Chapter 8: Everyday Memory And Memory Errors Flashcards
Autobiographical Memory (AM)
Memory for specific experiences from our life
- Mental time travel - Multidimensional- spatial, emotional, and sensory components
*We remember some events in our live better than others
Linton’s Diary Study
Wrote 2 most important things of day for 6 years
Waganaar’s Beeper Study
Assistant randomly beeped him and he had to write down everything about what he was doing in moment
Rubin’s VLTM
Very long-term memory
-Recall cues increased response, but decreased primary effect
Cabeza and coworkers (2004)
- Comparing brain activation caused by autobiographical memory and lab memory
- Participants viewed
- Photographs they took (own photons): more activation in PFC and hippocampus
- Photographs taken by someone else (lab-photos)
*Medial temporal lobe- episodic memory
Reminiscence Bump
Empirical finding that people over 40 years old have enhanced memory for events from adolescence and early adulthood, compared to other periods of their life
Explanations for the reminiscence bump
- Self-image
- Cognitive
- Cultural life script
Self-image hypothesis
Memory is enhanced for events that occur as a person’s self-image or life identity is being formed
- Period of assuming person’s self-image
Cognitive hypothesis
Encoding is better during periods of rapid change that are followed by stability
Cultural Life Script
Life events that commonly occur in particular culture
- Personal events are easier to recall when they fit the cultural life script
Cultural Life Script Hypothesis
Distinguishes between person’s life story and cultural life script
- Each person has
- personal life story
- understanding of culturally expected events
Youth Bias
Tendency for most notable public event in a person’s life to be perceived to occur when person is young
“Fragile Power”
- Forgetting:
- Transience
- Absent-mindedness
- Blocking
- Distortion
- Misattribution
- Suggestibility
- Bias
- Intrusive
- Persistence
Transience
Decreased accessibility of information over time
Absent-Mindedness
Inattentiveness leading to shallow processing and weak memory formation due to lack of attention to the task at hand
Blocking
Information that has been stored in your memory is not accessible at that moment in time
Misattribution
Matching the incorrect source to a recollection or an idea
Suggestibility
Memories that come from leading questions or ideas as a results of trying to recall a specific experience
Bias
Retrospective changes to past memories due to current beliefs that affect the memory itself even though it had little impact when the memory originally occurred
Persistence
Memories that we can’t get rid of even if we try to
Neisser and Harsch (1992)
Repeated recall
- Initial description: baseline
Results suggest that these memories can be inaccurate or lacking in detail
Emotional Events
- more easily and vividly remembered
- emotion improves memory, becomes greater with time
- activity in amygdala
- tendency to attend to weapon during a crime
Flashbulb Memories
- Memory for the circumstances surrounding shocking, highly charged important events
- Highly emotional, vivid, and very detailed
- Not “photograph” memories
- Can change with passage of time
- Repeated recall
- Results suggest that these memories can be inaccurate or lacking in detail
- Narrative rehearsal hypothesis
Repeated Recall
Recall is tested immediately after an events and then retested at various times after event
Narrative Rehearsal Hypothesis
Idea that we remember some life events better because we rehearse them
- Repeated viewing/ hearing of event
- TV, newspaper, radio, talking with others
- Could introduce errors in own memory
Constructive Nature of Memory
What actually happens+person’s knowledge, experiences, and expectations
- Bartlett’s “war of 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
- Changes to make story more consistent with own culture
Repeated Reproduction
Method of measuring memory in which person is asked to reproduce stimulus on repeated occasions at longer and longer intervals after original presentation of material to be remembered
Source Monitoring Error
Misidentifying source of memory
Cryptomeria
Unconscious plagiarism
Source Misattribution
Occurs when source of memory is misidentified
Illusory Truth Effect
- Enhances probability of evaluating statement is true after repeated presentation
- Occur due to fluency or familiarity with the information
Fluency
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
Pragmatic Inferences
Inference that occurs when reading/hearing statement leads person to expect something that is not explicitly stated or necessarily implied by statement
Schema
Person’s knowledge about what is involved in particular experience
Script
Type of schema
- Conception of sequence of actions that describe particular activity
Schemas and scripts influence memory
- Memory can include information not actually experienced by inferred because it is expected and consistent with the schema
- Constructive nature of memory can lead to error or “false memories”
Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory
Autobiographical memory capacity possessed by some people who can remember personal experiences that occurred on any specific day from past
Nostalgia
Memory that involved sentimental affection for past
Music-Enhanced Autobiographical Memories (MEAMS)
Autobiographical memories elicited by hearing music
Proust Effect
Taste and olfaction unlocked memories he hadn’t thought of for years
Power of Suggestion
- Misinformation effect
- Words used affects memory
- Source monitoring error
Misinformation Effect
Misleading information presented after someone witnesses an event can change how that person later describes the event
- Misleading post event information (MPI)
Misleading postevent information (MPI)
Misleading info that causes misinformation effect
Repressed Childhood Memory
Memories that have been pushed out of a person’s consciousness
Source monitoring error
- Failure to distinguish source of information
- MPI misattributed to original source
- Lindsay (1990)
Lindsay (1990)
- Heard a story: 2 days later again with some details changed
- Told to ignore changes
- Same voice for both stories created source monitoring errors
- Changing voice (male to female) did not create as many errors
False Memories: Hyman and coworkers (1995)
- Participants’ parents gave descriptions of childhood experiences
- Participant had conversation about experiences with experimenter, experimenter added new events
- When discussing it later, participant “remembered” the new events as actually happening
Errors in Eyewitness Testimony
- One of most convincing types of evidence to a jury
- Like other memory, eyewitness testimony can be inaccurate
- Confidence in one’s memories may be increased by postevent questioning
- May make memories easier to retrieve
Eyewitness Testimony
Testimony by witnesses to a crime about what they saw during commission of crime
Acceptance of Eyewitness Testimony
- Eyewitness was clearly able to see what happened
- Eyewitness was able to remember his/ her observations and translate them into accurate description of perpetrator and what happened
Weapon Focus Effect
Tendency for eyewitnesses to crime to focus on weapon, which causes poorer memory for other things that are happening
Post Identification Feedback Effect
Increase in confidence of memory recall due to confirming feedback after making an identification
Strategies to improve eyewitness testimony
- Inform witness that perpetrator might not be in lineup
- Use “filler” in lineup similar to suspect
- Use sequential presentation (not simultaneous)
- Improve interviewing techniques
- Cognitive Interview
Cognitive Interview
Procedure used for interviewing crime scene witnesses that involves witness talk with minimum interruption
