Memory Improvement Strategies, Essay Example

To improve memory, a variety of methods can be undertaken. Many people choose over-the-counter herb or vitamin regimens, but simple cognitive techniques for memory storage and retrieval may produce better results. Emotional reactions and coping mechanism may interfere with the brain’s ability to appropriately separate, store, and retrieve information. Confronting suppressed emotional disturbance may liberate portions of the memory, but the sudden release of that information can be traumatizing. Coping strategies are particularly essential to promote healthy development and avoid cognitive and emotional interference. (Myers 265-272)

The selection, optimization, and compensation (SOC) model proposes that those three developmental processes further a balanced sense of losses and gains and to create a less-stressed environment for exploratory, normal, healthy development. According to the model, selection involves choosing a domain for the investment of personal resources (whether internal or external); optimization involves nurturing and expanding the potential of these resources; compensation involves addressing and analyzing gains and losses and making decisions to minimize or offset losses. (Myers 283) After compensation occurs, the motivated person returns to selection and endeavors to produce a better result, a gain or a better gain. The cycle ends only with death or with the person’s inability or lack of volition to move forward and pursue a better life.

Strategies for coping can be problem-focused or emotion-focused. Problem-focused strategies take a head-on approach, directly confronting the problem and facilitating more direct interaction with the problem’s source. Emotion-focused strategies often choose alternative or supporting measures of circumventing the problem altogether, including reaching out to friends and family or simply ignoring the problem’s existence. (Myers 538-539) According to Myers, many of our health problems are brought about- or exacerbated- by stress. For this reason, Myers claims that problem-based strategies are more effective in producing a positive change, partially because they involve taking a proactive role against feeling the loss of control and also partially because advisers tend to contradict themselves frequently and/or further confuse the person seeking a friendly ear. (538)

Important distinctions exist between passive and active euthanasia and physician- assisted suicide. Passive euthanasia requires a passive inaction; active euthanasia requires an active, proactive facilitation of death. Although passive euthanasia in the form of the removal of tubes providing air and food occurs more frequently, active euthanasia is typically the subject of international debates of euthanasia because the motives of the perpetrators and the likelihood of experiencing pain and/or dying is guesswork. (Manning 2-5) Particularly, elderly or pained patients may request active euthanasia from a physician, facilitating their own physician-assisted suicides, often through medicines or injections which the physician provides for the use of the patient himself. (4)

Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences (TMI) claims that intelligence can be specialized and exhibited in ways which do not fall into the traditional testing battery but instead comprise eight categories of intelligence: linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, intrapersonal, interpersonal, and naturalist. (Myers 410-431) TMI upholds the common belief that book smarts and common sense do not always go together—just as a dedicated musician may become skilled but still not fully proficient without a natural ability. These characteristics become crucial determinants of employment and have been studied extensively.

Works Cited

Manning, Michael. Euthanasia and Physician-Assiste Suicide: Killing or Caring? Mahway, NJ: Paulist Press, 1998. Print.

Myers, David G. Psychology. 9^th ed. Worth Publishers, 2009. Print.