Psych 105 Assignment 2

Robbie Ray

Psych 105

Assignment 2 Case Study

Observation 1

Date: October 1, 2014

Location: Home

Case Description:

My roommate has poor study habits. It is in his belief that the best way to do well on an exam is to pull an all-nighter the night before, cramming all of the exam information into one 12 hour study session. He believes that this will allow the information to be fresh in his mind when he takes the exam. He and I are in the same Biology 102 class. While I studied 1-2 hours each day leading up to the exam, he put off studying, feeling that he could pull an all-nighter right before and be fully prepared for the exam. We both felt confident in ourselves going into the exam, and still felt confident about how we did after completing it. When we got our exams back during lab that week, I was pleased to see that I got a 92%, which was about what I thought I would get. He received his exam, and was dismayed to learn that he got a 65%, well below his expected score for this exam. He told me repeatedly that he went through every topic thoroughly during his night of studying, and up until receiving his exam back, was confident that he would score around a 90%. He was also confused by the fact that we both studied about 10-12 hours, cumulatively.

Psychological Application:

In this situation, there were two psychological concepts present. The first is the concept of memory consolidation through the process of sleep. After the brain acquires new information, consolidation during sleep allows that new information to become stable in the brain, for sleep strengthens the neural connections that allow us to form memories (Stickgold & Walker, 2005). Once memory consolidation occurs, it is much easier to recall that information. So, while I was studying concepts consistently for about a week, thus strengthening my memory for those concepts, my roommate was not able to consolidate any memory and had a much harder time recalling that information during the exam. Furthermore, it will be much more difficult for him to retain this information for the final exam if his study habits don’t improve. The second concept is metacognition, which, in this case, is a student’s awareness of their level of understanding of a topic. My roommate was overconfident about how well he understood the material presented on the exam. He did not understand the concepts as well as he thought he did, which explains why before, and even after, the exam, he believed that he performed well. I expected a score in the low 90s, and received a 92%, demonstrating that my metacognition is stronger than his, as he received a score 25% lower than what he expected. It is safe to assume that study habits and metacognition are linked in this case, as his poor study habits gave him a false confidence of his performance.

Reference:

Stickgold, R. and Walker, M. (2005). Memory consolidation and reconsolidation: What is the role of sleep? Trends in Neuroscience, Volume 28 Issue 8. doi: 10.1016/j.tins.2005.06.004

Observation 2

Date: October 11, 2014

Location: Home

Case Description:

On Saturday night, I experienced something strange and somewhat terrifying when I went to bed. I was in the process of falling asleep, and I could tell that I was half asleep. All of a sudden, I couldn’t move. It wasn’t because I was so tired that I couldn’t move, but it felt like every part of my body was frozen. This freaked me out a little bit. Then I got this weird feeling like there was something in the room with me. This freaked me out a lot. I couldn’t see anything, but in a way I felt another presence in the room. Then I felt a cold sensation on my arms, and in my terrified state, I believed that the other presence in the room was breathing cold air onto me, even though I couldn’t see anything. The cold sensation felt like it ran through my body. I closed my eyes and waited, trying to move my arms the whole time. Suddenly, I could move again, and I slowly sat up, walked over to my lightswitch, and turned on the lights. Nothing was there. Although I knew it wasn’t real, I was very unsettled for the next couple hours and then finally fell asleep. The next morning, when I thought about what happened, I realized that the sensation only lasted a few minutes, even though it felt like an hour while it was happening.