Download Sept 16 - Am i Normal part 1

Am I normal?
U3A Psychology
September 2016
Am I normal?
This session will cover:
Memory
Hearing voices
Obsessions
Beliefs
IS MY MEMORY NORMAL?
Is my memory normal?
Memory is actually all about forgetting; all brains discard most of the
sensory information they receive
“ Tomorrow you’ll remember reasonably well a conversation you had today,”
says Neurobiologist James McGaugh.
“Within a week, a lot of that information will have been lost.” Within a year,
the conversation might be gone entirely.
Sensory memory
“ Twirling a sparkler allows us to
write letters and make circles in
the air thanks to our sensory
memory.”
Sensory memories are
thought to be stored as short
lived patterns of electrical
energy in the sensory and
perceptual regions of the
brain.
When this activity disappears,
the memory usually fades too.
While they last, they provide a
detailed representation of the
experience, from which
relevant pieces of information
can be stored in memory.
Short term memory
Some sensory
memories go on to
make short- term
memories, such as the
phone number that
you just dialled.
Short term memory
When you hold a restaurant’s
phone number in your mind as
you dial the number, you rely on
your short term memory.
This store is capable of holding
roughly 7 items of information for
approx. 15 to 20 seconds.
Actively rehearsing the
information by repeating it
several times can help you to
retain it for a longer time.
Short term memory
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Chunking
Seven items of information may not seem much, but it is
possible to get around this limit by “chunking” larger
pieces of information into meaningful units.
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By breaking a long string of numbers down into
”chunks”, it makes the numbers easier to remember.
Chunking
Chunking would be useful here!
Long term memory
Only really important
information makes it into long
term memory , such as a
conversation that contained a
personal insult.
“ We have selectively strong
memory for events that are
emotionally arousing,” says
neurobiologist James
McGaugh of the University of
California.
Primacy and recency effects
Moonlight
Pyjamas
Dream
Snore
Couch
Fatigue
Doze
Nightmare
Pillow
Tired
Silence
Nightcap
The first words,
“moonlight” and
“pyjamas” (primacy) are
likely to be remembered
well because they were
rehearsed the most, and
“silence” and
“nightcap” (recency)
because the last few
words should still be held
in short term memory.
There are two main types of long term memory
Semantic memories
record facts such as
the concept of a train.
Episodic memories are
about events we have
experienced, such as
a particular train
journey.
Episodic memory
We probably all know
someone who has an
encyclopaedic factual
memory, but extraordinary
episodic memories are a
more recent discovery.
“ These people remember
events from years ago the
way that you and I remember
events from last week.” says
McGaugh
Episodic memories
There’s also the opposite
condition, in which people
struggle to recall even recent
events that they have
experienced.
“They know the event
happened, but they can’t
mentally travel back , even
one week,” says Daniela
Palombo, who researches
autobiographical memory at
Boston University in
Massachusetts.
Episodic memories
Most of us fall between these
two extremes.
True to the stereotype,
women tend to have better
episodic memories.
With semantic memory, men
tend to remember spatial
information better, whereas
women generally perform
better at verbal tasks, such as
recalling word lists.
Ageing and memory
As we grow older, we may become more forgetful.
This is because as we age, gradual changes in brain
structure, affect these connections between brain cells and
this makes the retrieval of stored memories less efficient.
Ageing affects the recall of personal experiences more
than that of facts.
But, until you start finding it difficult to carry out a simple
task you have done many times before, you should not be
concerned if your memory seems to move in mysterious
ways.
Personal memory
“Memory is a personal thing,” says psychologist Charles
Fernyhough.
“ People remember things that are important to them. We
all have different interests and this changes what our mind
processes,” he says.
“My wife is interested in flowers. When we visit a garden, I
just see a jumble of colours, whereas she will remember all
sorts of details.”
Memory Systems
Memories are systems with
multiple parts that change
over time, so it is
unsurprising that there is a
lot of variation.
“ There are strong
individual differences , ”
says McGaugh. “It’s a
characteristic of human
memory that we all don’t
remember the same kind of
things”
ARE THE VOICES IN MY HEAD
NORMAL?
Are the voices in my head normal?
For Socrates, it came as a
warning that he was about to
make a mistake.
For Sigmund Freud, it was a
loved one accompanying him
when he travelled alone.
Hearing voices has a long
history.
Voices in my head
And as these distinguished
gents perhaps attest, it isn’t
always a sign of madness; our
everyday thoughts often
sound like voices.
In 2011, Charles Fernyhough
and Simon Mccarthy-Jones of
Durham University, UK, found
that 60% of us experience
“inner speech” with a back
and forth conversational
quality.
Inner speech
So where does inner speech end and hearing “outside”
voices begin?
One answer is that an inner voice “sort of feels like you”
says Fernyhough, so you feel more control over it- but given
how involuntary many thought processes seem to be, that is
rather unsatisfying.
Fernyhough and his colleagues estimate that between 5 and
15% of us hear outside voices, even if only fleetingly or
occasionally.
About 1% of people with no diagnosis of mental illness hear
more persistent, recurring voices..
Hearing voices
There seems to be little
difference between the brains
of those who haven’t been
diagnosed with mental
illness, but who do hear
voices, and those who don’t
hear voices.
It’s probably best to ask
yourself one question before
getting worked up about the
voices in your head, says
Fernyhough, are they
bothering you?
Do our minds tell us stories?
Voices aren’t the only
expression of our inner
thoughts- our minds tell us
stories too.
This “confabulation” is a
symptom of some mental
disorders, whereby people
have false recollections.
But the rest of us do it too.
Research shows, for example,
that when people are forced to
make a random decision they
later invent a narrative to
explain it.
Making sense of the world
One theory is that this helps
us make sense of a world
that bombards us with
information, and gives
conscious rationale to
decisions we make for
unconscious reasons.
Robert Trivers, an American
evolutionary biologist, thinks
our lies are more self serving;
by lying to ourselves, we lie
better to others too.