Okay, so, I’ve been messing around with this whole “cognitive psychology” thing lately, and let me tell you, it’s a wild ride. I started out just trying to figure out why I always forget where I put my keys, you know? But it turned into this whole rabbit hole of questions.
First off, I got this list of like, 80 different questions related to psychology. It was a bit much, honestly. But it got me thinking about all the different areas you can dig into. I picked out a few that seemed cool, mostly about how our brains actually work when we’re learning, paying attention, or making decisions. I wasn’t feeling too brave so I avoid something related to brain regions.
So I started reading up on what other folks have done in this field. There are these people called cognitive psychologists, and they’re basically the brain detectives, trying to figure out all the secrets of our minds. And there’s a lot going on up there, let me tell you. They look at stuff like how we see things, how we learn new stuff, how we focus on one thing and ignore others. I found it interesting that there are studies around sensory encoding, motor control and reading. All of them are related to our daily life.
- Perception: How do we make sense of the world around us through our senses?
- Human learning: How do we acquire new knowledge and skills?
- Attention: How do we focus on specific information and filter out distractions?
- Problem solving: How do we approach and overcome challenges?
- Decision-making: How do we evaluate options and make choices?
Then I tried to come up with my own questions. Not easy, let me tell you. But I wanted to understand things like, how can we get better at remembering important stuff? Or, what’s the best way to learn something new so it really sticks? It was a little hard to connect my daily life to these questions in the beginning.
After a few days of this, I started to see how this cognitive psychology stuff is actually relevant to everyday life. Like, when I’m trying to learn a new song on the guitar, or when I’m trying to decide which route to take to work to avoid traffic. It’s all connected to how our brains process information.
I’m still no expert, but I’m definitely more aware of how my brain works now. And I’m pretty sure I’ll keep digging into this stuff. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll even figure out a foolproof way to never lose my keys again. But for now, I’m just enjoying the journey of exploring the mysteries of the mind, one question at a time.
What’s Next
I am planning to focus more on memory and forgetting, and see whether I can find something interesting. Maybe how to improve the efficiency of remembering things.
