By: Sophia Carlucci
Senior Marion Pearson is studying sensory psychology for her last semester at the high school. Sensory memory is impressions made that need to last for a certain period of time in order to be transferred into short-term memory. Her independent study consists of how sensory psychology affects people’s memories.
“I wanted to study this to see if would be something I would want to continue in the future,” said Pearson. “I’ve really liked this study and I want to study something like this in college.”
Throughout her study Pearson has been researching past experiments and doing a study on her grandfather with Alzheimer’s to observe the effect of the olfactory system on his memory loss.
“I have loved getting to learn about something that has a lot of personal significance to me,” said Pearson. “My grandfather is a really important person to me, and so I think that it’s been incredible to learn about the way the brain works and how it affects people with dementia and memory loss diseases like him.”
With this subject Pearson is interested in becoming an art therapist, who works with memory loss patients.
“It would be the coolest thing ever to be an art therapist,” said Pearson. “I have seen on my own how this disease has affected my grandfather, and I would love to be able to help people like him in the future.”
When wrapping up her study, Pearson hopes to see how her grandfather’s olfactory system is affected by memory loss.
“My goal is to see how much my grandfather can remember, even though his short term memory is gone,” said Pearson. “I am looking forward to understanding much more about people’s memories.”