, the reason could be guilt, bad consequences extra. At a certain point of analyzing one could make self-discovery of the lesson the incident or memory wanted to teach you in your life. I read a great essay recently, it was about the authors' self discovery by recalling an incident which happened in her neighborhood when she was fourteen years old. The author was Edwidge Danticat and the essay was Westbury Court.

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I believe that Remembering is a good thing it can help build you up or tear you down but it’s all in how you let it affect you. People have been through the worst of the worst like from Elie Weisel a quote from nights saying when we arrived and were walking of the cattle cars I went to the left with my father to the right my sister and my mother and at that moment I knew I would never see their faces ever again”, and that right there that moment defines Elie that hard and painful time made him strong and able to tell his story and inspire. And from Interment a girl say’s “it was a branding of her own indignation”, that goes to show that the Japanese when they were put in train cars and taken away from their home, it really goes along with the

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I can relate to this as when I was 4 I busted my head open on an exercise machine while I was playing with my cousin. I remember the events that happened after the event but I remember almost none of the emotions or thoughts I had at that point. This too illustrates that childhood memories are

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Memories are something that every person has, whether it is joyful memories, sad memories, frustrating memories; we all have them. Memories are vital for the stability in our lives. Without memories, we would have no idea of the history of our planet prior to technology. Even the bad memories have their purpose in life. The short, but impactful poem written by Countee Cullen in 1925 â Incident,â perfectly reflects the necessity of capturing memory.

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These mistakes of neglection caused them to loose their loved ones. Remembering will prevent those mistakes from happening again. So memory plays a very important role and remembering is

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What is the point in real memory? Why should we remember all the moral and immoral from the past? How does it even help us? Some people say most conditions in today's world are pointless but one item that stands out is memory. Everyone has to have memory, even if it just an image popping up in your head of the last time you took your dog on a walk or helped an old woman cross the street.

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It was a hectic day. My friend had to call and have his grandparents pick him up which took about 45 minutes because they lived kind of far away. During that time, my dad told me “pack your bags, we need to go visit your grandmother” I remember that I didn’t pack much because I couldn’t think. My mom immediately booked us plane tickets to Portland. It was super close but we made the flight.

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An example of this in the film is the character Natalie that Lenny stays with near the end of the film. Natalie openly admitted to Lenny that she’ll use him to get rid of Dodd and Teddy and that it doesn't matter because he won’t remember her saying it. Natalie does accomplish using Lenny by taking all the pens out of his sight for he doesn't write a note to himself about what she said. Memories also create a sense of self by providing us a reminder of how we used to be but the problem of that is that memories can fade over time and become altered by us, such as how Lenny altered his memories of his wife’s

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A humans memory contains all that they have learnt and all they have experienced. Memories allow moments of today and yesterday last tomorrow and forever. It may seem that memories are a reliable source of information for a large majority of individuals but what would they think if their memories were actually wrong? To realize the memories that have been held in their minds for so long are inaccurate would cause great confusion and denial, which is the exact effect it has on them. Several people truly believe the reason why such a significant amount of others along with themselves have false memories is The Mandela Effect.

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Memories are one of the most important parts of life, there is no true happiness without the reminiscence of pain or love. This concept is portrayed in "The Giver" by Lois Lowry. The story tells of a 12-year old Jonas, who lives in a “utopian” society, where all bad memories are destroyed to avoid the feeling of pain. Jonas becomes the receiver, someone who receives good and bad memories, and he is transmitted memories of pain and pleasure from The Giver and is taught to keep the secret to himself. The author shows one should cherish memories, whether it be good or bad, as they are all of what is left of the past, and we should learn from it as to better ourselves in the future.

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Continually, we all have some sort of prior knowledge on the topics which is further enhanced by the research we conducted. We know that memory is the process where the brain holds all the information. In addition, memories can influence how a person would respond to a certain situation because of the emotions that are stored with it. Therefore, memories we create can impact the decisions and life choices that we make.

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Emotions can be defined as physiological signs as response to external stimuli and feelings emerge when the stimuli is interpreted by the brain. Whereas, on the other hand, memory is the ability to retain information over time through three main processes namely, encoding, storing and retrieving. A theory of how emotion is capable of influencing memory is known as the flashbulb memory theory which is also the focus of this essay. Flashbulb memories are a type of highly accurate and vivid episodic memory that cannot be easily forgotten, due to the emotional nature of the event. The term ‘flashbulb’ connotes that the memory is like a photograph in nature, meaning accurate in detail.

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When writing or reading a book or a movie, ever think about how much past experiences can shape a person’s behavior and attitude? Well, it greatly affects the shaping of a person’s behavior and attitude. In A Single Shard, by Linda Sue Park, Tree-ear is an orphan whose parents had died from fever when he was very young. Being raised up by Crane-man, his foster father, Tree-ear did not learn a lot about his real parents. Because of this, he will want to do anything to learn more about them.

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Implicit and Explicit Memory The brain's memory systems are divided into two types: implicit memory and explicit memory. The main difference between implicit and explicit memory is their relation to consciousness: explicit memory transport data to consciousness in the form of images or thoughts, while implicit memory mainly skips consciousness (Memory, 2009). Procedural memory is another type of implicit memory. Procedural memory allows individual to gain specific skills, like using a music instruments or learning how to play a sport.

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The biological approach to the basis of memory is explained in terms of underlying biological factors such as the activity of the nervous system, genetic factors, biochemical and neurochemicals. In general terms memory is our ability to encode, store, retain and recall information and past experiences afterwards in the human brain. In biological terms, memory is the recreation of past experiences by simultaneous activation or firing of neurons. Some of the major biopsychological research questions on memory are what are the biological substrates of memory, where are memories stored in the brain, how are memories assessed during recall and what is the mechanism of forgetting. The two main reasons that gave rise to the interest in biological basis of memory are that researchers became aware of the fact that many memory deficits arise from injuries to the brain.

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