Everyday memory Flashcards
Explain the idea behind the construction of memory.
Memory is not like a videotape recording. We construct the memory every time we access it.
- Makes memory vary in accuracy
- Memory can change over time
- It’s hard to know when you are remembering something or when you are taking a guess
- External influences may affect memory judgements
What is metamemory?
Making judgments about our memories.
We tend to be overconfident in our memories and their accuracy.
How are autobiographical memories different? relate it to Cabeza’s experiment.
They are multimodal –> there are visual and auditory elements associated with the memory.
Cabeza found that the hippocampus and other areas of the frontal cortex were activated when participants looked at pictures they took rather than pictures of the same place taken by someone else.
What type of events are remembered well?
- Significant events
- Highly emotional events
What is the reminiscence bump?
The phenomenon is that old people tend to remember ages between 10 and 30 with more details/better than other life periods.
What are some possible explanations for the reminiscence bump?
Self-image hypothesis
- 10-30 is how we decide who we are and our identity.
Cognitive hypothesis
- We encode information better during periods of rapid change.
- Schrauf and Rubin showed that people who emigrated later to the US showed the reminiscence bump later than those who emigrated earlier –> shows that reminiscence is not biological as it happens where there is more change regardless of age.
There is an overlap between the hypotheses.
Why are emotional memories better?
Cortisol –> Positive and negative emotional experiences cause a release of cortisol
Cahill et al. (2003) found that participants remember emotional memories better than neutral memories when exposed to stress. There was no difference between emocional and neutral recall in the no stress condition.
What are flashbulb memories?
Memories formed for circumstances surrounding shocking, highly charged events.
You tend to remember details like: where were you, what you were doing, etc
People have very high confidence in these memories.
Public events are used to study them.
They are not accurate.
Explain some of the research on FBM.
Neisser and Harsh (1992)
- Challenger explosion
- Showed that FBM changes just like regular memories.
Talarico and Rubin (2003)
- It also showed that FBM loses details like regular memories.
- Also showed that FBM maintained high confidence across delays, whereas regular memories lost confidence.
Rimmele et al (2011)
- Showed that participants have better memory for details when shown neutral pictures but better big-picture memory for emotional pictures.
–> emotion–> focus is on the emotional impact and the core meaning of the event.
What is narrative rehearsal?
We place focus on core details when telling people about the event. Repeated hearing and viewing of the event change the details of the story.
Bartlett’s War of the Ghosts
- As time went on participants changed elements of the story to make it more consistent with their cultural schema.
What is source monitoring?
Determining the origins of our memory –> where did the info come from.
Sometimes, we think it came from the incorrect source. –> source misattribution.
Jacoby et al. (1989)
- After delay time participants identified non-famous names presented before as famous even though they correctly identified them the first time.
What are pragmatic inferences?
We edit our memory to make it agree with what we would expect to happen in a situation. Use our schemas to make inferences.
Brewer and Treyes –> People claimed that there were things that they would expect to find in the office even though there weren’t.
What are some explanations for misinformation?
Retroactive interference
- Recent learning interfering with memory for prior learning –> original memory is not replaced, but distorted
Source monitoring error
- Failure to distinguish the source of information
- Lindsey –> Participants got more confused when MPI was shown immediately after and by a same-gender narrator.
Pragmatic inference
- Participants assume that people testing them know better than them
What is misinformation?
Information presented after an event that can change later recall. It’s studies using misleading post-event information (MPI)
Loftus et al
- showed people videos of car accidents with a stop sign
- people who got MPI claimed to have seen a yield sign.
Loftus and Palmer (1974)
- Used different ways to describe car accidents. Participants estimated higher speed when smashed was used as opposed to hit.
Describe Hyman’s false memory experiment.
1) Parents described genuine childhood experiences.
2) Experimenters told participants to tell them about childhood experiences and introduced some that didn’t happen.
3) Results at first –> correctly identified real memories
Later –> some false memories were “recalled”
–> probably due to familiarity/source confusion
–> there were important individual differences
