Chapter 8-Everyday Memory Pt.1

Question 1

Autobiographical memory (AM)

Answer 1

Memory for specific experiences from our life, which can include both episodic and semantic components

• mental time travel
• multidimensional (spatial, emotional, and sensory components)

Question 2

Sensory component of AM

Answer 2

Greenberg and Rubin

• patients who cannot recognize objects also experience loss of AM
• visual experience plays a role in forming and retrieving AM

Question 3

Two ways of visually remembering an event

Answer 3

1. First person perspective

2. Third person perspective

Question 4

Planning for future also involves _____

Answer 4

Episodic memory (can simulate future events)

Participants are asked to describe a future event from their own point of view or in third person

Results in same brain area activation as past events

Question 5

Cabeza and coworkers

Answer 5

Compared brain activation caused by autobiographical memory and laboratory memory

Participants viewed:

• photographs they took (A photos)
• photographs taken by someone else

Question 6

Cabeza and coworkers experimental results

Answer 6

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 of autobiographical memories

Question 7

What events are remembered well?

Answer 7

• significant events in a person’s life
• highly emotional events
• transition points

Question 8

Reminiscence bump

Answer 8

Participants over the age of 40 are asked to describe an event to a neutral cue word

Memory is high for recent events (retention) and for events that occurred between 10-30 years of age (reminiscence)

Memory poor under age 10 (childhood amnesia)

Question 9

Hypotheses about the reminiscence bump

Answer 9

1. Self image
2. Cognitive
3. Cultural life script

Question 10

Self image hypothesis

Answer 10

• Memory is enhanced for events that occur as a person’s self image or life identity is being formed
• people assume identities between ages 10-30
• memories from this period are a foundation for later development, either as continuous with that foundation or discontinuous and in need for explanation
• references made back to this momentous time of life would function cognitively as rehearsals

Question 11

Cognitive hypothesis

Answer 11

• encoding is better during periods of rapid change that are followed by stability
• evidence from those who emigrated to the US after younger adulthood (>30 years of age) indicates reminiscence bump is shifted

Question 12

Cultural life script hypothesis

Answer 12

Each person has:

• a personal life story
• an understanding of culturally expected events

Personal events are easier to recall when they fit the cultural life script

Question 13

Results of Koppel and Bernsten’s “youth bias” experiment

Answer 13

Participants were asked to indicate how old a hypothetical person would be when the event that they consider to be the most important public event of their life time takes place (ages 10-30)

The distribution of responses are similar for both younger and older participants

Question 14

Memory for emotional stimuli

Answer 14

Emotional events are remembered more easily and vividly

Emotion improves memory, becomes greater with time (may enhance consolidation)

Brain activity: amygdala

Review experiment where emotional pictures are remembered better than neutral words, even after 1 year

Question 15

Results for emotional/neutral picture experiment

Answer 15

Recall for emotional pictures is better than for neutral pictures when subjects are exposed to stress during encoding (cortisol increases consolidation)

-arms in cold water versus arms in warm

There is no significance difference between emotional and neutral recall in the no stress condition. This result may be related to enhanced memory consolidation for the emotional picture.

Question 16

Flashbulb memories

Answer 16

Memory for circumstances surrounding shocking, highly charged important events

• remember where you were and what you were doing
• highly emotional, vivid, and very detailed

Question 17

Are flashbulb memories photograph memories

Answer 17

No they can change with the passage of time as demonstrated by repeated recall:

Initial description: baseline
Later reports: compare to baseline

Question 18

Neisser and Harsch

Answer 18

Participants filled out questionnaires within a day after the explosion of Challenger and then filled out the same questionnaire 2.5-3 years later

People changed where and how they knew the events

Results were inaccurate or lacking in detail, even though people reported them to be very vivid and confident

Question 19

Flashbulb memories are just like

Answer 19

Everyday memories (details decay for flashbulb memories but vividness and confidence stay high)

Question 20

Rimmele and coworkers

Answer 20

Memories for negative emotional pictures were stronger and associated with greater confidence

But worse for colour context memory

Demonstrates dissociation between confidence of peoples self report and their memory (or between subjective report and objective measurements)

Question 21

Narrative rehearsal hypothesis

Answer 21

• for flashbulb memories
• repeated viewing/hearing of event
• could introduce errors into our own memory

Question 22

The constructive nature of memory

Answer 22

Memory=what actually happens + person’s knowledge, experiences, and expectations

Question 23

The constructive nature of memory experiment

Answer 23

Bartletts “war of ghosts” experiment

• had participants attempt to remember a story from a different culture
• repeated reproduction

Results

• overtime, reproduction became shorter, contained inaccuracies
• changed the story to make it more consistent with their own culture

Question 24

Source memory

Answer 24

Process of determining origins of our memories

Question 25

Source monitoring error

Answer 25

Misidentifying source of memory

Also called source misattributions

Question 26

Cryptoamnesia

Answer 26

Unconscious plagiarism of another’s work due to a lack of recognition of its original source

Question 27

Coglab: Remember/Know

Answer 27

• Tulving used to show remember/know are dif memory forms
• remember (contextual details/associations)
• know (no contextual details/automatic familiarity)
• reflect the fact that you can give access to the current states of your own memory
• its the presence or absence of conscious awareness of aspects of the prior experience that are important
• two phases; first phase either synonym or rhyming, second phase is test phase

Question 28

Results of coglab: remember/know

Answer 28

Large levels of Processing for the remember judgments but no levels of Processing for the know judgements

Remember judgments depend on episodic memory systems whereas know judgments are based on a procedural memory system

Alternatively, remember judgements may depend more on recollective processes whereas know judgements are based more on familiarity

Question 29

Jacoby et al. (Source monitoring-Becoming Famous Overnight experiment)

Answer 29

Acquisition: participants learned lists of non famous people

Immediate test group: tested right after. Most non famous names correctly identified as nonfamous

Delayed test group: After 24 hours, some non famous names were identified as famous because the names were familiar and the participants misattributed the source of the familiarity

Question 30

Making inferences

Answer 30

Memory can be influenced by inferences that people make based on their experiences and knowledge

Pragmatic inferences: based on knowledge gained through experience

Memory often includes information that is implied by or is consistent with the to be remembered information but was not explicitly stated

Question 31

Making inferences experiment

Answer 31

Exp: “pounding” the nail
Control: “looking” for the nail
Test: includes hammer

Read this sentence and 5 others. Test is have you seen this before? Experimental group erroneously identified seeing more sentences before because they identified more sentences as being originally presented even though they were not

Question 32

Source monitoring task

Answer 32

• review baseball one

- review male/female example