Medium = Elaborative Encoding
Introverts are writative (extraverts are talkative). Medium provided the expressive soil my ideas needed during quarantine.
Table of Contents (click to Fast Travel)
· Medium = Memory
∘ GamerGirl & Instagram ‘Image Description Generation’ Effects
∘ Quoted Medium Article by Camille Cordova
· Sidenotes to Self (ignore)
∘ Animacy Effect on Memory
∘ Emotions Dominate
∘ We’re much better at encoding meaning than details
· Bisexual Courtship In Distant Worlds
· PrePrint in January — Avatar Study
· UCSD COVID Tests Required Weekly for Professors & Researchers (use this link to schedule)
Medium has been a blessing during quarantine.
It has helped tremendously with storing direct quotes/ citations/ references (many are still being played with in unpublished drafts). Most importantly, Medium has provided a space to creatively use all the materials I’ve continued gathering over the course of this year, but have hardly felt like I could break long enough from everything else going on to use them in a “worthy of being part of a published article in a top tier Psychology journal” manner.
Suffice it to say, many of the references I’ve used in published Medium posts will be used in to-be published research papers with my lab at UC San Diego.
We submitted 3 manuscripts during quarantine & we’ve received a revise-and-resubmit decision on all 3 of them. Interestingly, the first manuscript we submitted this year — in January — is the only one not to receive an official decision yet.
[Update: the January manuscript ALSO received a revise & resubmit decision. Hoping to get all 4 published in 2021, & we’re submitting our first infidelity paper of the year soon]
Levels of Processing Theory
The Levels of Processing Model says that the more deeply an item is processed during encoding, the more meaning it has and the better it is remembered.
Encoding can be achieved through two types of rehearsal.
1 → Maintenance rehearsal involves simply repeating the item over and over and provides shallow encoding of information = blah
2 → Elaborative rehearsal encodes the information more deeply and is based on meaning (semantic information) = Yassssss
Medium = Memory
Medium has given me a space to use it all the research I’ve gathered creatively & meaningfully, which facilitates greater memory for the material.
This also applies to social media memes, gifs, & stories where we try & creatively describe an idea for others. Research on Conversation & Memory finds that the act of describing visual content for another person boosts memory for that content (McKinley et al., 2017; Yoon., 2016).
#GamerGirl content that I create is the social media equivalent of Paivio’s (1991) dual-coding theory: I’m engaging in elaborative/meaningful processing of the content being utilized to create the instagram story (and trying to do so with much parsimony) AND trying to ensure that I’m describing it in a way that anyone who views the story will ‘get it’ (with the recognition that I also don’t want GamerGirl to be understood by everyone).
GamerGirl & Instagram ‘Image Description Generation’ Effects
The creation of meme descriptions is also associated with elaborative encoding via the generation effect (Fawcett, Quinlan, & Taylor, 2012; Zormpa et al., 2019). Put simply, the elaborative process of generating descriptions for meme images you intent to post promotes better encoding & subsequent retrieval of that information.
In short, GamerGirl stories offer multiple levels of elaborative encoding (Craik & Lockhart, 1972; Yoon et al., 2016; Zormpa et al., 2019).
Finally, “the act of commenting on an Instagram post boosts memory for that post” & the longer your comment the better the memory (Jordan Z & Sarah Brown-Schmidt, 2020).
A Comment on Memory
In addition, rewriting your notes by hand (after initially writing them by hand) helps significantly (compared to *only typing the notes you originally wrote).
*Only = It’s perfectly fine to type notes that were originally written, especially if you plan to print them out & read them aloud as though you were giving a speech of your notes (not kidding; I literally have a personal podium in my office that I used to use for this during my PhD). This is a “Production Effect” wherein the production of material is associated with more elaborative encoding of it.
Similarly, when rewriting by hand we hold the material in our minds that we read from the initial spiral, oftentimes transforming/ rephrasing it in some way (“Generation Effect” → elaborative encoding), and then we physically draw the alphabetical symbols of the letters which conspire to form the words & sentences.
Compared to simply typing notes — in which the letter symbols are already programmed for you with the push of identical button — drawing the letters yourself leads to significantly better encoding & future retrieval
(Generation Effect: Even on instagram, people who write longer comments for someone’s post or story have better recall of it than people who write descriptively shorter comments (Jordan Z & Sarah Brown-Schmidt, 2020).. Creation creates stronger memories.)
The darker skinned lovers in interracial couples are ESPECIALLY likely to use whitening filters on social media (reminder to get PrePrint up on OSF).
“I suddenly found myself forcing doors to open though I was holding the wrong keys” — Camille Cordova
At one point I felt like I had all the right keys but each door was too heavy to fully open at the time. Thus, instead of making the perfect the enemy of the good, I decided that the pristine value pieces I’d otherwise love to produce in ‘normal times’ just wouldn’t be possible during quarantine… at least not if I ever wanted to grow the new seeds I’ve collected for my research garden once the pandemic is over.
Medium provided the soil & sunlight (e.g., public visibility; potential for feedback) my ideas needed to safely take root amidst a calamity.
Quoted Medium Article by Camille Cordova
Sidenotes to Self (ignore)
Memory & Production Effect → Reading aloud improves memory for material compared to silent reading (Bradshaw & Anderson, 1982; Conway & Gathercole, 1987; Forrin et al., 2014; Gathercole & Conway, 1988; Gregg & Gardiner, 1991; Hopkins & Edwards, 1972; MacLeod et al., 2010), and benefits both recognition (Forrin, Ozubko, & MacLeod, 2012; Hourihan & MacLeod, 2008; MacLeod, 2011; Ozubko, Hourihan, & MacLeod, 2012) and recall (Castel, Rhodes, & Friedman, 2013; Conway & Gathercole, 1987, Experiment 3; Lin & MacLeod, 2012).
Animacy Effect on Memory
Sentient stimuli are remembered better than are inanimate stimuli (Bonin et al., 2014; Gelin et al., 2017; Macleod et al., 2010; Meinhardt et al., 2018; Nairne et al., 2013; VanArsdall et al., 2015).
Emotions Dominate
Affect-laden stimuli are receive neural priority over cognitive processing (Buchanan & Adolphs, 2002; Kensinger & Corkin, 2003) & neutral stimuli (LaBar & Phelps, 1998).
Our brain gives memories consequential to ongoing evolutionary fitness & sexual selection the Memory-VIP treatment (Kensinger, 2007).
Thankfully, experience, exposure, habituation, acclimation, etc modulate the influence of emotion in our response to stimuli over time. The water isn’t cold after we’ve been in it for 10 (or maximum 15) minutes.
We’re much better at encoding meaning than details
When it comes to memory, we’re excellent at encoding the forest, but we tend to forget the exact number of trees. Over time, we may even misremember certain kinds of flowers being in the forest that — in fact — were never there. But given how easy it is for our brain to associate ‘flowers’ with ‘forest’ (or general ‘outdoors’ schema), it’s a false memory that can easily be generated if asked the right leading questions.
Guilds = virtual imposition of market frameworks into the interpersonal sphere). For example, as a non-elf I have privilege (and I make sure to check it), I’m a more valuable social asset, & I expect to apply myself as a social resource to someone who is desirable enough in their overall level/ gear/ magic potions/ etc. to return value proportional to what I’m worth.
Given that elves are the least desired race with the least attractive skin & pointy ears, I won’t be associating with an Elezen-Eorzean… at least not publicly where other people may see. But if the elf is biracial… the Multiracial Dividend Effect comes into play (e.g., monoracials romantically prefer multiracials over every other monoracial group, save for their own; multiracials’ interracial preference every monoracial group is greater than monoracials’ interracial preference for each other).
Welcome to MMORPG
Avatar customization allows gamers to adjust a variety of facial features & bodily traits in ways that could serve as racial markers.
Dietrich’s (2013) analysis of 65 games found that found that light skin tones/ pigmentations were the only choice in 26 of them, and only 23 out of 65 offered hair options outside the ‘straight hair’ category.
I’ve created 3 different avatars for ESO & each one of them is a woman with the same first name. The last woman was created in June 2018 as part of the Summerset Expansion. She is naturally blonde, she is a B cup, & she is the shortest (around 5'3–5'4). She is also biracial: part White & part Hispanic, thanks to an explicitly White assumed first name, Hispanic assumed last name, & the inclusion of ñ for proper pronunciation.
Spanish language keyboard tip: If you intentionally misspell Pinyata, Word will offer a spelling correction that includes the version of the letter n I used in my avatar name (piñata).
[temporary excerpt placement; may delete later]
Sharing personal experiences & giving/receiving emotional support …is why female avatar friendships provide more health/wellness than what the males have.
In the real world, people are willing to harm men over women (FeldmanHall et al., 2016).
But in the MMORPG world, people are willing to harm male avatars over female avatars (Zhang et al., 2018).
- 19 Reasons Why, #8
GamerGuy: Any new items related to both COVID & SoCal Lab research?
GamerGirl: Just that gay men — relative to lesbians & other dyads — showed a strong correlation between sexual behavior & COVID. Basically, if you take the ‘default high sex drive of males’
(+)
‘males that desire other males’
( — )
‘the selectivity of women given considerations of reproduction’
= higher COVID symptomatology among men who have sex with men (Carvalho et al., 2020).
UCSD COVID Tests Required Weekly for Professors & Researchers (use this link to schedule)
UC Professors & Researchers, please use the link below to schedule your free COVID Test on campus that’s required weekly: https://covid19testing.ucsd.edu/?Symptom=asymptom&Location=campus
I’m COVID Negative
My test from this morning came back negative, but I’m scheduling all my future tests even earlier because that COVID testing area felt like the least safe place I’ve been since March lols
Obviously it can’t be helped — we need to conduct mass testing. I’m curious though how many people perceive that they may have become infected while they were at a COVID testing site. Especially if you’re an introvert with no roommates: literally nothing else in everyday life places us in as much danger of being around someone else with COVID than being at a COVID test location.
Thankful that here at UCSD we’ve continued to be a model for the country in our handling of COVID. Per the New York Times, we’ve only had “about 70 cases since March among the more than 9,000 students living on campus.”
Self-administered testing locations 👏👏👏
Students and employees may pick-up and drop-off a test kit at the following locations.* Please see adjusted holiday hours here.
- Muir College | Mariposa Room (map)
- Seventh College | Parcel Center (map)
- Nuevo East | Fitness Center (map)
- Price Center | Ballroom B (map)
*More locations coming in winter 2021.
^^ Legit just received this email this afternoon lols Definitely more assuring than having to go to a test center full of people who are potentially infected.
I haven’t had a cookie in nearly 2 months. Before COVID19, I wouldn’t go 2 weeks without cookie… but nearly 2 months now.
Two of them.
Stay Apart So Yall Can Stay Together
My condolences to guildmates who have lost friends & family in their real lives during this Year of Years.
No matter how much you may want to travel to be with family & friends this holiday season…
Stay Apart So Yall Can Stay Together
And continue wearing glasses instead of contacts until you get the vaccine
(Li et al., (2020) — Novel Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19): The importance of recognising possible early ocular manifestation and using protective eyewear)
V-Safe ~ The Post-Vaccination Checkup App
Have you gotten a #COVID19 vaccine? Register for v-safe, a smartphone-based tool that allows people to tell CDC how they feel after vaccination. You’ll receive personalized health check-ins and a reminder when it is time for your 2nd dose of vaccine. https://bit.ly/3gNkdpZ.
Does your shoulder feel sore after the vaccination? Do you have a light fever or feel a little meh? That’s excellent — it means your immune system is working properly & optimizing the vaccine for you. Be sure to let the CDC know about your vaccination success with V-Safe =^.^=
Pfizer Document
Moderna Document
Tuskegee Syphilis (then) & COVID Vaccine (now) (GamerGirl Twindemic Story)
#GamerGuy: The issues of racial injustice in America & #COVID19 will never overlap.
December News Report: Black Americans cautious about getting the #Pfizer or #Moderna #COVID vaccines due to the racist history of the #TuskegeeSyphillisExperiment
#GamerGirl: You were saying…
Kwon et al., 2020: Evidence of Long-Distance Droplet Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 by Direct Air Flow in a Restaurant in Korea
“Researchers recreated the conditions at the restaurant and measured the airflow. The high school student and a third diner who was infected had been sitting directly along the flow of air from an air conditioner.” — LA Times
I wouldn’t mind some more mask virtue signaling with respect to our emojis & in-game emotes. The sooner we motivate everyone to wear a mask (and properly over their nose) the better.
I have faith emoji companies will do the right thing — for profit lols
Women reject femininity in men more than men reject masculinity in women.
Sleep-Awake Inequity for Asynchronous Students
Some students around the world have mentioned they’ve already lost 5–7 hours to complete an assessment by the time it’s morning where they are. For assessments due within 48 hours, they’re going to sleep two more times within that window (for a total of 3 sleep cycles) whereas students in the US only sleep twice within that window… creating Sleep-Awake Inequity on assessments. As such, students overseas are more likely to sacrifice sleep.
Delirium (The Brain’s Compensatory Mechanism for Sleepless Nights)
- Studies show that dopamine levels in the brain increase, even after just one sleepless night, suggesting a neural adaptation to sleep deprivation. However, this upregulation of dopamine does not compensate for cognitive deficits following sleep deprivation.
- “As long as our brains remain a mystery, the universe, the reflection of the structure of the brain will also be a mystery.” Santiago Ramón y Cajal (Nobel laureate)
Woman Like Me :: Black Like Me
Black Like Me
“Using medication that darkened his skin to deep brown, he exchanged his privileged life as a Southern white man for the disenfranchised world of a black man.”
Woman Like Me (Chapter 1 Link)
Using the New Game window to create a female avatar…
Becky With the Good Pixelated Hair
Finsta & Instragram
→ to be clear, the person is saying that her real instagram account is where her pictures are fake. (Interview by Forsey, 2019)
“My real Instagram account is kind of fake — like, only pictures of my ‘best’ life,” My cousin explained. “I use my Finsta to share funny, inside jokes with my closest friends. My real Instagram has like, 400 followers. My fake one only has like, eight.”” …
America’s Tripartite Racial (or Tri-Racial) Hierarchy
1 — Top = Whites & multiracials (relative to skin tone) on top,
2 — Middle = lighter skinned East Asians, Indians, Persians, Hispanics, and half-White multiracials in the middle (some interminority multiracials relative to skin tone)
3 — Bottom = Blacks, some darker skin tone East Asian, Indian, Persian, interminority multiracials, & Hispanic groups at the bottom
(Bonilla-Silva, 2004; Gans 1999; Lee & Bean, 2007; Robnett & Feliciano, 2011; Mykel Rodriguez et al., in review).
Race as a social construct is an ontological argument that many hardly have the time to concern themselves with given the deontological reality of race in their everyday life (Bonilla-Silva 1999; Song 2018; Telles & Paschel 2014; Torngren et al., 2019).
(Incomplete Update)
WRITTEN BY Medium’s → Emily Mullin
“The idea of enhancing soldiers is hardly new, and China is not the first superpower to try it. In Nazi Germany, methamphetamines and cocaine-based stimulants were distributed among the army to boost soldiers’ physical performance, increase risk-taking, and stave off sleep.
In the United States, the military has prescribed amphetamines and other stimulants for long endurance flights or critical missions. Throughout the years, U.S. military members have also been critical in the testing of vaccines, which could be considered a type of biological enhancement.”
At the most basic level, “CRISPR” is a tool for gene editing that possesses immense potential for precise and efficient modifications.
Update 3.16.2021 — Context Dependent Memory
“Context-dependent failure
means that if we are in a different place than we were when learning, the memory may not be accessible. This is why when visiting your old school/ neighbourhood, you might remember more things than you would’ve been able to had you not gone back there. Here’s some supporting research:
Abernethy (1940) found that participants, after learning some material, recalled it less well when tested by an unfamiliar teacher in an unfamiliar room than participants who were tested by a familiar teacher in a familiar room.
Godden & Baddeley (1975) got divers to learn material either on dry land or while underwater. Those who learned the words underwater had better recall when assessed underwater than on land (and vice-versa for those that learned the material on land).
State-dependent failure
means that if we are not in the same physical and emotional state as we were when the learning happened, we may not be able to access the memory. This could be when you were happy, sad or even when you were in love. Here’s some supporting research:
Overton (1972) got participants to learn material when either drunk or sober and found that recall was worse when participants were in a different internal state at recall than their internal state at coding — for example, recalling information learned when drunk was better if the information had been learned when drunk rather than sober.
Darley et al (1973) found that participants who hid money while high on marijuana were less able to recall where the money was when they were not high than when they were high again.
Research source: PSYCHOLOGY for A-Level Year 1 and AS by Jean-Marc Lawton and Eleanor Willard pg. 79"
4.8 Update
Similar studies testing short term memory between sexes also led to the conclusion that females have stronger capability of recalling memory than males (Loprinzi & Frith, 2018).
Other studies have pointed towards the link between a subject being female and stronger memory retention towards neural sensitivity towards emotions (Roediger et al., 2009). This could mean that a female in the study, who is more emotionally intelligent will be able to recall the given information as opposed to a male, who has been socialized in a direction orthogonal to emotional mindfulness.
Women outperform men at remembering emotional information.
In an experiment conducted that prompted subjects to recall the emotion displayed in a person’s face, women in the study demonstrated superior recall of facial emotions (Roediger et al., 2009).
May 1st Update
Ditch the laptop
“Though taking your notes using a laptop might seem accurate to the eyes, it doesn’t to the brain. To speed up the learning process ditch the laptop and take your notes the old school way — pen and paper.
An experiment tested both groups of note-takers (pen and laptop users) exactly half an hour after the lecture, which left them without the opportunity to review. The psychological scientists decided to explore this concept further and conducted a second experiment in which these students would be given a week to review for the exam.
Even after a week of review, the students who took notes in longhand were found to do significantly better than the other students in the experiment, including the fleet typists — those who transcribed the lectures.
Overall, it seems those who type their notes may potentially be at risk for “mindless processing.” The old-fashioned note-taking method of pen and paper boosts memory and the ability to understand concepts and facts.
As research has proven, handwriting is better for retaining what you write, but first, you need the right tools.
While taking notes with your hand, paraphrase them into your own style, make them easy for you to grasp and understand under short periods.
During a study, partakers were given a series of words that were easy to draw (for example, “apple”) and were either asked to draw the word or write it down. To guarantee partakers consumed the same amount of time either writing or drawing, they were given 40 seconds for each word and asked to fill the entire period. So they could write or draw the item over and over.
When partakers were later tested on how many words they remembered, drawing helped them to remember twice as many as writing.”
June 21st Update
Read Before Class
“…for a college student, the main purpose of attending lectures is to get knowledge about things that will play a role in your future. For career guys, they attend round table meetings where they discuss ideas, share fresh innovations, and plan the next step to move forward. For athletes, training sessions are to gain instructions that will help improve your fitness and pace — Which means you’ll likely get quick tips you can apply in real-time.
…before I get to class I make sure to read (or sometimes skim) all previous materials assigned by the professor. I try to familiarize myself with the topic before getting to class so I know what to expect.
A 2004 study by Spies and Wilkin found that the law students who read a legal case before they got to class displayed a superior understanding of the topic than students who did not have any form of preparation before class.
Designer Mike Rohde popularized “sketchnotes” with his books The Sketchnote Handbook and The Sketchnote Workbook. Rohde uses the term sketchnotes to describe the way he draws shapes and pictures among his notes to help him better take in the main ideas from conference talks, rather than trying to note down every little point.” — Benjamin Ebuka