Everyday Memory and Memory Errors Flashcards
Two important characteristics of autobiographical memory
1) They are multidimensional
2) We remember some events in our lives better than others
Visual experience plays an important role in autobiographical memory. Patients with visual damage are unable to…
Remember autobiographical memories as well. Whether they are visual or not
Reminiscence bump
Empirical finding that people over 40 years old have enhanced memory for events that occurred in adolescence and early adulthood
When does the reminiscence bump occur?
Between age 10 and 30
What are the three hypotheses based on the idea that special events occur during the reminiscence bump?
1) Self-image hypothesis
2) Cognitive hypothesis
3) Cultural life script hypothesis
Self-Image Hypothesis
Memory is enhanced for events that occur as a person’s self-image is being formed.
Memorable events associated with the development of self-image: giving birth, graduating from University, staring a career
Cognitive Hypothesis
Encoding is better during periods of rapid change that are followed by stability.
Going away to school, emigrating, staring a career, are followed by a relative stability of adult life
People who experience rapid changes that occurred later mean that their reminiscence bump also occurs later
Cultural Life Script Hypothesis
Events in a person’s life story that become easier to recall when they fit their cultural life script
Youth bias: tendency for the most notable events in a person’s life to be perceived as occurring when the person is young (getting a job, married, having a kid)
Emotions may trigger events in the amygdala that help us remember…
events associated with emotion
Experiment with rats and humans led to the finding that stress hormones released after an emotional experience…
increase consolidation of memory for that experience
Flashbulb memories
Memory for the circumstances that surround hearing (not experiencing) about shocking events
Narrative rehearsal hypothesis
We remember some life events better than others because we rehearse them
If the narrative hypothesis is correct than the flashbulb analogy is…
misleading
People’s memory for flashbulb events remain more ____ than everyday memories but that does not mean they remain ______
vivid, accurate
The constructive nature of memory
People’s memories are constructed based on what actually happened AND additional factors such as expectations, knowledge, and life experience
Aspects of the constructive nature of memory are illustrated by…
Source monitoring errors
Illusory truth effect
Knowledge
Inferences
Schemas and scripts
False recall and recognition
Source monitoring errors
Misidentifying the source of a memory
Illusory truth effect
Related to the propaganda effect.
Believing a statement to be true because of its repetition
Participants tend to let their own _____ influence stories they hear. This is shown when they are asked to recall a story.
culture
Pragmatic inference
When reading a sentence leads a person to expect something that is not explicitly stated or implied
Schema
A person’s knowledge about what is involved in a particular experience
Ex; what things make up an office?
Script
Our conception of the sequence of actions that usually occur during a particular experience
Schema and script influence our memory by…
setting up expectations about what usually happens in a certain situation
False recall and recognition
Being presented a list of words such as “bed, rest, awake, tired, dream” and then having to recall them and saying “sleep” even though it was not there
Remembering “sleep” is a false memory. This occurs because the word is associated with other words on the list
Similar to schemas
Misinformation effect
Misleading information presented after a person witnesses an event can change how the person later describes that event
Experiment on creating false childhood memories
Participants were asked to remember a fake childhood event. Participants dais they did not remember this event but then a second time they did.
Could be explained by familiarity
