Cognitive Domains: Memory

If you read a page in a book, how well can you recall what you read several days later? Or what if someone asked you what you ate for lunch yesterday? Let’s say you’re driving home. On the way, you don’t really need to check for directions because you often drive this route. Then as you’re almost home, you get a phone call to tell you that you have an appointment. Once you hang up, you walk over to your calendar and immediately write it down. In order for you to complete all of these actions, you relied on your memory. In fact, you used different types of memory. For example, you remembered how to drive a car, but this was different from the information presented on the phone for the appointment. 

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Something interesting written by Larry R Squire (Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry, Neurosciences, and Psychology at University of California San Diego) is that memory is considered a distinct cerebral function which can be separate from other cognitive abilities. He explains that memory is the faculty of encoding, storing, and retrieving information

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But if you’re picturing your memory as something physical that’s stored in your brain, or if you’re wondering about the maximum amount of memories that you keep, you might want to think about it differently. Scientific research has recently revealed that memory doesn’t exactly work this way. Rather than memory being something fixed that you store in your brain, it’s more accurately described as a chemical process between neurons. You may want to consider the amount of memory you’re able process on a daily basis more than how many memories you’re able to store overall. 

 

How Memory is Defined

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The cognitive domain of Memory is defined as follows by the APA Dictionary of Psychology:

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1. the ability to retain information or a representation of past experience, based on the mental processes of learning or encoding, retention across some interval of time, and retrieval or reactivation of the memory.

2. specific information or a specific past experience that is recalled.

3. the hypothesized part of the brain where traces of information and past experiences are stored. See memory storage; memory system. See also explicit memory; immediate memory; implicit memory; long-term memory; short-term memory.

 

You can view the original source here.

 

Types of Memory – The Subdomains

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When speaking of Memory as a cognitive domain, it in fact contains various subdomains. Here are the subdomains:

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1. Episodic memory (including emotional memory)

2. Semantic memory

3. Immediate memory

4. Memory retrieval

5. Sustained memory

6. Procedural memory

7. Short-term memory

 

How to Improve Your Attention

 

While some people can remember information, processes and events in great detail, many of us would like to work on improving our memory. In fact, semantic memory impairments could be an early indicator of dementia or Alzheimer’s disease

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We’ve designed specific tasks in the Cognishape app to help you improve your memory, and help you detect potential cognitive issues. Here’s an example of one of these tasks:

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“Choose 3 people in your life and try to recall their birthday. 
Was that easy? 
Now, go one step further and try to remember the last time you celebrated their birthday.
Can you give me one example you remembered?”

 

This task works to improve your memory functions (semantic memory and memory retrieval).