Question

• Speak to an elderly individual you know (over the age of 70). Schedule to spend at least 20 minutes with them. Ask them the following questions:
  • What is their favorite memory from childhood?
  • What is their favorite memory from middle adulthood?
  • Ask them the last song they heard on the radio, the last book they read, or what they need from the grocery store.
• Ask them if any of the questions were difficult to answer. Ask if they would share the ways their memory has changed over time and the most frustrating aspect of that change.
• Write a paper describing your conversation, relaying context for the individual you interviewed, the location and time of day of the interview, and how forward they were sharing their answers.
• Relate their answers back to Section 14.3 on Cognitive Processes and memories.
• 2 pages answer please

Answer 1

Speaking to a lady who was about to turn 80 quite recently was a nice experience. She had a nice time having a conversation as well. Turns out, she has had a benign brain tumor, and had it operated out about 15 years ago. Apparantly, as she has reported, she is better able to recall things more clearly than she was before her operation. This could be explained by the tumor potentially influencing her ability to recall clearly when she had it. She was not sure of the specifications of the type of brain tumor, which part it was affecting, or which functioning of the brain was affected by the presence of the tumor.

Regardless, this is what she had to say for the best memory she could recall from her childhood. She belonged to a very conservative family in India. She kept herself busy helping her family at home. And she would spend her leisure time with her friends who were girls of her age. She was married off at an early age of 16. Now the best part about her marriage in a conservative society was thatshe happened to marry the man of her choice, which did not happen in her society. Not that she ever expressed her feelings or anything, she just used to stare at him going to school and had a crush on him. And he saw her fetching water from the well. No one ever confessed their feelings. It so happened that their parents wanted them to et married, without even knowing that they had feelings for each other. Apparantly, if they knew, they would have looked for other people to marry off theyr children, this is how things were at that time.

The lady was not as much clear about the adulthood memory that she talked about, but this is what she had to say. Her favourite memory from adulthood is the moment she had her first child at dawn. When she and her husband were together looking at the baby right after it was born. This is all she has to say.

She never listens to songs, so she had nothing to say about this.

And she did not even remember if she had to go to get the groceries, or barely anything specific she had done in the morning.

It was clear that her con itive processes have slowed down a bit, her memory is not as sharp as it was before. Her autobioraphical memory is intact pretty strongly, it is the recent memory that has been affected.