Chapter 8: Everyday Memory And Memory Errors Flashcards
Define memory
The process involved in retaining retrieving and using info about stimuli images events ideas and skills after original info is no longer present
What is autobiographical memory
Memory for specific experiences from our life which can include both episodic and semantic components.
Multidimensional nature of AM
Consist of spatial emotional and sensory components
Memory over the life span
Personal milestones like graduating or getting married stand out as well as highly emotional events like surviving a car accident.
Transition points appear to be particularly memorable.
The enhanced memory for adolescence and young adulthood commonly found in people over 40 is called the reminiscence bump.
Identify the 3 hypothesis of why adolescence and young adulthood are special times for memory encoding
The self image hypothesis:
Proposed by Rathbone stated that memory is enhanced for events that occur as a person’s self image or life identity is formed.
Cognitive hypothesis
Proposed periods of rapid change that are followed by stability cause stronger encoding of memories.
The cultural life script hypothesis
Distinguish between a person’s life story which is all of the events that have occurred in a person’s life and a cultural life script which is a record of culturally expected events that occur at a certain time in the life span.
What is the relationship between memory and emotions
The amygdala is important in this regard. Activity was higher for successfully retrieved emotional stimuli than successful neutral stimuli.
Cortisol enhances memory for emotional stimuli which leads to conclusion that hormone activation that occurs subsequent to arousing emotional experience enhance memory consolidation in humans. This increased consolidation associated with emotions has also been linked to increased activity in amygdala.
Weapon focus is the tendency to focus attention on a weapon during the commission of a crime.
Flashbulb memories
Refers to memory for the circumstances surrounding how a person heard about an event not memory for the event itself.
the narrative rehearsal hypothesis
Rehearsing an event after it has occurred.
Expand on the concept of the constructive nature of memory
What is reported as memories are constructed based on what actually happened in addition to other factors like person’s knowledge experience and expectations. It refers to constructive because the mind construct memories based on a number of sources of info.
The idea that memories are comprised of details from various sources involves phenomenon called source monitoring which is the process of determining the origin of our memory knowledge or beliefs .
Cryptoamnesia
Unconscious plagiarism of the work of others.
How does real world knowledge affects memory
Pragmatic inference: occurs when reading a sentence leads a person to expect something that’s not explicitly stated or implied by the sentence.
Schema is a person’s knowledge about some aspect of environment.
Von restoff effect: refers to the findings that distinctiveness or unexpectancy aids memory
A script is our conception of the sequence of actions that usually occurs during a certain experience.
How can memory be modified or created by suggestion
The misinformation effect: misleading info presented after a person witnesses an event that can change how the person described the event later where the info is referred to as misleading post Event info MPI
Original info is forgotten because of retrospective interference which occurs when more recent learning interferes with memory for something that happened in the past
Source monitoring
How does memory effect eyewitness testimony
It is testimony by a person who was present at the crime about what they saw happen which is based on whether the witness was able to clearly see what happened and remember their observations and translate them into accurate description of what happened.
Weapon focus effect:
Refers to the observation that the presence of a weapon impairs eyewitness recall for details of the crime scene.
the increase in confidence due to confirming bias after identification the post identification feedback effect.
