Chapter 8: Everyday Memory and Memory Errors

Question 1

Memory for specific experiences from our life. Two important characteristics of this type of memory is:

1. They are multidimensional (often include visual, auditory, and sometimes smells, tastes, touch, emotions)
2. We remember some events in our lives better than others

Answer 1

Autobiographical memory

Question 2

Part of the brain that is involved in recollection (memory associated with “mental time travel.”

Answer 2

Hippocampus

Question 3

People over age 40 tend to have good memory for events they experienced from adolescence to early adulthood. This is called the _____ _____.

Answer 3

Reminiscence bump

Question 4

Proposes that memory is enhanced for events that occur as a person’s self-image or life identitiy is being formed. “I am” statements are strong here: “I am a mother” or “I am a psychologist.”

Answer 4

Self-image hypothesis

*Proposed to explain the reminiscence bump.

Question 5

Proposes that periods of rapid change that are followed by stability cause stronger encoding of memories. Examples: Going away to school, getting married, starting a career.

Answer 5

Cognitive hypothesis

*Proposed to explain the reminiscence bump.

Question 6

The idea that events in a person’s life story become easier to recall when they fit the cultural life script for that person’s culture.

Answer 6

Cultural life script hypothesis

*Proposed to explain the reminiscence bump.

Question 7

Life events that commonly occur in a particular culture, such as, falling in love, marriage, college, and having children.

Answer 7

Cultural life script

Question 8

Related to the cultural life script in which there is a tendency for the most notable public events in a person’s life to be perceived to occur when the person is young.

Answer 8

Youth bias

Question 9

A key structure for emotional memories, and emotion has been linked to improved memory consolidation.

______ is a subcortical structure that is involved in processing emotional aspects of experience, including memory for emotional events.

Increased consolidation associated with emotion has also been linked to increased activity in the _____.

Answer 9

Amygdala

Question 10

Refers to a person’s memory for the circumstances surrounding hearing about shocking, highly charged events. They proposed that these flashbulb memories are vivid and detailed, like photographs (although they are not since they are often changed/altered over time).

Answer 10

Flashbulb memory

Question 11

Proposes that enhanced memory for significant events may be caused by rehearsal. This rehearsal is often linked to TV coverage, as illustrated by the results of the Princess Diana study.

Answer 11

Narrative rehearsal hypothesis

Question 12

According to the _____, originally proposed by Bartlett based on his “War of the Ghosts” experiment, what people report as memories are constructed based on what actually happened plus additional factors such as the person’s knowledge, experiences, and expectations. One aspect of the _____ is illustrated by the phenomenon of source monitoring.

Answer 12

Constructive nature of memory

Question 13

The process of determining the origins of our memories, knowledge, or beliefs.

Answer 13

Source monitoring

Question 14

Occurs when the source of a memory is misidentified.

Answer 14

Source monitoring error (also known as source misattributions)

Question 15

Unconscious plagiarism (an example of a source monitoring error).

Answer 15

Cyptomnesia

Question 16

The results of Jacoby’s “Becoming Famous Overnight” experiment show how _____ can lead to a source monitoring error.

Answer 16

Familiarity

Question 17

Occurs when repetition increases the perceived truth of a statement.

Answer 17

Illusory truth effect

Question 18

_____ is the ease with which a statement can be remembered. Proposed by Fazio to describe how repetition can increase perceived truthfulness and influence people’s judgments.

Answer 18

Fluency

Question 19

A method used in Bartlett’s “War of the Ghosts” experiment to measure memory in which a person is asked to reproduce a stimulus on repeated occasions at longer and longer intervals after the original presentation of the material to be remembered.

o At longer times after reading the story, most participants’ reproductions of the story were shorter than the original and contained many omissions and inaccuracies. But what was most significant about the remembered stories is that they tended to reflect the participant’s own culture. For example, “canoes” became “boats.”
o Participants combined the original story and what they knew about similar stories in their own culture in their reproductions.

Answer 19

Repeated reproduction

Question 20

Inference that occurs when reading or hearing a statement leads a person to expect something that is not explicitly stated or necessarily implied by the statement.

o These inferences are based on knowledge gained through experience. Thus, although reading that a baby stayed awake all night does not include any information about crying, knowledge about babies might lead a person to infer that the baby was crying.

Answer 20

Pragmatic inference

• Pragmatic = “practical”

Question 21

A person’s knowledge about some aspect of the environment. In one study, although there were no books in an office, 30 percent of the participants reported having seen books when asked to describe the room they were waiting in.

Answer 21

Schema

Question 22

Is our conception of the sequence of actions that usually occurs during a particular experience. In the “dentist experiment,” some participants reported reading that “Bill checked in with the dentist’s receptionist.” This statement is part of most people’s “going to the dentist” _____, but it was not included in the original story. Thus, knowledge of the dentist script caused the participants to add information that wasn’t originally presented.

Answer 22

Script

Question 23

Misleading information presented after a person witnesses an event that changes how the person describes that event later.

Answer 23

Misinformation effect

Question 24

The misleading information that causes the misinformation effect.

Memory experiments in which _____ is presented to participants indicate that memory can be influenced by suggestion. An example is Loftus’s traffic accident experiment. Source monitoring errors have been proposed to explain the errors caused by _____. Lindsay’s experiment provides support for the source monitoring explanation.

• Although there was no broken glass in the film (Loftus’s traffic accident experiment), 32 percent of the participants who heard “smashed” before estimating the speed reported seeing broken glass, whereas only 14 percent of the participants who heard “hit” reported seeing the glass.

Answer 24

Misleading postevent information (MPI)

Question 25

Is testimony by eyewitnesses to a crime about what they saw during commission of the crime.

Answer 25

Eyewitness testimony

Question 26

A procedure used for interviewing crime scene witnesses that involves letting witnesses talk with a minimum of interruption. It also uses techniques that help witnesses recreate the situation present at the crime scene by having them place themselves back in the scene and recreate emotions they were feeling, where they were looking, and how the scene may have appeared when viewed from different perspectives.

Answer 26

Cognitive interview

Question 27

A memory that involves a sentimental affection for the past.

Answer 27

Nostalgia

Question 28

Memories elicited by hearing music.

Answer 28

Music-enhanced autobiographical memories (MEAMS)

Question 29

Marcel Proust describes, in his novel Remembrance of Things Past, an experience after eating a small lemon cookie called a madeleine. Proust’s description of how taste and olfaction unlocked memories he hadn’t thought of for years is called the _____.

Answer 29

Proust effect