Chapter 8 - Everyday Memory and Memory Errors Flashcards
Autobiographical Memory (AM)
- memory for specific experiences form out life, which can include both episodic and semantic components
- Mental Time travel
- Multi-dimensional
- Spatial, emotional, and sensory components
- Sensory component
Multi-dimensional of AM
there are different components to AM: visual, auditory, smells, tastes and tactile perceptions as well. Spatial components, and often involve thoughts, emotions (both positive and negative)
-Greenberg and Rubin (2003)
- patients who cannot recognize objects also experience loss of autobiographical memory
- visual experience plays a role in forming and retrieving AM
-Cabeza and coworkers (2004)
- comparing brain activation caused by autobiographical memory and lab memory
- participants viewed
- photos they took (A-photos)
- photos taken by someone else
- both types of photos activated similar brain structures
- medial temporal lobe (MTL) (episodic)
- parietal cortex (processing of scenes)
- A-photos activated more of the:
- prefrontal cortex (information about self)
- hippocampus (recollection)
-demonstrates the richness or autobiographical memories
Memory over the Lifespan
-what events are remembered well?
- significant events in a persons life
- highly emotional events
- transition points
reminiscence bump
enhanced memory for adolescence and adulthood found in people over 40
-memory is high for recent events and for events that occurred in adolescence and early adulthood (between 10 and 30 years)
self-image hypothesis
proposes that memory is enhanced for events that occur as a persons self image or life identity is being formed
- many transitions occur between ages 10 and 30
- memories from this period are a foundation for later development, either as continuous with that foundation or as discontinuous and in need of explanation
Memory over the lifespan
-participants described an event to an event to a neutral cue word, e.g. bread (Crovitz and Schiffman, 1974)
- the distribution of those memories across the lifespan is extremely regular across participants. Experimental Research shows the following components
a. Childhood amnesia
b. Retention
-cognitive hypothesis
- encoding is better during periods of rapid change that are followed by stability
- evidence from those who emigrated to the US after young adulthood indicated reminiscence buy one is shifted
-cultural life-script hypothesis
- each person has:
- a personal life story
- an understanding of culturally expected events
- listed the important events in a typical persons life
- people listed falling in live (16), college (22), marriage (27), and having childcare
- personals events a re easier to recalled when they fit the cultural life script
cultural life script
culturally expected events that occur in a particular time in the life span
youth bias
the tendency for the most notable public events in a persons life to be perceived to occur when the person is young
Memory for Emotional Stimuli
- emotional events remembered more easily and vividly
- emotion improves memory, becomes greater with time (may enhance consolidation)
- Brain activity: amygdala
importance of the amygdala
activates high for emotional words
emotions trigger mechanisms in the amygdala that help us remember events triggered by emotions
Flashbulb Memories
- memory for circumstances surrounding shocking highly charged important events
- 9/11/01
- Kennedy assassination
- challenger explosion
- Where you were and what you were doing
- highly emotional, vivid, and very detailed
- flashbulbs are not photo memories as they change with the passage of time
-Repeated recall
is used to determine whether memory changes over time by testing participants a number of times after an event
-Neisse and Harsch (1992)
- participants filled questionnaire within a day after the explosion of Challenger and then filled out the same questionnaire 2.5 to 3 years later
- people changed where and how they knew the events
- in classroom, heard it form others then got all details after class
- in dorm and was watching TV, breaking news
- Results suggest inaccurate or lacking detail, even though reported to be very vivid and confident
- Challenger explosion
- O.J. Simpson murder trial
- Just like everyday memories
-memories for negative emotional pictures were stronger
and associated with greater confidence
-but worse context memory
narrative rehearsal hypothesis
- repeated viewing/hearing of event
- tv, newspaper, radio, talking with others
- could introduce errors in own memory
flashbulb memories are both
special (vivid, likely to be remembered) and ordinary (may not be accurate) at the same time
constructive nature of memory
what people report as memories are construed based on what actually happened plus additional factors such as the persons knowledge, experiences, and expectations
Source monitoring
process of determining the origins of our memories
where and when did something happen for example - can lead to “tip of the tongue “
source monitoring errors / source misattributions
misidentifying the source of a memory. Memory is attributed to the wrong source
cryptomnesia
unconscious plagiarism of the work of others due to lack of recognition of its original source
-Bartlett’s “war of the ghosts” experiment
- had participants attempt to remember a story from a different culture
- repeated reproduction
- results:
- over time, reproduction became shorter, contained omissions and inaccuracies
- changed to make the story more consistent with their own culture
-Tip of tongue effect
- For example: Most of people experienced that you meet someone you think you met before but not recollect where or when you met him/her
- Remember/know judgments reflect the fact that you can give access to the current states of your own memory.
Note that it is not the type of information that makes a difference. Rather, it is the presence or absence of conscious awareness of aspects of the prior experience that are important
Coblab – Remember/Know
- The expected result is that there will be a large levels of processing effect for the remember judgments, but no levels of processing effect (or even a slight reverse) for the know judgments
- Explanation
- One explanation is that remember judgments depend on the episodic memory system whereas know judgments are not; rather, they are possibly based on a procedural memory system.
An alternate explanation is that remember judgements may depend more on recollective processes whereas know judgements are based more on familiarity.
Source Monitoring
-Jacoby et a;. (1989)
- after 24 hours, some non-famous names were misidentified as famous
- Explanation: some non-famous names were familiar, and the participants misattributed the source of the familiarly
- failed to identify the source as the list that had been read the previous day
- people felt familiar with the non-famous names that they had learned. But they did not tell the source. So they decided that the familiarly was caused by fame
illusory truth effect
the enhanced probability of evaluating a statement as being true upon repeated presentation
fluency
the ease with which a statement can be remembered
Making Inferences
-memory can be influenced by inferences that people make based on their experiences and knowledge
-pragmatic inferences:
occurs when reading a sentence and leads to a person to expect something that is not explicitly stated or implied in the sentence
based on knowledge gained through experiences
-memory often includes information that is implied by or is consistent with the to-be-remembered information but was not explicitly stated
fluency and familiarity can
affect judgements as well in the truth effect
repeated reproduction
participants tried to remember a story after longer and longer intervals after they had first read it.
the longer the gap, the less accurate their reproduction was
schema
a persons knowledge about some aspect of the environment
Script:
conception of sequence of actions that usually occurs during a particular experience
- can influence memory based on what we would expect to happen in those settings / situations
- going to a restaurant; playing tennis, ordering coffee
-Bower et al. (1979)
showed that participants added some actions that were not mentioned when they read a passage. For example, check in with receptionist in the dentist office
- Schemas and scripts influence memory
- memory can include information not actually experienced but inferred because it is expected and consistent with the schema
- office waiting room: books not present but mentioned in memory tasks
- the constructive nature of memory can lead to errors or “false memories”
COGLAB – False Memory
Explanation
- The idea is that many of the words presented are related to the distractor, and most likely you thought about the distractor item as the words were being shown.
- At test, you have a memory of thinking about the word, but thought this was because it was presented rather than realizing you had just thought about the word.
- How robust is this effect? Are there limits to this effect?
- The effect is quite robust and perhaps most surprisingly, it works well even when subjects know what the experiment is about.
False Recall and recognition
false memories arise from the same constructive process that produces true memories, thus, memory errors are created
this helps us to fill in the blanks using the information we have on hand
misinformation effect
misleading information presented after a person witnesses an event can change how the person describes that event later
the information that can lead to the misinformation effect is called
misleading post-event information (MPI)
-Loftus and coworkers (1978)
- Post event questions
- Introduce MPI: yield sign instead of the stop sign (Did another car pass the red car while it was stopped at the yield sign) (Source monitoring error)
- Not introduce MPI: did another car pass the red car while it was stopped at the stop sign
- Hear “smashed” or “hit” in description of car accident
- Those hearing “smashed” said the cars were going much faster than those who heard “hit”
-Retroactive inference
- more recent learning with memory for something in the past
- Original memory trace is not replaced
-Source monitoring error
- failure to distinguish the source of the information
- MPI is misattributed to the original source
-Lindsey (1990)
- heard a story; tow days later again with some details changed
- told to ignore changes
- some voice for both stories created source monitoring errors
- changing voice (female to male) did not create as many errors
False Memories for Early Events
-Hyman and coworkers (1995)
- Participant had conversation about experiences with experimenter (true events); experimenter added new events (false events, attending a wedding reception)
- For the first time, participants said “no clue” about the new events.
- When discussing it 2 days later, participant remembered the new events as actually happening
- So it is another experiment of source monitoring error.
- Participants felt familiar to the false event in the second time, so they accepted it as having actually happened.
- Similar to another experiment we mentioned! What is that??
Lindsay et al. (2004)
• Reported that participants who were given the narrative of the false event together with a true old photograph recalled more false memories than participants who were not given the pictures.
Errors in Eyewitness Testimony
- testimony by an eyewitness to a crime about what he or she say during a crime
- one of the most convincing types of evidence to a jury
- assume that people see and remember accurately
- but, like other memory, eyewitness testimony can be inaccurate
- mistaken identity
- constructive nature of memory
-Wells & Bradfield (1998)
- Participants view security videotape with gunman in view for 8 seconds
- Everyone identified someone as the gunman from photographs afterwards
- The actual gunman’s picture was not presented
repressed childhood memories
memories that have been pushed out of the person’s consciousness
-Errors due to attention and arousal
- attention can be narrowed by specific stimuli
- weapons focus
-Errors due to familiarity
- source monitoring
- seeing someone the same day but at a different location, looks like someone you’ve met before etc but it is not the perp
-Errors due to suggestion
- Suggestive questioning
- when identifying the perpetrator of a crime from a lineup, the officer said “which of these men did it?” Implying that the perpetrator was in the lineup
- Confirming feedback
- after recognition the officer said “OK” implying the pick was correct
-Confidence in ones memory
may be increased by post event questioning
-may make memories easier to retrieve
What is being done about eyewitness testimony issues ?
- inform witness perpetrator may not be in the lineup
- Use “filters” in lineup similar to suspect
- rate confidence immediately when viewing lineups
- use blind lineup admin, someone (like the officer) does not know if the the suspected perp is in the lineup either
- use sequential prevention (not simultaneous)
- Improve interviewing techniques
- cognitive interview
post-identification feedback effect
increase in confidence due to confirming feedback about an identification
cognitive interview
involves letting the witness talk with a minimum of interruption and also uses techniques to help them recreate the situation present at the time and scene of the crime, emotions, where they were looking etc.
decreases the likelihood of any suggestions during the process since only the witness speaks
Eliciting false confessions
-use of social pressure and provided instructions for a guided imagery procedure for visualising the crime, meaning they eventually believed that they had actually committed the crime
all interrogations must be recorded because of things like this
music enhanced autobiographical memories (MEAMS)
memories elicited by listening to music
typically referred to as involuntary memories
highly emotional responses
Proust effect
how taste and olfactation unlocked memories he had not thought of for years
