L5: contemporary issues in human memory research part 2 Flashcards
individual differences?
Low cognitive ability showed to increase tendency for individuals to incorporate post event information into eyewitness memories (Roediger & Geraci, 2007; Zhu et al., 2010)
Individuals with lower cognitive reflections scores tend to reason intuitively instead of analytically (Bronstein et al., 2019)
High or overclaimed knowledge and/or engagement may induce more overlapping memory traces and trigger the feeling of familiarity for false memories (e.g., Mitchell & Johnson, 2000)
Individuals with stronger conspiracy beliefs are more likely to believe in fake news (Calvillo et al., 2020, 2021) and have lower analytic thinking (Swami et al., 2014)
study?
Fabricated stories were mixed with true stories and presented to the participants
Short news pieces in formats of either texts or voiceover of video
The favourability (pro or against either party) is match across party and true/fabricated
Rate their memory for the stories
I have a clear memory of seeing/hearing about this
I have a vague memory of this event occurring
I don’t have a memory of this, but it feels familiar
I remember this differently
I don’t remember this
Where did they encounter the story
TV, Newspaper, Radio, Online news website, Social media, Word-of-mouth, Other
I didn’t see/hear about this
I don’t remember
How do you feel at the time when you see the news?
How did researchers measure individual differences?
Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT; Frederick, 2005): the questions are intuitive but incorrect responses, and correct responses require analytic thought
The ages of Mark and Adam add up to 28 years total. Mark is 20 years older than Adam. How many years old is Adam?
Generic Conspiracist Belief Scale (GCBS; Brotherton et al., 2013): includes items that measure conspiracy themes without invoking specific conspiracy theories
Technology with mind-control capacities is used on people without their knowledge
Engagement: how frequently they
Viewed or listened to traditional media about the event
Engaged with social media content about the event
Had discussion with family and friends about the event
Cognitive ability: Wordsum test
Knowledge test of the event
Ideology and susceptibility to false memories
Almost half [1,2] or slightly more than 80% [3] of the participants reported at least one false memory
Each fabricated story was remembered by 22-35% of participants [2]
With some participants reported rich details (“that illegal posters were burned”) [1]
Ideology-congruent false memories are more likely to recall
”No” voters recalled more fabricated scandals for “Yes” than “No” voters, or vice versa [1]
“Leave” voters recalled more fabricated negative stories of “Remain” voters than of “Leave” voters, or vice versa [2]
Republicans recalled more fabricated events that are supportive to Republicans than to Democrats, or vice versa [3]
what are the findings?
individual differences and susceptibility to false memories:
A warning of potential fabrication decreases false memories but did not eliminate them [
5 different individual differences measured in this study. Memory recollection, false memory recollection or ability to differentiate between fabricated and true stories.
Found if participant held more knowledge on event more likely to recollected despite true or false? And more likely to report false on opposite campaign? Showed better ability to differentiate. If had higher engagement (how frequent talk about to friends, social media, read news etc.) reported high memory recollection and false memory but doesnt help to differentiate.
Cognitive: more initative or analytic.
Cognitive reflection- more analytic. Higher score in those tests mentioned before. More analytic= less memory recollection regardless of true and false and less false memory recollection doesnt help differentiate./ doesnt change ability (same s before)
Higher cognitive ablity- less memor, less false, no diff in differentiation
Higher beliefs in conspiracy theories- greater memory recollection, more false memories, doesnt change ability to differentiate
Info in yellow is finding from study at top. : higher knowledge and higher cognitive ability= no diff in terms of whether more prone
But diff for high engagement and cognitive reflection.
but:
Data is still preliminary, interpret with cautious
Do the participants indeed have the memories for these fabricated stories or do they feel or think they have them?
internet?
memory attribution error and google:
people mistake the internets knowledge for their own:
How sure are you about where you learned a piece of specific knowledge?
Memory partners: memory of a group or society divide the mental labour of attending to, processing and remember information through their internal memory
Internet (Google) enables an ‘on-demand’ external memory
How many hearts does an octopus have?
Research questions:
Would the convenient and seamless experience of googling make people to mistake the internet’s knowledge for their own?
Do Google users appropriately acknowledge the internet as the source of their knowledge?
Participants were asked a list of 10 general questions
E.g., “what is a baby shark called?”, “In what state was pop star Madonna born?”
Google groups vs. non-Google groups
Self-rate perceived ability to remember
E.g., “I have a better memory than most of people”, “I am smart”
Predict future performance in the absent of googling
How many questions they can answer correctly on a subsequent test of similar difficulty without access to any external resources
Participants in Google group answered more questions correctly, they are also…
More confident in their own memory
Predicted they would answer more questions in the future when the internet was no longer available
Sometimes the participants even claimed that the answer found online had been produced entirely from their own memory
Feeling of knowing and the blur of the boundary of internal and external memory
A recent finding suggested that people prefer using external source for semantic memory, as opposed to internal source for episodic memory (Finley & Naaz, 2022)
How do you think if the same question is asked to generative AI (e.g., Bard or
ChatGPT)?
why should you test a witness memory only once and guidance on conducting a police lineup?
Why should test a witness memory only once?
Is courtroom identification an independent and direct source in the witness’s memory?
Just as other evidence, witness’s memory can also be contaminated
Innocent Project (2020): eyewitness misidentifications contributed to about 70% of more than 375 wrongful convictions later overturned by DNA evidence
Why have these wrong convictions happened and how can we improve the accuracy of witness identification?
uidance on conducting a police lineup (1998)
The lineup administrator should be blind to the identity of the suspect
The eyewitnesses should be informed that the suspect may or may not be in the lineup
The suspect should not stand out in the lineup (i.e., the lineup should be fair)
A confidence statement should be obtained at the time an identification is made and before any feedback from the police
At least five fillers should be included in the lineup (1999); at least 12 photographs should be used in the UK
Wells (2020)
Avoid repeated identification procedures with the same witness and suspect
Conduct an interview before the lineup and warn the witness not to identify the culprit on social media or elsewhere
Memory is malleable.
morgan et al. (2013)?
Morgan et al. (2013) a mock prisoner- of warer experiment
Soldier undergo 13 min integration with interrogator. After the interrogater left and said this was the person who was interrogated?
Researcher comes in and asks ‘did your interrogator gie u anything to eat’
In another condition diff soldier show pic of white male and implying person in photo is interrogator
‘Did ur interrogater give anything to eat’
Lineup of photos given. Real investigator missing. Falsey implied person (in pic) is among photos. Found that by just presenting that pic without exposing actual pic to person 15%= when pic not shown
84% chose pic when pic was shown
Easy to misidentify someone under influence of suggestions.
How did that happen?
retrieval cue: I’m going to show you some photos and i’d like you to tell me if you see the person who stole the car —-> context reinstatement—> activated context—-> memory test (photo lineup)—-> result of memory test: 1. a memory match signal (m) is generated for the test face being considered 2. the rest face is encoded along with the reinstated context and current testing context
Context overlapping- rencoding specificity principle
The one that matches the features the most usually gets picked up the most despite real suspect or not (top left here)
brown et al. (1997)?
Brown et al. (1977)
Choose a group of criminals
After 19 mins view 15 mugshots including criminals and some others being seen for the first time.
After a week identify suspect?
Original suspect was absent from line up to stimulate that police ruled out that suspect?
Neq mugshots havent been seen before added.
In this case, misidentification rate for new: 8% for previous: 20%
By being in lineup those faces get higher chances to be misindentified particularly in the absence of real suspect
Goodsell et al. (2015)
Replicated the 1977 study. Observe group of crminals. Shown mugshots however this time real was absent. Control- no mugshots
48 hrs- participants separated into 2 diff groups. First group- shown diff sets of mugshots no mugshot of suspect
Another group shown mugshots with real suspects
8%- identified suspect when not shwon before?
70% identified when real suspect present?
81%- misidentificatopm when sspect not present???
Chose same person twice in a row? People not suspects but present in previous mugshots more likely to be 28% more likely to be misidentified??? Brah he explaining this so bad
18%???
If actual suspect not in first line up and later available in some cases where participants forgot then only 1/5th chance for actual suspect to be identified?
Why shiuld test a witnesses memory only once?
repeated testing?
repeated testing is problematic in identifying the suspect, then what we can do about it?
Conduct an interview before the line up
Cognitive Interview (Fisher & Geiselman, 1992)
Mental reinstatement of environmental and personal contexts
In-depth reporting
Describing the TBR event in several orders
Reporting the TBR event from different perspectives
Supplementary techniques
Only test the memory once
The initial confidence is a key indicator to the memory
Measure the confidence properly
If the photo is not clear, then don’t test it yet
Cases of misidentification with witnesses
Innocent Project: eyewitness misidentifications contributed to about 70% of more than 375 wrongful convictions later overturned by DNA evidence (Garrett, 2011)
In some cases, witnesses reported high confidence at trial (57%, 92 out of 161 cases)
Initially identified with low confidence (34 cases)
Initially identified a filler, another suspect or no one at all (64 cases)
Reported not having seen the suspect’s face (15 cases)
The high confidence level at trial may be suggested or constructed!
Interm summary- test a witnesses memory of a suepct only once
The courtroom is usually where the last identification takes place
What the same witness did at the first identification is more important for accurate memories
High confidence at the initial identification is a key protection to innocent individuals
Some cases identified that the initial confidence was low, despite the confidence was high at court
