Cognitive Psychology: Memory, Term Paper Example

Akeelah and the Bee is a moving story about an 11-year-old girl from Los Angeles who wins her local spelling bee and tries to go all the way to the Scripps National Spelling Bee. She must overcome the distractions of her home life and her own insecurities, as well as her coaches’ personal troubles, to make it. There is a scene from this movie that gives an example of state-dependent learning. In this scene, Akeelah is struggling to remember how to spell a word. To help jog her memory, Akeelah starts doing what she was doing when she learned the word, and it comes right back to her. This movie gives some insight to the cognitive process involved in spelling and so is an example of cognitive psychology in popular media. It was written and directed by Doug Atchison and released in April 2006.

Memory works by way of three central aspects, encoding, storage, and retrieval. Encoding is how the information is introduced in memory. Storage has to do with retaining the information in memory. Retrieval is “pulling out” the information from memory to use at a later time (Psych 120A, Winter 2012). Phonological loop holds information in a phonological (speech-based) form (Psych 120A, Winter 2012). Episodic memory includes the events/circumstances of the time the memory was made. Serial exhaustive processing is the best model for short-term memory retrieval. It means that the points of the memory were retrieved all at once, and that all pockets of information were checked for the memory. These concepts were discussed and defined within the context of the course and the textbook. They are all relevant concepts to the memory recall scene presented in the first paragraph from the movie, Akeelah and the Bee.

The three central aspects of memory, encoding, storage, and retrieval, are all at work in the memory recall scene from Akeelah and the Bee. Since she retrieves the memory she must have encoded and stored it at some point prior. Spelling of words is often practiced by repeating the words out loud, over and over. So it is reasonable to assume the information was stored in a phonological loop. But this scene specifically concerns the retrieval of the memory, the correct spelling of the word, and not the initial encoding or storage of the memory. In the text, serial exhaustive processing is presented as the best method for short term memory retrieval. In this case, it would mean that the letters of the word were retrieved at the same time and that all pockets of memory were searched before settling on the final delivery of the memory. Akeelah remembered the whole word at once, not just one letter at a time. Since it was an auditory memory, she most likely heard what the word and letters sounded like, rather than picturing an image. That she was able to remember the word when she started doing what she was doing when she learned the word describes it as episodic memory. By remembering and acting out what she was doing at the time of the memory was made, she was able to recall the memory more clearly and quickly. Also, the action itself was encoded with the memory of the spelling of the word and so when she retrieved how to perform the action, she was able to access the spelling memory. That these course concepts can be linked with the scene from Akeelah and the Bee makes the scene a workable example of cognitive psychology in popular media. You can see the scene referred to at this link, or watch the entire movie here.

Bibliography

Atchison, D. (Director). (2006). Akeelah and the Bee [Motion Picture].