Chapter 8 Lecture and textbook notes Flashcards
Describe Cabeza’s experiment
Before test
Had participants go around campus and take pictures at specific locations (self pictures) and showed them pictures others take pictures at the same location (lab seen)
Test
placed participants in a brain imager and presented them with photos and asked them to indicate if it was one that they had take, one that someone else had taken that they had seen in the test phase, or one that someone else had taken that they had not seen in the test phase
Findings
participants medial temporal lobes, (associated with episodic memory) and parietal lobes (associated with processing scenes) were activated by all pictures. Participants prefrontal cortex, (associated with processing information about ones self) and hippocampus (associated with mental time travel) were more activated by the self pictures.
What does autobiographical memory is multidimensional mean?
It contains multiple sensory components have found for people who have damage to their visual cortex can lose autobiographical memories that are not associated with vision
What is a reminiscence bump, describe the experiment that found it?
a reminiscence bump refers for people over 40’s tendancy to report more life events that they can remember as occuring within the age range of 10-30. Experiment asked participants aged 55 to report their lief events found they generally had memory from age 5 to age 55 and that they reported the highest frequency of events in the very recent time frame and the timeframe from when they were 10-30.
What is the self image theory for reminiscence bump and the experiment that supports it?
Surveyed participants on average aged 54 about what events they considered to define their identity and how old they were when the event occurred, found that the average age all of these events had occurred was 25. ex “I became a mother” “I became a psychologist” When our self image is defined it is a significant event since more of the significant events appear to occur when we are in adolescence/reminiscence bump aage range it makes sense that we can remember more from the reminiscence bump age range.
Describe the cognitive theory behind the reminiscence bump and the experiment that found it
According to the cognitive theory of the reminiscence bump when times fo rapid change are followed by times of stability better encoding occurs. Since for most people adolescence is a period of rapid change followed by a period of stability it makes sense that the reminiscence bump includes it
Rubin and Schauf
Predicated that for people who had experienced rapid change later in life would have the reminiscence bump occur later. Ased peoole who had emigrated to the US when they were 20-24 years old to report their life events and the ages at which they happened and compared with people who were 30-34 when they had emigrated found that the people who were 30-34 when they had emigrated had their reminiscence bumps occur later. The 30-34 wouldn’t count as having the adolescent be reminiscence bump bc is not followed by stability as have another maybe more significant change occur after it, (emmigrating)
Describe the Cultural script hypothesis and the experiments associated with it
According to the cultural script hypothesis the events generally considered to be most important are expected to occur during the period of time that the reminiscence bump. They might not occur during tihe time of the reminiscence bump but if they do it makes it easier to remember them because they are potentially more likely to receive rehersal, (in depictions from that culture of what is considered the important events of an average life and when they should occur) on flip side since their is more pressure to obtain these culturally important events at these times they might stick out more to people who deviated from them because they feel as though they are marked as different from average.
Rubin and Bernstern asked participants to describe what they think the most important events in a persons life will be and the age that they predict them to happen found falling in love (16), going to college (22), getting married (27), and having kids (28)
Kopple and Berstern youth bias
Asked participants to imagine a theoretical person of their same gender from their same culture and then asked them to select the ages that they thought theoreteical important public events would occur, (ex a war, death of a significant politician etc.) found that when they only tested older participants the average age was before they were 30 however when they included younger participants became 20s or teenage years- the tendency displayed through this for [people to predict that the most important public events (not correlated with the individual directly os should not be impacted by their age) will occur when the individual is younger.
Describe Lebar and Phelp’s experiment on the effect of emotion on memory
Presented participants with sexually obscene or curse words- (likely to be more emotion evoking) and normal words (ex street, stare), (likely to be less emotion evoking) found that participants were more likely to remember the sexually obscene or curse words
Describe Delcos experiment
Showed participants emotional and non emotional pictures then had a 1 year delay before testing their memory. After the 1 year delay placed partiicpants in an fMRI, found that participants had better memory for the emotional pictures then the non emotional pictures and that their amygdalas were more activated by the emotional rather then non emotional pictures.
Describe the link between memory and the amygdala as demonstrated through B.P’s case.
B.P experienced brain damage to the amygdala
was shown a slidshow with neutral parts a boy and his mother walking and an emotional part the boy gets injured for the neutral parts B.P had equally as good memory as participants without brain damage however participants without brain damage had enhanced memory for the emotional scene whereas B.P did not.
Describe the experiments that examine if cortisol enhances memory
Rats do a task then have a stimulant given to them causes them to have better memory of the task
Cahill
group 1 (stress group): shown emotional and non emotional pictures while their arms were submerged in ice water- which would cause the release of the stress hormone cortisol so they were exposed to the stress condition
group 2: shown emotional and non emotional pcitures while their arms were submerged in warm water - would not cause the release of cortisol - so they were exposed to the non-stress condition
Test
after a delay of one week both groups asked to state what they remembered of each picture
Findings
The stress grouphad better memory for the emotionally arousing picture then the non emotional arousing picture and better memory of the emotionally arousing picture then the nonstress group. The non-stress group did not have much difference in what they could remember of the emotionally arousing vs not emotionally arousing pictures. Both groups had equal levels of memory for the neutral image- this suggests that being exposed to stress enhanced the memory of the emotionally arousing stimuli but not the neutral stimuli.
Describe Kulik and Brown’s theory of flashbulb memories
Coined the term flashbulb memories after the JFK assassination, use the term flashbulb memories to refer to peoples memories of how they first heard about a shocking public event, (note important distinction this is not what people remember of how JFK was assassinated - the event itself but rather where they were and under what circumstances they first heard about it) - this usually results in what would otherwise be part of an ordinary day being given special significance ex author mentions that he has talked to his secretary many many times but he will always remember when she told him that a plain crashed into the world trade center. Kulik and Brown propose that flashbulb memories, (memories of how someone first found out about a very shocking publicized event) are resistant to decay- proposed that during flashbulb moments our brain has a now print mechanism like it took a picture of the moment and that picture will never fade.
What was an issue with Kulik and Browns findings
They determined that flashbulb memoreis existed because people could still even many years after the event had happened- describe how they had learned about JFK or MLK’s assacinations in detail however they only asked people about how they discovered about these events years later. Since they did not take a baseline and discover how the people had heard about the events immediately after they had occured they had no way of checking the accuracy of peoples recollections, (if they had done this they would have used the technique of repeated recall- where people are asked about an event right after it occurs and then asked to recall it sometime later on and the accuracy of their recall is compared with what they initallly reported)
Describe Niessers Repeated Narrative hypothesis theory and Harsch and Niessers challenger experiment
Harsch and Niessers challenger experiment
right after the challenger exploded had participants report how they had heard about it, then 2 and 1/2 years later asked the same participants to recall how they had heard about the challenger exploding. Only 21% of participants had in their original report stated that they had heard about it exploding through TV however in the recall test 45% of participants recalled that they had first heard about the explosion on TV–> this lead Neisser to propose the Repeated Narrative Hypothesis. According to Niesser people seem to be able to recall how they first heard about shocking events more vividly because they get more rehersals for them, ex after 9/11 lots of TV coverage on 9/11 might prompt individuals to think of how they first heard about it however also might cause individuals to focus on different elements like the image of the smoke. If participants have certain features highlighted in their memory bc of repeated exposure and have certain features of the event repeatedly shown after they are prompted to think about the event again they might associate the two and mistakenly come to believe that parts of the rehersal of the event were parts of how they first learned about the event.
Describe James Ost’s flashbulb memory experiment
James Ost interviewed 45 people on their knowledge regarding significant british public events one of the questions he asked was weather the people had seen the paparazzis footage fo princess dianas death 20 out of 45 said they had when in reality they had not as this footage did not exist.
Describe the 9/11 flashbulb memory experiment
Interviewed participants the day after 9/11 and asked them to report how they had heard about 9/11 and to report an ordinary event that had occurred in their daily lives in one of the days prior to 9/11. Participants created 2 or 3 cue words for the ordinary event. Participants were then either tested a week later, 6 weeks later or 32 weeks later. Found that the number of details the participants reported when recalling how they heard about 9/11 did not increase however the number of accurate details they recalled decreased so the amount of accurate information they could remember about how they heard about 9/11 was pretty much the same as the amount of accurate information they could remember about the ordinary event. This shows that flashbulb memories are special, (participants could not accurately remember how they had heard about 9/11 however they could remember that they had first heard about 9/11- where they might have forgotten what other everyday task they had reported and kept a similar level of detail in their recollection as was present in their initial report) and ordinary, (they decay over time).
What are source monitoring errors?
Source monitoring errors can also be called source misattributions are when we misidentify the source of information- can occur with external sources, (ex we might know that we are excited to watch a movie and think we first heard about the movie but cant remember if we first heard about it through an online review or by talking to our friend if we decide that we must have first heard about it when we talked to our friend when in reality we first heard about it by reading the online review then we would have committed a source monitoring error), or internal (we might know that we heard I will be home late for dinner from ourselves but misattribute that we heard this from ourselves when we said it to someone else when in reality we only thought it)
What is cryptomnesia
Having something to create in your mind thinking you have thought it up yourself but when in reality it already was created by someone else and you have made a source monitoring error thinking you thought of it when in reality you heard it.
Describe Larry Jacoby’s becoming famous overnight experiment
Study phase
presented both groups with a list of made up non-famous names
group 1: immediately after being shown the list of non famous names were reminded that the names they had seen were of non famous people and then were given a list containing some of the non famous names they had seen in the study phase, some non famous names that they had never seen before and some famous names.
Group 2: after a 24 hour delay were told the list they had seen 24 hours earlier had been of non famous names and given a list containing some of the non famous names they had seen in the study phase, some non famous names that they had never seen before and some famous names.
Findings: group 1 immediate test group was able to generally accurately differentiate between the famous and non famous names whereas group 2 often misidentified the non famous names that they had seen in the study phase as being famous ones. This demonstrates source monitoring error the non-famous names feel familiar but they might not be able to identify why, (at least not as well because the info as to where they are from was presented longer ago then it was for the other group) - so have to decide if it is familiar bc it is a famous persons name or a name they saw in the study phase.
What is the illusory truth effect and describe the experiment that found it
The illusory truth effect refers to our tendency to be more likely to respond that a statement that has been presented to us repeatedly is true even if we have conflicting information that we can produce on the subject. ex if we have “A sari is the name of the short pleated skirt that people in scotland wear” even if the person can answer the question what is the name of the pleated skirt that people in scotland wear is a kilt.
Fazio
presented participants with a mix of true and fasle statements and asked participants to rate how interesting they were, then presented some of the previously presented true and false statements with new true and false statements and asked participants to respond if they believed the statements were true . Participants on average classified 56% of the correct statements that they had not been presented with before as being true and 62% of the correct statements that they had been presented with in the interesting or not phase as being true- simmilar occured for false statements. Explained by fluency have greater knowledge of the statements they were exposed to before bc they are more fammilair so they are more likely to believe that they are true.
Describe Bartletts ghost story experiment
Told english participants a ghost story that took place in canada asked them to do repeated reproduction, (where a researcher presents a story to participants and then has participants try to recite the story after a delay) found that the longer the delay the more inaccuracies were present and the shorter the recitals got however interestingly found that participants would incorporate details not present in the original story but likely to be present in a similar format of story from Edwardian England, ex canoes became boats, etc. Showed that people took information from the original source and combined it with information from simmilar sources.
What is a pragmatic inference?
When we come to believe a piece of information was presented with the original information even though it was not explicitly stated only implied based on our previous knowledge, (this does not necessarily mean that it is true either)
Describe Chan, Mcdermott and Brewer’s pragmatic inference experiment
McDermott and Chan 2006, Brewer 1977
Presented participants with several sentences like “The temperature reached 80 degrees and the children’s snowman vanished” and “The absent minded professor did not have his keys” and several others like them, then asked participants to recall the sentences found partiicpants were likely to change the sentence “The temperature reached 80 degrees and the children’s snowman vanished” to “The temperature reached 80 degrees and the children’s snowman melted” and the “The absent minded professor did not have his keys” to “The absent minded professor lost his keys” this shows how the sentences caused them to envision a certain series of events based on prior knowledge and the other information presented that they would then remember the original sentences being about even though they never specified this- the children’s snowman could have vanished for a different reason but based on our prior knowledge we assume that it vanished because it melted.
What is a schema
A persons knowledge of the aspects of an environment ex a schema of a bank might include the knowledge of what a bank looks like from the outside, what the tellers desk looks like and what services you can expect from a bank.
Describe Brewer and Treyons schema experiment
ad participants in a psychologists office experimenter left for 35 seconds to go “check to make sure that the last hours participants experiment had been recorded” and then asked the participants to follow them to a different room then told the participants that they were going to be tested on what they remembered of the original room, 305 of participants reported having seen books even though no books were present this is likely because based on their schema, (the participants knowledge of the environment) of a psychologists office told them that books would be there.
