Everyday Memory Flashcards
Whats the focus for study of everyday memory?
- The relevance of meaningful materials
Natural events - Motivation in keeping certain memories linked to personal goals
- Relevance of memories
- Mismatch between report of an event vs the actual event
What are the seven sins of Memory?
Shows how fragile memory is in reality
- Transience - Loose access of info across time
- Absent-mindedness- Failures in remembering info and intended activities in our everyday life
- Blocking - Temporary retrieval failure
- Misattribution - Correct fact but the wrong source or context
- Suggestibility - Tendency to incorporate information from others or from yourself
- Bias - Distort recollection
- Persistence - To remember facts or events that you rather forget
Proposition
Representation of meaning that can be stored and retrieved from memory
Meaning is important to understand human cognition
We store propositions in our memory
Based on 5 dimensions in a sentence
- Relation to the topic or event
- Agent, the one who did the relation
- Patient, receiving the relation
- Location
- Time
What was Sachs study about?
How important meaning vs verbatim is
- We retain meaning better than verbatim
- Confirmed by other studies as well
Fan effect
When more words are associated with a concept, RT are longer
Is memory like a video-recording system?
No, its a naïve view that many seems to believe in
What are the different levels of language comprehension? van Djink & Kintsch
- Surface form
Verbatim mental representation - Textbase
Similar to propositions, remembering ideas - Situational Model
State of affairs described - Different types of mental representations
- Happens in parallel
- How well people remember over time
Metamemory
To asses how accurate our memories will be
Source monitoring
Accurately remember the source of a meaning
- Is it encountered or imaginary?
- Complex process
- Failures include routinely tasks we do everyday
- Misattribution effect
Retelling past events*
Retelling past evens is often incomplete or distorted, with consequences for later memory
- Shows how much memory is prone to influences
- Often distort retelling of our life events, and believe it to be true
- How we talk about our memory affect how we remember it
Watching a violent scene, more errors when we focus on the emotions during the scene
How does schema-congruity effect our memory?
Memory can get distorted if it doesnt fit into to our goals or expectations
- Bartlett Ghost story
- Better memory for schema-consistent info than reverse
We store alot of clichés in our memory
Can leading questions effect your memory?
Yes it can
- Classic study about speed, changed one word
Neutral words vs impactful
- Different estimation on speed
Misinformation acceptance
Accepting the additional information and viewing it as true
Memory impariment
A genuine change or alteration of an experienced event as a function of a later event
1. See something
2. Gets additional information
Neutral or weighted
3. Memory test
Misinformation effect
Incorrectly claim to remember misinformation, paired with memory impairment
- Memory is prone to biases and errors
Can you implant memories?
It is possible yeah
- Lost in the mall study by Loftus
- The people themselves can have high confidence in those implanted memories
Believe they are true
- False memory study
False memories were similar in detail and vividness to true memories - study of a imaginary crime
What are the memory wars about?
- Whether people can repress and recover lost memories
Is it reliable? Can those memory be trusted? - Traumatic events are prone to distortions
- Two camps about it
- Support for both sides
Study 1
81% undergraduates believe trauma can repress memory , 70% believe it can be retrieved
Study 2
Undergraduates-general public-psychologists
Bit of skepticism from undergraduates and psychologist
Nonresearches believed in repressed memories and their retreival
Camp false memory
Memory is pliable
- Simple manipulation in labs has shown that
- Cognitive psychologists
Camp Delayed memory
Childhood trauma can result in dissociative amnesia - split off memory from conscious awareness
- Trauma therapists
Memory tests for natural events*
A classic study: Participants tested for their retention of names and faces of own graduating class
- Different ages
Different retention interval
- High retention level due to prolonged acquisition
- Free recall performed worse
Prolonged acquisition
Overlearning during a long learning phase
Distributed practice rather than massed practice
What are some examples of dairy studies?*
- Ebbinghaus
- Wagenaar recorder all of his daily events in a very systematic fashion and tested his recall of those events
None of the evens was truly forgotten, could be remembered with the help of cues
Pleasant events recalled better than unpleasant ones at shorter retention
Can dairy studies gives us something about memory?
- Describes themes in your life
- Can show how we store things in our life long memory
Organising the events in themes
Autobiographical memory
All of our personal memories we have
- To build and maintain our identity and self-image
- Broader than episodic memory
What are the knowledge structures in autobiographical memory?
- Periods that comprise long-lasting situations
- General experiences
- Knowledge related to specific events
- Life story
Spontaneous memories
Direct, involuntary retrieval of autobiographical memory triggered by external stimulus
- Often from odors
- Often single events
Flashbulb memories
We often seem to have extremely accurate and detailed memories of particular events
- Emotional involvement
- Surprising or unusual events
Are recall the only way of remembering information?
Often not
Flashbulb memories - Study*
How accurately do we remember flashbulb events?
- Study shows that we can remember events more vividly due to uniqueness but not necessarily more accurately
What is infantile amnesia?
Not being able to remember events before a certain age, often around 3
- Due to brain development
- Language skills
- Cognitive self
- Implicit learning early on
What is reminiscence bump?
We often remember the majority of events from the age of 14 to around 25
- Use of life scrips
Expectancies
Bump for events that correspond with life script
- Novel experiences around that time period
- Unexpected events
- Control of life
Prospective memory
Remembering to do something in the future
- At a specific time
- Intention and content
Going to the store after i get off of the train
Judgments of learning
Prediction of how much knowledge one have after studying something
Feeling of knowing
How likely ill remember something later
- Meeting someone who looks familiar, dont remember the name
How can we test prospective memory systematically?*
Time-based tasks
- Pressing a button every hour
- Think more about the tasks
- Worse performance
Event-based tasks
- When entering a room
- Intention triggered by external cue
Prospective memory paradigm *
- Instructions prospective memory intention
- Filler task
- Ongoing task
- Prospective memory intention
Can interferences interrupt prospective memory?*
Yes it can
- Distraction, attention on something else
Formation and retrieval of prospective memories
- Stress
- Aging
