Chapter 8 Remembering Complex Events Flashcards
What is HSAM and are people with it geniuses?
Highly Superior Autobiographical Recall. They have virtually perfect memories for their lives (episodic memory), but rarely for semantic memory. They are otherwise normal.
How does Crombag et al. (1996 Dutch airplane crash study) demonstrate how people make memory errors?
10 months after a Cargo plane crashed into 11 storey building in Amsterdam, 193 Dutch people were asked questions about the crash, e.g. “did you see the video of the plane hitting the building?” More than half of them answered yes, although no such film exists. A follow up study asked 93 participants more detailed questions like “was the plane on fire when it crashed, or did it catch fire a moment later?” 66% said they saw the footage and could provide details.
How does Brewer & Treyens (1981 Imaginary books in professor’s room study), demonstrate how people make memory errors?
Participants were asked to wait in the experimenter’s office prior to the start of procedure. After 35 seconds they were taken out of this office and told there was no experiment, but they just needed to recall what was in the room they had just been sitting in. Although there were no books in view in the office, 30% of participants reported seeing books.
Explain how understanding can both help and hurt memory
When we encode memories, we usually understand them in relation to other things that we already know, like attaching new nodes in an existing network. This promotes retrieval, but also creates errors when we fill in gaps with existing/related knowledge.
Give an example that proves the statement: “We are powerfully influenced by our prior beliefs.”
Prior beliefs about what should be in an academics office (from personal experience, or watching movies) made participants imagine they saw books in the office that weren’t actually there.
Is information from a single episode stored in the same place?
No, its elements are stored separately but linked by connections.
Storage is actually modality-specific–what you saw of an event is stored in a different location than what you heard and felt.
What is a transplant error?
When bits of information you have encountered in one context has transplanted into another context as a result of the complex web like nature of memory. Eg part of your thinking about the event gets misremembered as if it were actually part of the original experience.
Two examples of when memory connections have helped and hurt recall.
(1) Sleep word test - Although recall of words was high at 65% (memory connections help), false recall of the theme word (sleep) was almost as frequent as accurate recall of words actually presented (memory connections hurt).
(2) Nancy and professor story.
Prologue (“Hope I’m not pregnant”)gives more context and understanding to the story about Nancy needing to see the Professor, which helps with later recall of statements from passage. It also made participants include statements that weren’t in the passage that they had incorrectly inferred from the prologue.
Give evidence that justifies the statement: “Recall is often governed by our expectations, not by reality.”
(1) Brewer & Treyens (1981 Imaginary books in professor’s room study). Participants expected to see books in an academic’s room, even though they did not experience them to be there.
(2) Crashing studies (Dutch plane and Lady Di): We generally expect there to be footage of these events, so we fill in the gaps in our memory with our expectations.
What is the DRM effect?
When memory connections help and hurt recall, as demonstrated in themed word list tests where the theme word is missing. [e.g. word list including bed, rest, awake tired etc, all related to a theme word ‘sleep’ that is absent from the list.]Participants remembered more words but also included a word that wasn’t on the list (sleep).
[named after Deese Rodiger and McDermott]
Why does the DRM effect occur?
The words in the list are related so they are all priming each other and therefore easy to recall. Because memory is a network of related ideas, the theme word is also primed, even though it isn’t on the list.
How do memory connections help and how do they hurt recollection (DRM effect)?
They help because the connections, serving as retrieval paths, enable you to locate information in memory.
They hurt because the connections sometimes make it difficult to see where the remembered episode stops and other, related knowledge begins.
What is a schema?
A mental shortcut that summarizes the broad pattern of a how things normally occur.
E.g. you generally don’t need to look around a kitchen to know there will be an oven and a fridge, you know from experience that they are almost always present.
How are schema’s helpful?
They fill in the gaps so we don’t have to pay attention to everything. E.g we don’t need to look for the fridge in a kitchen, we can assume it is there.
Give two examples of how schemas contribute to memory errors.
(1) crashing experiments: there is usually footage shown of major events, we’ve come to expect it to be normal. Schemas will fill in the gaps in our recall, even if there is no footage.
(2) DRM experiments: Our schema of a university professors office includes a chair, a desk and books. We expect that going in, so we don’t need to check.
Why are memory connections cool?
They serve as retrieval paths. Allowing you to locate information in storage
How do memory connections enrich your understanding?
They tie each of your memories to a context provided by other things you already know.
What do the connections to schematic knowledge enable you to do?
Schematic knowledge enables you to supplement your perception and recollection with well-informed (and usually accurate) inference.
Do schemas guide you to what is informative in a situation, or what is self-evident?
Schemas guide your attention to what’s informative in a situation, rather than what’s self-evident, guiding your inferences at the time of recall.
Is it true to say that the same connections that help you understand the world, also undermine the accuracy of your memory?
Yes
What is the misinformation effect?
When you give people misleading information and it effects their memory.
Give an example of the misinformation effect.
Loftus and Palmer’s (1974) car crash experiment:
–Study participants watch a car accident, and half are asked “how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?”, the other half “…when they smashed into each other”. The “hit” group said 34m/hr, the “smashed” group said 41.
–One week later, participants were asked if they saw the broken glass (there wasn’t any), 14% of the “hit” group said yes, 32% of “smashed” group said yes.
When does information about an event have to be received in order for it to be incorporated into the memory as misinformation?
After the event.
The misinformation effect refers to memory errors that result from misinformation received after an event was experienced.
People then end up incorporating the false suggestion (which can be subtle or overt) into their memory of the original event.
What does Loftus and Palmer (1974) car crash study tell us about the misinformation effect?
Even the verb you use to describe and event can influence people’s memories and make them less accurate.
