Everyday memory Flashcards
The storehouse vs the correspondence metaphor for memory.
Quantity of information vs what kind of information and how it is prioritized.
Ulrich Neisser’s (1996) three characteristics of everyday memory:
- Purposeful
- Has a personal quality
- Influenced by situational demands
Distributed practice vs massed practice in learning and memory
Distributed practice produces much better results (Smith & Rothkopf, 1984 - statistics lectures)
Which is retrieved more quickly - autobiographical memories or memories of other kinds of information?
Conway (1996) - autobiographical memories are retrieved more slowly - e.g. 4 sec vs 1 second for personal information. The hypothesized reason is that autobiographical memories are reconstructed rather than reproduced.
Brewer (1988) - a study of event-specific knowledge - Ss received randomly timed signals to record their thoughts and actions - results?
Locations were best remembered, then actions and then thoughts. Recall of sensory detail was highly predictive of accurate recall of other aspects.
Rubin, Wetzler, and Nebes (1986) - memories across the lifetime - results?
- a reminiscence bump - surprisingly large number of memories coming from the years between 10 and 30, and especially between 15 & 25
- infantile amnesia - almost total lack of memories from the first five years of life
How memorable are unique events and first times?
93% of vivid life memories were found to be either of unique or of first time life events (Cohen & Faulkner, 1988)
A possible explanation of the reminiscence bump:
Rubin et al. (1988) - “the best situation for memory is the beginning of a period of stability that lasts until retrieval” - stability after the formation of adult identity + novelty - memories formed shortly after the onset of adult identity…
An explanation of infantile amnesia:
Howe & Courage (1977) - the emergence of self (self-recognition, using personal pronouns) towards the second year of life.
Linton (1975) - own diary study:
Two events recorded per day, two randomly tested per month. 60% of events completely forgotten if not tested; less than 40% forgotten if tested at least once.
The self-reference effect
Information about oneself is better remembered than information of a more impersonal kind.
E.g. Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker (1977) - recall was higher after semantic than after phonemic judgments, but twice as high after self-references (does this apply to you?)
Flash-bulb memories
Brown & Kulik (1977) - very important, dramatic, and surprising public or personal events. (might not exist as such)
Meta-analysis - Symons & Johnson (1997)
What accounts for the self-reference effect completely?
Self-reference was no more effective than ordinary semantic processing when the extent to which the information is organized was controlled (Klein & Kihlstrom, 1986)
Schooler & Engstler-Schooler (1990)
Verbal overshadowing of visual memories: a film of a crime, some provided a verbal report of the criminal’s appearance - those performed worse on picture recognitions
Loftus & Palmer (1974)
Hit vs. Smashed into (estimates 34 mph vs 41 mph)
- did you see broken glass? (1 week later)
32% of ‘smashed’ Ss reported seeing it.
(14% for ‘hit’ & 12% for controls)
Dodson & Reisberg (1991) - does misinformation destroy the original memory of an event?
Using an implicit memory test they showed that the original information was still stored in LTM
Explanations of misinformation effects on memory
- ‘misinformation acceptance’ - Loftus (1992)
- Ss do what they think is expected - Zaragoza & McCloskey (1989) - responding to the ‘demand characteristics’ of the situation
- Lindsay (1990) - memories distorted even if participants are warned that all the information is wrong
- within the source monitoring framework - source misattribution (if people falsely attribute the source of information to the original event)
‘Functional size’ of a line-up
# of people matching the witness's description of the culprit - low functional size is associated with greater probability of mistaken identification when the actual culprit is absent (Lindsay & Wells, 1980)
Is eyewitness confidence a good predictor of identification accuracy?
No. Perfect & Hollins (1996) - asked questions about a kidnapping film as well as general knowledge questions (accuracy of memory was associated with confidence only on the general knowledge questions, supposedly because of no one to compare one’s knowledge with in the crime - no source of confidence)
The ‘basic cognitive interview’
Geiselman et al. (1985):
- the eyewitness tries to recreate the context existing at the time of the crime, including environmental and internal info
- the E reports everything he/she ca think of about the incident, even if the info is fragmented
- the E reports details of the incident in various orders
- the E reports the events from various perspectives
Standard interview vs basic cognitive interview vs hypnosis
Geiselman (1985) avg # of correct statements with standard - 29.4; basic cognitive - 41.1; hypnosis - 38
‘enhanced cognitive interview’ - additional principles:
Fisher et al. (1987) - minimize distractions, induce eyewitnesses to speak slowly, allow a pause btw response & next question, tailor language to suit E, try to reduce anxiety, judgment, and personal comments.
enhanced vs basic cognitive interview
Fisher et al. (1987) - avg of 57.5 correct statements with enhanced, compared to 39.6 with basic; however, there were 28% more incorrect statements with the enhanced interview
enhanced cognitive interview vs standard interviewing techniques in the field
Fisher, Geiselman, and Amador (1990) - Metro-Dade Police Department in Miami - training produce an increase of 46% in statements, ca 90% of those proved accurate.
