Unleveled Psychology Memory Project

3 friends relive some of their most vivid memories

This podcast will include both Henry’s and my memories of being at the basketball court. In order to remember the events, we both went back to the scene and acted out what happened. We asked each other many questions, including things about the weather, placement of bodies, outcome, and other key details. These were context dependent memories because going back to the location of occurrence easily triggered them. Having the same smell, sound, visual, and paying greater attention to the event can also trigger context dependent memories. By discovering specific places around campus where we have memories, we were able to remember great detail by being present in the certain spot. While at these locations, we were able to retrieve, or locate, the stored information in our brains. Once locating it, we were able to return it to conscious thought and explain to others what happened.

When Cici and I visited the Duxbury Student Union, we first saw the whole building and were suddenly remembered of the days back in middle school when we were allowed to hang out with friends and listen to music at the student union for lunch, the dances that were held there and all the memories we retrieved from those wonderful days. This is an example of the context dependent memory because we remembered the memory that came back after looking and being at the student union. Context dependent memory are memories that come back after being prompted by something. Another example of this memory is the state dependent memory, because at the time we were happy and we remembered having fun at the dances from middle school. We walked up to the front of the building where we then retrieved from the dances that the inside got super hot, so we were allowed to walk outside and get some air.

In our podcast, MC recounts the time he crashed his 10th grade winter chorus concert. We went back to the spot it happened, the PAC, and when MC was standing near the stage, Julia reminded him of the memory. It is a context dependent memory because it was prompted by being there and seeing MC in that spot. In addition, context dependent memories can be prompted with food, music, or smells. When prompted, he remembered pulling his dress up to run across the wing of the stage, something he wouldn’t have remembered without being there. It was retrieved from his long term memory and brought into the front of his consciousness.

Nick and Chris went to the cross country starting line and remembered the Whitman-Hanson race during the 2016 XC season.

Sitting in breadboard last year me bella and two of our friends abby and ibby were decorating cookies. We shared many laughs and one in particular was when we were playing with a water bottle and took a slow motion video of it. It was really funny to us and is a happy memory.

A memory that Brett and I recalled was the time that I injured and dislocated my shoulder during a Duxbury High School football game. To recall this information from our memory storage (retrieval), Brett and I walked to the Duxbury High School turf field and positioned ourselves right in the spot where the injury occurred. What we were doing was a context-dependent memory. With context-dependent memories information is more easily retrieved in the context in which it was encoded and stored. When Brett and I positioned ourselves exactly in the spot and environment of where our memory took place at the turf field, this made it easier to recall information and certain details that happened during that specific memory. Additionally, the shoulder dislocation injury is an example of an episodic memory. An episodic memory is a memory of a specific event that you experienced yourself. I experienced the shoulder dislocation injury myself, but Brett was still right there on the sideline to witness the injury and drama

A context dependent memory is a memory that you cannot retrieve (or retrieve most of it) without knowing the context of the memory. This relates to our project because we used memories where we went to the location of the memory and then from there we were able to think of most everything that occured during that specific memory. So by going to the exact door that we left during gym class we were able to realize everything that happened from there after. The door was the context and all of the dependent information that we retrieved from there after was things like day of the week, coffee flavor, music that played and much more. I know what my car looks like, but by Tess going back to my car and refreshing her memory of what it looked like she was able recalls things such as where people sat. All of these different contexts allowed us to retrieve some minor and larger details that occured during that specific hour from almost an entire year ago. A context dependent memory allows us to recall memories that we

Walking around Duxbury High School, we stopped at the art room. Caitlin remembered that a memory she had from art club last year in the art room. She remembered that her friend Kyla made a silk painting and had showed it to her while she was making a color wheel. Caitlin stood outside of the art room because there was a class, but being near the art room, she was able to remember in more detail. She remembered what was on the silk and remembered what color it was. She remembered that there were four guitars one one each side. There were piano keys in a circle and musical notes around the keys. Also there were american flags. She said it felt happy and sad at the same time to remember that. It was happy because she was with her best friend and sad because she is now a senior and will be graduating soon. She might not have time to come back to high school at that room when she is in college. Caitlin would not have remember some of that stuff if we had not stopped by the art room. This was a context dependent me

The other day, Juliana and Alden went on an adventure around Duxbury High School to unlock the secrets of the “context dependent memory”. A context dependent memory is when someone remembers the details of memory when exposed to something that relates to that memory. This could include seeing a photograph of the memory, hearing the sounds similar to those in the memory, or visiting the place where the memory was made. For Juliana and Alden, this included a trip to the space between the gym and the locker room, as well as the high school visitor parking lot, which helped them remember specific details about getting trapped and blaring the horn.

The way we achieved this memory was by using techniques to improve memory.One of these techniques was to visit the spot and try to remember a specific memory. The memory that most of us remembered was an Episodic Memory. This memory is part of the long-term memory tree. We retrieved this by remembering a Context Dependent Memory. This is a memory that is not normally remembered but when you visit the spot you are able to remember nearly everything from that memory. This is different from other memories because there may be a schema. That is when there is a false memory of something that happened. This is also known as the Mandela Effect. However my memory of the Bird Sanctuary was not a schema.

Recap of my first time meeting Mr. Stephens, a memory that I retrieved when I walked by his office a few days ago.