How Stress Affects Your Memory

a post by Fabiana Franco for the World of Psychology blog



The relationship between stress and memory is complex. A little bit of stress can enhance your ability to encode, store, and retrieve factual information. Too much stress, however, can shut the system down. You may have had this experience studying for a test. A moderate amount of anxiety is motivating and will help you perform better. Too much on the other hand, especially while taking the actual test, can prevent you from recalling what you know.

The experience of trauma and chronic stress over time can actually change the brain structures involved in memory. To understand how this happens, we need to consider one of the ways memories are formed and recalled.

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OCD, Learning, and Memory Problems

a post by Janet Singer for the World of Psychology blog

I’ve written posts and articles about my son Dan’s struggle with OCD in college, and our family’s experience is also fully chronicled in my book Overcoming OCD: A Journey to Recovery. The most frustrating aspects of this portion of Dan’s journey were not only the widespread lack of understanding of what obsessive-compulsive disorder actually entails, but also dealing with an academic support staff who basically had no idea how to help him.

To be fair, it really wasn’t their fault. They were typically willing to help; they just didn’t know how. Aside from offering extra time on tests (which is often not even a good idea for those with OCD) they were at a loss. And so were we. Once my husband and I realized that Dan was struggling with time management, the balance of details within the big picture, and over-thinking, we asked that these issues be addressed mainly through the open-mindedness and flexibility of his professors.

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The tattoo as a document

an article by Kristina Sundberg and Ulrika Kjellman (ALM, Uppsala, Sweden) published in Journal of Documentation Volume 74 Issue 1 (2018)

Abstract

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how tattoos can be considered documents of an individual’s identity, experiences, status and actions in a given context, relating to ideas stating that archival records/documents can be of many types and have different functions. The paper also wants to discuss how tattoos serve as a bank of memories and evidence on a living body; in this respect, the tattooed body can be viewed as an archive, which immortalises and symbolises the events and relationships an individual has experienced in his or her life, and this in relation to a specific social and cultural context.

Design/methodology/approach
To discuss these issues, the authors take the point of departure in the tattoo practice of Russian/Soviet prisoners. The tattoo material referred to is from the “Russian Criminal Tattoo Archive”. The archive is created by FUEL Design and Publishing that holds the meanings of the tattoos as explained in Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia Volume I-III. The authors exemplify this practice with two photographs of Soviet/Russian prisoners and their tattoos. By using a semiotic analysis that contextualises these images primarily through literature studies, the authors try to say something about what meaning these tattoos might carry.

Findings
The paper argues that it is possible to view the tattoo as a document, bound to an individual, reflecting his/her life and a given social and cultural context. As documents, they provide the individual with the essential evidence of his or her endeavours in a criminal environment. They also function as an individual’s memory of events and relationships (hardships and comradeships). Subsequently, the tattoos help create and sustain an identity. Finally, the tattoo presents itself as a document that may represent a critique of a dominant society or simply the voice of the alienated.

Originality/value
By showing how tattoos can be seen as documents and memory records, this paper brings a new kind of item into information and archival studies. It also uses theories and concepts from information and archival studies to put new light on the functions of tattoos.

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Why Life Seems to Speed Up over Time, and How to Slow It Down Again

a post by Paul Ratner for the Big Think blog

When you are young, time often passes quite slowly. Each birthday is a monumental occasion. Long lazy summers seem to never end. We remember trying to make the clock hands move faster with our minds as we sat bored in class. But as we grow older, life seems to speed up. Birthdays aren’t as big a deal. You’d almost rather not even notice them as you feel like you're barreling towards old age. Why does it feel like this? Is time really moving faster somehow?

A research team from the University of Kansas ran a study to understand this phenomenon. They tested the theory, first proposed by philosopher Douglas Hofstadter, that time appears to speed up because we start grouping distinct individual experiences into larger “chunks”. When we are young we have many big moments, experiencing things for the first time. So going to a park could be quite a big deal, with many memorable sensations there. But as you grow older, going to that park offers fewer and fewer new experiences. You start collapsing them into memory “chunks,” putting everything that happened simply under “a walk in the park” - making the span of time feel brief.

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License to Hurt: What We Really Need When We’re in Pain

a post by Jan DeBlieu for the Tiny Buddha blog


“We’ll light the candle together when she’s ready. For now I’ll trust the darkness for us both.” ~Terri St. Cloud

Over breakfast one morning recently, Jeff and I started reminiscing about past years, and something was said that brought back a painful memory for me. My boss at the time had been unimaginably small-minded. He had hung me out to dry. “I still can’t understand why he did that,” I said.

Jeff looked at me levelly. “You need to get over it, Jan,” he said. “It was years ago.”

Wise advice, without question. The only problem was that I didn’t want it just then.

Why is it that we are so seldom allowed a few moments just to hurt? After a serious heartbreak like the death of a loved one, sure, we’re given all the leeway we need. But the run-of-the-mill slights and small, persistent sorrows are treated as something we should quickly move past, even when they’re deeply painful.

Jeff, poor guy, was just trying to help. I couldn’t fault him. I knew I was being a bit ridiculous. But what I longed for was someone to acknowledge my outrage, let me sit with it, live into it for a few moments – and then gently remind me that it’s time to get over it.

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My husband is like Jeff with his “that was a long time ago”. However, whilst acknowledging the irrational thoughts that come into my head whenever I hear a certain person’s voice, I can only manage those thoughts by getting as far away from said person as is possible. If I was crying over my father’s death he would be all sympathy although that was more than 50 years ago, but being terrified of someone who threatened to throw a brick through my head and also to have me locked up because I was a loony is a matter for ridicule.
I guess that is life!

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My Name Is Sue. How Do You Do! (Names and Identity)

an article by Irina Perianova (University of National and World Economy, Sofia, Bulgaria) published in Issues in Social Sciences Volume 3 Number 1 (2015)

Abstract

The paper aims to give an overview of the functions of proper names as a complex multi-dimensional phenomenon. While implying certain conceptual characteristics proper names reflect the way people see themselves, or what others might infer about them, and thus shapе their attitude.

As part of the cultural discourse they serve as determinants of social identity. An important feature of personal names is their potential to be used metaphorically – as characterizers and signifiers. Naming conventions depend on culture, generation, status and existing linguistic forms. Avoiding a name as a form of address is culture-based, or expresses attitude and affect. Furthermore, names are an instrument of control, submission and otherisaton.

They are also a marker of memory and trust as well as a signifier of status. The disparity of addressing when, for example, one of the speakers uses the first name and the other one the surname, always implies some kind of inequality.

The drift of the current changes in naming/addressing in the West is egalitarian and characterized by greater informality and reciprocity.

Full Text: PDF

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Work Identity in Crisis? Rethinking the Problem of Attachment and Loss at Work

an article by Tim Strangleman (University of Kent, Canterbury) published in Sociology Volume 46 Number 3 (June 2012)

Abstract

The identity and meaning people obtain from their work is a central issue in contemporary sociology.

There is a debate between those suggesting that we have witnessed either great rupture or continuity in the way employees engage with their jobs.

This article reframes the question posed, developing a critical theoretical framework for understanding narratives of change derived from a range of theorists using concepts of nostalgia, tradition and generations. This framework is then used to read a set of work/life history interviews and autobiographical material from mainly older male workers in the UK railway industry who lament the erosion of their workplace culture and the sustainable moral order of the past.

The article seeks to move beyond dismissing such accounts as simple nostalgia and instead suggests that these narratives can be understood as valuable organic critiques of industrial and social change emergent from work culture.

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