Heuristics - Memory Errors and Biases

Question 1

Bizarreness effect

Answer 1

Bizarre material is better remembered than common material.

Question 2

Choice-supportive bias

Answer 2

In a self-justifying manner retroactively ascribing one’s choices to be more informed than they were when they were made.

Question 3

Change bias

Answer 3

After an investment of effort in producing change, remembering one’s past performance as more difficult than it actually was[88][unreliable source?]

Question 4

Childhood amnesia

Answer 4

The retention of few memories from before the age of four.

Question 5

Conservatism or Regressive bias

Answer 5

Tendency to remember high values and high likelihoods/probabilities/frequencies as lower than they actually were and low ones as higher than they actually were. Based on the evidence, memories are not extreme enough[69][70]

Question 6

Consistency bias

Answer 6

Incorrectly remembering one’s past attitudes and behaviour as resembling present attitudes and behaviour.[89]

Question 7

Context effect

Answer 7

That cognition and memory are dependent on context, such that out-of-context memories are more difficult to retrieve than in-context memories (e.g., recall time and accuracy for a work-related memory will be lower at home, and vice versa)

Question 8

Cross-race effect

Answer 8

The tendency for people of one race to have difficulty identifying members of a race other than their own.

Question 9

Cryptomnesia

Answer 9

A form of misattribution where a memory is mistaken for imagination, because there is no subjective experience of it being a memory.[88]

Question 10

Egocentric bias

Answer 10

Recalling the past in a self-serving manner, e.g., remembering one’s exam grades as being better than they were, or remembering a caught fish as bigger than it really was.

Question 11

Fading affect bias

Answer 11

A bias in which the emotion associated with unpleasant memories fades more quickly than the emotion associated with positive events.[90]

Question 12

False memory

Answer 12

A form of misattribution where imagination is mistaken for a memory.

Question 13

Generation effect (Self-generation effect)

Answer 13

That self-generated information is remembered best. For instance, people are better able to recall memories of statements that they have generated than similar statements generated by others.

Question 14

Google effect

Answer 14

The tendency to forget information that can be found readily online by using Internet search engines.

Question 15

Hindsight bias

Answer 15

The inclination to see past events as being more predictable than they actually were; also called the “I-knew-it-all-along” effect.

Question 16

Humor effect

Answer 16

That humorous items are more easily remembered than non-humorous ones, which might be explained by the distinctiveness of humor, the increased cognitive processing time to understand the humor, or the emotional arousal caused by the humor.[91]

Question 17

Illusion of truth effect

Answer 17

That people are more likely to identify as true statements those they have previously heard (even if they cannot consciously remember having heard them), regardless of the actual validity of the statement. In other words, a person is more likely to believe a familiar statement than an unfamiliar one.

Question 18

Illusory correlation

Answer 18

Inaccurately remembering a relationship between two events.[4][50]

Question 19

Lag effect

Answer 19

The phenomenon whereby learning is greater when studying is spread out over time, as opposed to studying the same amount of time in a single session. See also spacing effect.

Question 20

Leveling and sharpening

Answer 20

Memory distortions introduced by the loss of details in a recollection over time, often concurrent with sharpening or selective recollection of certain details that take on exaggerated significance in relation to the details or aspects of the experience lost through leveling. Both biases may be reinforced over time, and by repeated recollection or re-telling of a memory.[92]

Question 21

Levels-of-processing effect

Answer 21

That different methods of encoding information into memory have different levels of effectiveness.[93]

Question 22

List-length effect

Answer 22

A smaller percentage of items are remembered in a longer list, but as the length of the list increases, the absolute number of items remembered increases as well.[94][further explanation needed]

Question 23

Misinformation effect

Answer 23

Memory becoming less accurate because of interference from post-event information.[95]

Question 24

Modality effect

Answer 24

That memory recall is higher for the last items of a list when the list items were received via speech than when they were received through writing.

Question 25

Mood-congruent memory bias

Answer 25

The improved recall of information congruent with one’s current mood.

Question 26

Next-in-line effect

Answer 26

That a person in a group has diminished recall for the words of others who spoke immediately before himself, if they take turns speaking.[96]

Question 27

Part-list cueing effect

Answer 27

That being shown some items from a list and later retrieving one item causes it to become harder to retrieve the other items.[97]

Question 28

Peak-end rule

Answer 28

That people seem to perceive not the sum of an experience but the average of how it was at its peak (e.g., pleasant or unpleasant) and how it ended.

Question 29

Persistence

Answer 29

The unwanted recurrence of memories of a traumatic event.[citation needed]

Question 30

Picture superiority effect

Answer 30

The notion that concepts that are learned by viewing pictures are more easily and frequently recalled than are concepts that are learned by viewing their written word form counterparts.[98][99][100][101][102][103]

Question 31

Positivity effect

Answer 31

That older adults favor positive over negative information in their memories.

Question 32

Primacy effect, recency effect & serial position effect

Answer 32

That items near the end of a sequence are the easiest to recall, followed by the items at the beginning of a sequence; items in the middle are the least likely to be remembered.[104]

Question 33

Processing difficulty effect

Answer 33

That information that takes longer to read and is thought about more (processed with more difficulty) is more easily remembered.[105]

Question 34

Reminiscence bump

Answer 34

The recalling of more personal events from adolescence and early adulthood than personal events from other lifetime periods[106]

Question 35

Rosy retrospection

Answer 35

The remembering of the past as having been better than it really was.

Question 36

Self-relevance effect

Answer 36

That memories relating to the self are better recalled than similar information relating to others.

Question 37

Source confusion

Answer 37

Confusing episodic memories with other information, creating distorted memories.[107]

Question 38

Spacing effect

Answer 38

That information is better recalled if exposure to it is repeated over a long span of time rather than a short one.

Question 39

Spotlight effect

Answer 39

The tendency to overestimate the amount that other people notice your appearance or behavior.

Question 40

Stereotypical bias

Answer 40

Memory distorted towards stereotypes (e.g., racial or gender), e.g., “black-sounding” names being misremembered as names of criminals.[88][unreliable source?]

Question 41

Suffix effect

Answer 41

Diminishment of the recency effect because a sound item is appended to the list that the subject is not required to recall.[108][109]

Question 42

Suggestibility

Answer 42

A form of misattribution where ideas suggested by a questioner are mistaken for memory.

Question 43

Telescoping effect

Answer 43

The tendency to displace recent events backward in time and remote events forward in time, so that recent events appear more remote, and remote events, more recent.

Question 44

Testing effect

Answer 44

The fact that you more easily remember information you have read by rewriting it instead of rereading it.[110]

Question 45

Tip of the tongue phenomenon

Answer 45

When a subject is able to recall parts of an item, or related information, but is frustratingly unable to recall the whole item. This is thought to be an instance of “blocking” where multiple similar memories are being recalled and interfere with each other.[88]

Question 46

Travis Syndrome

Answer 46

Overestimating the significance of the present.[111] It is related to the enlightenment Idea of Progress and chronological snobbery with possibly an appeal to novelty logical fallacy being part of the bias.

Question 47

Verbatim effect

Answer 47

That the “gist” of what someone has said is better remembered than the verbatim wording.[112] This is because memories are representations, not exact copies.

Question 48

Von Restorff effect

Answer 48

That an item that sticks out is more likely to be remembered than other items[113]

Question 49

Zeigarnik effect

Answer 49

That uncompleted or interrupted tasks are remembered better than completed ones.