Exam 3 Flashcards
Two Additional Characteristics of Autobiographical Memory
1) It’s multidimensional bc they consist of spatial, emotional, and sensory components.
2) We remember some events in our lives better than others.
Reminiscence Bump
The empirical finding that people over 40 years old have enhanced memory for events from adolescence and early adulthood, compared to other periods of their lives.
Explanations for the Reminiscence Bump
Self-Image Hypothesis, Cognitive Hypothesis, and Cultural Life Script Hypothesis
Self-Image Hypothesis
Proposes that memory is enhanced for events that occur as a person’s self-image or life identity is formed.
Development of the self-image therefore brings with it numerous memorable events, most of which happen during adolescence or young adulthood.
Cognitive Hypothesis
Proposes that periods of rapid change that are followed by stability causes stronger encoding of memories. Adolescence and young adulthood fit this description because the rapid changes, such as going away to school, getting married, and starting a career, that occur during these periods are followed by the relative stability of adult life.
People who emigrated at a later age have a later reminiscence Bump.
Cultural Life Script Hypothesis
Distinguishes between a person’s life story, which is all of the events that occurred in a person’s life, and a cultural life script, which is the culturally expected events that occur at a particular time in a life span.
Events that fit our cultural “stories.”
Events in a person’s life story become easier to recall when they fit the cultural life script for that person’s culture.
Amygdala
A subcortical structure that is involved in processing emotional aspects of experience, including memory for emotional events.
Emotions may trigger mechanisms in the amygdala that helps us remember events that are associated with the emotions.
Weapon Focus
The tendency to focus attention on a weapon during the commission of a crime, which is typically a high-emotion situation.
Flashbulb Memory
Refers to a person’s memory for the circumstances surrounding shocking, highly charged events.
Surrounding how a person heard about an event, not memory for the event itself. We believe these are very true compared to other memories, based on the emotions.
Ex. 9/11 and JFK’s assassination.
Repeated Recall
The technique of comparing later memories to memories collected immediately after the event. This is to determine whether memory changes over time.
Narrative Rehearsal Hypothesis
The idea that we remember some life events better because we rehearse them.
Constructive Nature of Memory
What people report as memories are constructed based on what actually happened plus additional factors, such as the person’s knowledge, experiences, and expectations.
Repeated Reproduction
Same subjects try to remember the story at longer and longer intervals after they have first read it.
Source Monitoring
Process of determining the origins of our memories, knowledge, or beliefs. Influenced by biases we might have.
Source Monitoring Error/Source Misattributions
Misidentifying the source of a memory.
The memory is attributed to the wrong source.
Cryptoamnesia
Unconscious plagiarism of the works of others.
Patient BP
Extremely rare disorder, damaging only his amygdala (bilaterally). Emotionally-charged things don’t stick with him better than neutral things.
Pragmatic Inference
Occurs when reading a sentence leads a person to expect something that is not explicitly stated or implied by the sentence.
Schema
A person’s knowledge about some aspect of the environment.
Script
Our conception of the sequence of actions that usually occurs during a particular experience. Knowledge about stereotypic sequences of events (scripts are a kind of schema). Ex. Doing laundry.
Misinformation Effect
Misleading info presented after a person witnesses an event can change how the person describes that event later.
A person’s memory for an event is modified by things that happen after the event occurred.
Misleading Post Event Information (MPI)
The misleading info from the misinformation effect.
One explanation for the MPI effect proposes that the original info is forgotten bc of retroactive interference, which occurs when new learning (misinformation) interferes with memory for something that happened in the past (actual events).
Eyewitness Testimony
Testimony by a person who was present at the crime about what he or she saw during commission of the crime.
Acceptance of Eyewitness Testimony
1) The eyewitness was able to clearly see what happened.
2) The eyewitness was able to remember his or her observation and translate them into an accurate description of what happened and accurate identification of the perpetrator(s).
Post-Identification Feedback Effect
Increase in confidence due to confirming feedback after making an identification.
Cognitive Interview
Based on what is known about memory retrieval. Involves letting the witness talk with a minimum of interruption and also uses techniques that help witnesses recreate the situation present at the crime scene by having them place themselves back in the scene and recreate things like emotions they were feeling, where they were looking, and how the scene might have appeared when viewed from diff. perspectives.
Truth Effect/Propaganda Effect
Thinking something is true because you heard it in the past, but forget the context in which you learned it in (source Monitoring).
Inferences
Assumptions made based on prior knowledge. Often happen without conscious awareness.
Elaboration
Introduced elements not in the original passage (based on schemas).
Why Are We Influenced by MPIs?
Memory trace replacement (replacing your original memory with the misleading info), retroactive interference (new learning is interfering with older info), source monitoring errors (making mistakes of sources from which you got this info).
Conceptual Knowledge
Knowledge that enables us to recognize objects and events and to make inferences about their properties.
