Week 3!

How Good Is Your Memory?

I've always known that I didn't have the best memory. For whatever reason, I am just terrible at remembering what happens in movies. It doesn't matter how long ago I watched it, whether it be last week or 5 years ago or even how much I enjoyed it; you could ask me about any movie and there won't be a single one that I can actually remember the plot line for. But on the other hand, I'm easily able to remember something like names of ions or vocabulary terms, so I get pretty excited when a test or quiz is all simple memorization. 

Most of the tests I took, like the test asking me to press the space bar key whenever a picture of an animal was repeated, told me I had about an average memory. This was the same for the one that asked me to memorize 12 words and restate them to test my short term memory. I took the this test twice and could got 7 out of 12 words both times, even though they were the same words (which is a little sad in my opinion.) However, upon taking the "memory for faces" test I didn't too well, as I could only identify 3 out of 10 correct features on the displayed face.

I think that the validity of the test that evaluated my ability to remember faces was pretty accurate, because I realized I can meet people multiple times and still be completely unable to picture their face in my head. As for the words and pictures memory tests, I don't think they are that accurate in measuring people's overall short term memory because some people can remember pictures better than words, or vice versa. I guess everyone's brain is just wired a little differently.

I saw this study stating that smelling rose, or another subtle smell, while sleeping could help children learn better. Honestly, I'm down for that to be true because if I can do better in school by just having a rose by my pillow at night that would be great.