L9 - Seven Sins of Memory Flashcards
What are the seven sins of memory?
- Transience
- Absent-Mindedness
- Blocking
- Misattribution
- Suggestibility
- Bias
- Persistence
What is transience?
The way that memory for facts and events become less accessible over time, especially when not used or needed.
In transience, which type of details fade first?
Specific, then general.
What is the value of transience?
Detailed but irrelevant information will not be remembered, ‘freeing up space’.
What is absent mindedness?
Forgetting due to inattention during encoding or retrieval.
What is prospective memory?
Memory for actions/events in the future (e.g. remembering to book a doctors appointment, etc)
What is event-based prospective memory?
Remembering to perform an intended action when the circumstances are appropriate
What is time-based prospective memory?
Remembering to carry out an intended action at the appropriate time.
What is the value of absent mindedness?
Allows us to maintain an attentional bottleneck - meaning we can focus on the tasks that we need to, without being distracted by irrelevancies.
What is blocking?
The temporary inaccessibility of information. Individual may be aware they know the material but just cannot access it - TOT state, tip of the tongue state.
What is TOT?
Tip of the tongue state
What does the term ‘ugly sisters’ refer to?
Words that are close together semantically or phonologically, but is not the target.
What is the value of blocking?
To prevent a large overflow of information all at once. We don’t want or need all the information we know around a given topic to come to the fore at once.
What is misattribution?
The attribution of a memory to the wrong source, or false recall (memory for something that never happened)
What is source amnesia?
Forgetting the actual, true source of a memory
What is the sleeper effect?
Information gained from an unreliable source slowly loses its connections to that unreliable source, leading the individual to eventually believe that the information is credible.
What are the three types of misattribution?
- Wrong source
- Wrong source and no experience of remembering
- False recall/recognition of something which never happened.
Explain wrong source misattribution.
Subjective and incorrect account of where you gained the information from.
Explain the type of misattribution in which the source is wrong and the individual has no experience of remembering.
Unintended plagiarism - e.g. musicians who (wrongly) believe they have created their own melodies.
Explain false recall in relation to misattribution.
Recognition of something which never happened, e.g. reporting seeing a word in a list, which was never there.
In which 4 situations can more false memories occur?
- Associations exist between words
- Recall ability of actual words is low
- Old age
- Frontal lobe damage
Why can associations between words increase the instance of false memory?
Priming between those words is more likely to occur
Why can low recall ability of words increase instances of false memory?
Participants are more likely to guess in their responses.
Why can frontal lobe damage increase instances of false memory?
Less monitoring occurs.
What are 3 situations in which false memories are less likely to occur?
- pictures are used instead of words
- the critical word has more emotional connotations
- there is medial temporal lobe damage
Why can instances of false memory increase when using pictures instead of words?
There is less emphasis of and influence by the gist.
What is the value of misattribution?
Resources used to remember the information itself, rather than it’s source - which is largely irrelevant in an evolutionary sense (need to remember where the food is, not who gave it.)
What is suggestibility?
Accepting a false suggestion made by others, either directly, through leading questions or false/recovered memories.
People with tendencies to report false events usually…?
- report lapses of attention and have dissociative experiences (daydreaming)
- have high creative imagination scores
What did Kassin & Keichel, (1996) find out and which sin of memory was it linked to?
Linked to suggestibility. Tricked 100& of PPS into wrongly thinking they had touched the alt key when they hadn’t. Did this by using claims from the experimenter and witness that PPS had touched it. 35% of PPS gave detailed descriptions of how it happened.
What is the value of suggestibility?
Fine details are normally forgotten because the gist is more important.
What is bias?
The distortion of memories by current beliefs, values, moods, expectations and schemas at the encoding and retrieval stages.
What is reproductive memory?
Reproducing the stimulus to the letter, e.g. word for word.
What is reconstructive memory?
The combination of material with existing schemas.
What is the value of bias?
Gist - specific details can be warped, gist is held on to.
Storage
What is persistence?
The constant remembrance of an event you wish to forget.
What are 3 examples of persistence?
- PTSD
- Pink elephant
- Suicidal depression
Which brain area is persistence linked to?
Amygdala, as it deals with fear related responses.
What is the value of persistence?
To avoid life threatening situations in the future.
doesn’t explain pink elephant scenario though
