Page 63 - Biblical Counseling II

4. Well-learned information. For example, when you see words in your native language, perhaps on the side
of a delivery truck, you cannot help but register their meanings. At such times, automatic processing is so
effortless that it is difficult to shut it off” (Myers, p. 186, 2012).

“When learning new information, such as names, we can boost our memory through rehearsal, or conscious
repetition. Here are five different ways our brain encodes information:

Think of the list of five words I asked you to remember a few minutes ago. Say the five words without looking
back at the list. Which ones were the easiest to remember? Probably cigarettes and fire because they involve
visual imagery. Avoid goes along with cigarettes, so that has a connection too. Imagine and process are the
most difficult because they are abstract words.

Thanks to the durability of vivid images, our memory of an experience is often colored by its best or worst
moment – the best moment of pleasure or joy, and the worst moment of pain or frustration. Recalling the
high points while forgetting the boring may explain the phenomenon of rosy retrospection when people
tend to recall events more positively than they judged them at the time” (Myers, p. 187, 2012).

Storage: Retaining Information

Stress Hormones and Memory
Researchers interested in the biology of the mind have also looked closely at the influence of emotions and
stress on memory. When we are excited or stressed, emotion-triggered stress hormones make more glucose
energy available to fuel brain activity, signaling the brain that something important has happened.
Moreover, the amygdala, two emotion-processing clusters in the limbic system, boosts activity and available
proteins in the brain’s memory-forming area. The result? Arousal can sear certain events into the brain,
while disrupting memory for neutral events around the same time.
95% of American adults said they could recall exactly where they were or what they were doing when they
first heard the news of the terrorist attack on 9/11. This perceived clarity of memories of surprising,
significant events leads some psychologists to call them flashbulb memories: a clear memory of an
emotionally significant moment or event. It’s as if the brain commands, “Capture this!” Although our
flashbulb memories are noteworthy for their vividness and the confidence with which we recall them,
misinformation can seep into them” (Myers, p. 188, 2012).

Storing Implicit and Explicit Memories

Amnesia: the loss of memory.

Implicit memory: retention independent of conscious recollection.

Explicit memory: memory of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and “declare.”

Hippocampus: a neural center that is located in the limbic system; it helps process explicit memories for
storage.

Storing Implicit and Explicit Memories

61