Lecture 10 - False Memory and Memory Errors

Question 1

What evidence is there does NOT support decay theory?

Answer 1

AB-AC and AB-CD tasks - in AB-AC tasks memory is worse compared to AB-CD tasks, as there are more associations between A. Decay theory would not predict this.
And when new categories and introduced in learning tasks

Question 2

What percentage of people think that memory works like a video camera?

Answer 2

2/3 of people believe this.
But…this does not seem to be the case.
This word was done by Simons and Chabris (2011).

Question 3

What are memory intrusion errors?

Answer 3

Memory intrusion errors refer to when we recall information that pertains to when we recall information associated with a theme of a memory, but which was not originally present in the original memory.
Over time these memory intrusions can lead to a us building up false memories or inaccurate memories.
An in-lab experiment of this is in an AB-AC task - a memory intrusion error here would be, when asked about the associate of C to recall B. C is associated with A and A is associated with B and therefore we may recall B in response to C.
A real-life example would be having a memory of your 12th birthday and recalling that it was at your favourite park, but it in fact wasn’t. Perhaps you had other birthdays at the park and so that park is associated with birthday parties, so when you think of your 12th birthday that was actually at a different park, you
recall the wrong park.
These memory intrusions are more common in AB-AC tasks than in AB-CD tasks.

Question 4

What was one of the main findings from Drewnsoki and Murdock (1980) re memory intrusion errors and lists preceding the memory task?

Question 5

What are IMPLICIT ASSOCIATIVE RESPONSES?

Question 6

What is the DRM paradigm?

Question 7

What is a critical lure in regards to false memories?

Question 8

Does perceptual false memory occur as well as semantic false memories?

Question 9

When participants are warned about the potentiality of false memories did false memories still occur?

Question 10

DRM tasks tend to have around 9 words. What happens when there are fewer words?

Question 11

Why do false memories occur?

Question 12

What are SOURCE MONITORY errors?

Question 13

What is FUZZY TRACE theory?

Question 14

Why doesn’t forewarning reduce false memory?

Question 15

Why does increases in number of associated increase false memories?

Question 16

Why do false memories still occur even if they are not generated at study?

Question 17

What were some of the reasons people had issues with theories that were derived from laboratory-based research tasks?

Question 18

What is RECONSTRUCTIVE MEMORY?

Question 19

What was the story that Bartlett used to study memory and recall?

Question 20

What were some of the findings from the how people remembered The War of Ghosts story?

Question 21

Memory isn’t a recording we view, instead…

Answer 21

We actively reconstruct an event/memory every time we remember.

Question 22

What were the findings from the study done by Kitsch et al. (1990) on reconstructive memory?

Question 23

Do we remember meaning, text or surface better after hearing or reading a text?

Question 24

What happens to memory when misleading questions are asked?

Question 25

What was the study done by Loftus & Palmer (1974) and what did they find?

Question 26

How does the timing or context of misinformation impact memory?

Question 27

Loftus and Pickerell (1995) did a study on false childhood memories. What did they find?

Question 28

What was the Hot Air Balloon study done by Wade et al. (2002) and what did they find?

Question 29

What are some of the real-world implications of the misinformation effect on false memories?

Question 30

What was the study done by Wells and Bradfield (1998) on witness identification and post-identification feedback?

Question 31

What are FLASHBULB memories?

Answer 31

Flashbulb memories are called this because of the old cameras that had a flashbulb.

Question 32

Are Flashbulb memories immune to false memories/reconstructive memories?

Question 33

What was the study done by Neisser and Harsch (1973) that looked at memory after the Challenger Explosion? Did they find that flashbuld memories were immune to false reconstruction?

Question 34

Have there been replication studies of the Neisser and Harsh study?

Question 35

If Flashbulb memories are not immune to reconstruction across time, what is different about them compared to standard memories?

Question 36

What are some of the explanations for why flashbulb memories are inaccurate?

Question 37

What happens in memory tasks when a new category type is introduced and what does this suggest about decay theory?

Answer 37

In a memory-based task, such as remembering a list of written words, if the list continues but changes from written to audio words there is an increase in performance in memory for the start of the new category of words. Decay theory cannot explain this.

Question 38

What is the law of recency?

Answer 38

The law of recency finds that more recently presented information is remembered better than middle information.

Question 39

Are memory intrusions more common in AB-BC paired associate recall tests or AB-AC paired associate recall tasks?

Answer 39

AB-AC tasks.

Question 40

What causes memory intrusions?

Answer 40

Common cues and information that is studied/experienced close together in time.

Question 41

When participants study multiple lists in a row, what is a common occurrence is seen regarding the stimuli they remember?
Hint: when multiple recall lists are learned and tested.

Answer 41

Participants tend to recall words/stimuli from prior lists they have recently studied.
So, even if there is no common cue (although you could say that the task itself is a common cue), because the lists have been studied so close together in time we get confused about which words/items belong to which list.

Question 42

Underwood (1965) found that participants remember words they had not studied. These words were…with the words on the list of studied words. Underwood said this happened due to … … …?

Answer 42

Associated.
Implicit associated responses.
I.e. if roar, jungle, mane are presented on list, subjects may say they saw lion, even though it was not present, due to its association with the list words.

Question 43

Are children more susceptible to false memories created by imagination?

Answer 43

Yes. If children are told to imagine an event, they are more likely to think that event actually happened.

Question 44

What is the DRM paradigm?

Answer 44

DRM stands for Deese-Rodiger-McDermott.
It refers to the most popular way of studying false memory in the lab.
It was originally used by Deese in 1959 and then later revised in 1995 by Rodiger and McDermott, hence the name,
It involves having a critical lure (which is word that is not presented, but which the presented words are associated with) and then generating a list of word associates from this.
The subjects then study the list of word associates and upon recall and recognition we look for the presenece of the critical lure.
If participants recall or say they recognise the critical lure as a word they have seen then we can see the presense of a false memory.
Subjects tend to recall and recognise critical lures with high confidence.

Question 45

Rodiger and McDermott (1995) found that sematically similar critical lures are recalled and recognised with high confidence, but what about PERCEPTUALLY similar words? Who did a study looking at this and what did they find?

Answer 45

Sommers and Lewis (1999) looking at words that are perceptually associated, such as “buff, bet, put”, where the critical lure is “but”.
What they found was that recall and recognition of the critical lures, where the studied associates were perceptually similar, was also done with high levels of confidence.

Question 46

Do we see the same results of critical lure recall and recognition in sematic and perceptual false memory ?

Answer 46

Yes.

Question 47

What happens when subjects are told that the lists were designed to induce false memory?

Answer 47

Gallo, Roberts, and Seamon (1997) looked at this and found that whilst false memories of the critical lure were reduced, they were not eliminated, suggesting that like Underwood originally suggested, these associations are happening implicitly, below conscious awareness.

Question 48

What is the typical number of words used in DRM lists?

Answer 48

Around 8-9 words associated with the critical lure are generally used.

Question 49

What happens when the number of studied associates in a DRM task increases?

Answer 49

As the number of studied associates increases, the rate of false recognition or recall of the critical lure (false memory of the critical lure) increases.

Question 50

When we forget who told us what, this is an example of what kind of memory error?

Answer 50

This is an example of a SOURCE MONITORING ERROR.

Question 51

What is the SOURCE MONITORING error and how does this relate to false memory generation?

Answer 51

One of the reasons we have create false memories about critical lures is due to this idea that when we read associated words, such as house, floor, roof, we may be reminded of “wall” even though we haven’t read it. Then when we go to recall or recognise the critical lure “Wall” we think we saw it, but we didn’t, we just “saw it” in our mind, but we forget that. In other words we weren’t able to remember a real event over an imagined one.

Question 52

One way to study whether being reminded of a word is what leads to critical lure false memory is to have subjects rehearse out loud the words they are learning. If they are reminded of a critical lure the idea is that they will rehearse this critical lure outloud. We can then measure whether upon recall and recognition whether they false remember the critical lure and whether is is associated with whether they rehearsed the critical lure during study.
Seamsons et al (2002) did just this. What did they find?

Answer 52

They found that even when subjects did not rehearse out loud the critical lure they still recalled and recognised the critical lure to a significant extent.

Question 53

What is “fuzzy trace theory” and how does it relate to false memory generation?

Answer 53

Fuzzy trace theory was first proposed by Brainerd and Reyna (2002) and refers to this idea that when we are having an experience, such as learning a group of words we create both verbatim and gist traces. Verbatim traces are the actual experience, with some gaps and gist traces refer to the “general idea” of what we experienced. In regards to studying a list of words, if they are critical lure associates then we generate a gist of what the words were related to such as royalty, and then at recall/recognition we then think of the gist and if the critical lure fits within this gist we may feel that we have seen it before - i.e we have a false memory of it.

Question 54

According to gist theory or fuzzy trace theory, why are critical lures still falsely recognised or recalled even if they haven’t been rehearsed at study?

Answer 54

This is because the “gist” is generated at recall/recognition and not at encoding/studying.

Question 55

What is ACTIVATION MONITORY THEORY and how does it relate to false memory generation?

Answer 55

Activation Monitoring Theory refers to this idea that when we are say studying a list of words those words are activated in our memory network and associated words are also activated, perhaps not to the same extent, but to some degree.
So, when we go to recall or recognise these words we search in our mind for the acitvated words in our memory network, which will not only be the words we saw, but also potentially associated words with the studied words.

Question 56

What are Global Similarity accounts of FALSE memory generation?

Answer 56

These accounts are computational models that suggest that when we are engaging in recognition we compare the probe/word presented to us to our whole memory of the studied words. The more similar the current word/probe is to the memory of the studied words the more likely we are to endorse that probe.
In other words false memories are generated involuntarily due to similarity between memories and cues.

Question 57

What did Bartlett (1932) find occurred to peoples’ memory of The War of Ghosts the more time elapsed?

Answer 57

Bartlett found that more memory errors occurred as more time past from when the participants heard the story of The War of Ghosts.

Question 58

What theory of memory emerged from Bartlett’s word on memory regarding The War of Ghosts story in 1932?

Answer 58

The Reconstructive View/Theory of memory arose from Bartlett’s work. This view/theory of memory refers to this idea that we do not have a video recording of what happens in our lives, instead we recreated/reconstruct memories each time we recall them.

Question 59

What did Bartlett find the more time passed between when his English students had heard the War of Ghosts story and we he asked them to retell it?

Answer 59

He found that not only were there more errors with time, but also that there were INTRUSIONS of meaning that reflected cultural values from the students’ culture that were not present in the Native American story.

Question 60

Do we remember the meaning or events/stories better than the exact details, such as sentence structure and text?

Answer 60

Yes.

Question 61

Kintsch (1990) did seminal work on the rate of forgetting for different components of sentences/stories. What was this?

Answer 61

Kintsch found that memory of the meaning of stories did not decay very quickly, whereas the memory for sentence structure and the text/words used decreased rapidly.

Question 62

“What you get out of memory is the questions you ask.”
In 1974 Loftus and Palmer did an experiment looking at false memory and perception. What did they find?

Answer 62

Subjects observed a car accident where one car hit another.
One group was asked, “How fast was the car going when it hit the other car?”
One group was asked, “How fast was the car going when it smashed the other car?”
The group that was asked the latter reported that the car was going faster than the other group.
The second group also reported that they had seen things that were in fact not presented such as “smashed glass”.

Question 63

How does the timing or context of misinformation impact memory?

Answer 63

In a study done by Lindsay (1990) they found that misinformation presented by the same narrator of an event right after the narration impacted people’s memory of the event more than when a different narrator gave misinformation about the event two days later.

Question 64

In studies that looked at false memories of childhood events that didn’t actually occur, what did Loftus and Pickerell (1995) and Wade et al. (2002) find?

Answer 64

Lostus and Pickerell found false memories of subjects being lost in a mall when they were prompted to describe that event even though it had not occurred.
Wade et al. found that subjects would describe being in a hot air balloon when they had never been in one. In this study the researchers both photoshopped subjects into a hot airballoon and also got family to be in on the study.

Question 65

When police give eyewitnesses positive feedback after they have picked a suspect, what does this do to the eyewitness’ confidence in their choice?

Answer 65

The positive feedback makes them more confident in their choice.

Question 66

What are flashbulb memories?

Answer 66

Flashbulb memories refer to memories of highly emotional and intense events, such as the election of Donald Trump, the invasion of Gaza, hearing about the death of loved one.
People tend to remember more details about these events than other memories, such as where they were, who was there, what they did etc.

Question 67

Brown and Kullik (1977) proposed the idea of “flashbulb” memories and said that these memories are more resistant to decay than other memories due to their emotional salience.
What was a limitation of their work and who presented more insight into the nature of flashbulb memories?

Answer 67

One major limitation of Brown and Kullik’s work was that there was verification that the memories were indeed more accurate. Perhaps there was just more confidence in the recollection the event.
Neisser and Harsch (1973) did a longidudinal study of peoples’ reports of The Challenger explosion. They found that peoples’ reports changed significantly the more time elapsed, to the point that some people couldn’t even recognise their original reports.

Question 68

Talarico and Rubin (2003) did a study looking at regular memories and flashbulb memories. They looked at these memories using three measures: 1) the accuracy, 2) the vividness, 3) the confidence of the memory.
What did they find?

Answer 68

They found that the accuracy of flashbulb memories followed a similar pattern of decay as regular memories.
However, the vividness and the confidence in which these flashbulb memories were recalled was higher and steadier across time compared to regular memories.
So, what is unique about flashbulb memories could be that they have more enduring emotional salience.

Question 69

What were/are the “memory wars”?

Answer 69

The memory wars refer to the debate between whether we repress certain memories by our subconscious and that these memories can the be recovered through therapeutic work or certain cues.
Sigmund Freud was one of the first to suggest this idea of the subconscious repressing certain memories and a lot of the psychoanalytic work is based on providing a space to allow these memories come to light.
There was push back from memory/cognitive psychologists, such as Beth Loftus, saying that we do not have any evidence for this being the case and when people do recover memories it is because there is an appropriate cue provided that allowed them to recall the memory. One could argue that this is also what is happening in therapy.
Anyway, this is still an ongoing discussion and apparently there is not much evidence for the repression of memories in the way we have thought about it thus far, however, I don’t find the evidence against it very compelling, not least because you cannot explore these things in an ethical way and therefore the studies done often focus on lab-based tasks.

Question 70

What have been some of the arguments made around why we do not suppress traumatic memories?

Answer 70

Some people remember traumatic memories to a high degree of accuracy and vividness and in fact they are a plague on their mind and they wish they could forget them (have you ever heard of people working differently?!!!)
Some therapists use “Exercises” to aid in clients remembering traumatic events and this potentially works like the “hot air balloon” studies of false childhood memories.

Question 71

In 2001 Schooler found what about recovered traumatic memories?

Answer 71

Schooler found that traumatic memories of abuse could be recalled when there was an appropriate cue, such as seeing sexual assault in a film, or hearing someone share their own traumatic experience.
This study was very compelling because there was independent evidence that the abuse had occurred.

Question 72

Is there evidence that traumatic memories can be blocked by the unconscious mind?

Answer 72

No. Not at this stage. But literally, how would you study this ???!!!!

Question 73

Even though children may not block memories of abuse, why do adults still have experiences of realisation of the abuse?

Answer 73

Children do not have the language to label the abuse at the time, such as sexual abuse or kidnapping. It may have been traumatic, painful or uncomfortable for them, but they did not know that it was wrong or that it was abuse. Only once they are told, sometimes, do adults re-categorise memories as abuse, which can be followed by feelings of re-experiencing or understanding that event.

Question 74

Does Elizabeth Loftus think we can trust our memory?

Answer 74

Simply put, no.
Has been used to undermine eyewitness accounts - was employed to defend Harvey Weinstein.

Question 75

Mikes et al. (2011) did research on memory accuracy and the confidence of memory recall. What were the main findings and what does this mean about the question of whether we can trust our memory?

Answer 75

Mikes et al. found that memories that were recalled and endorsed with a high level of confidence are often accurate.
Authors suggest that this is evidence for the idea that when we are confident about a memory it is more likely to be accurate. I can see some issues here….

Question 76

Diamond, Armson and Levine (2020) did study on memory looking at memory decline across time.
What was this study and what were the main findings?

Answer 76

The subjects were taken on a tour a university campus and then their memory for specific details was tested across time.
What they found was that the frequency of recalled details declined with time, however, the accuracy of the recalled details remained very high.
This evidence endorses the idea that our memory can be quite accurate.

Question 77

If there is evidence that our memory for mundane details can be quite high, such as in the Diamond et al. study, why are flashbulb memories so inaccurate?

Answer 77

The high inaccuracy of flashbulb memories may come from the fact that we often think or verbally repeat these stories again and again. Each time we think of the event or retell it we are reconstructing it each time and therefore it is likely to change with time.
Mundane memories, such as the colour of a building we passed this morning, are less likely to accumulate false memory errors or source monitoring errors as we do not think about them much or retell our experience of them and so when we do go to recall these details they are more likely to be accurate.

Question 78

When are eyewitness testamonies most accurate?

Answer 78

1. When confidence of a memory is recorded at the initial identification (i.e. not after they have received feedback from authorities, such as police)
2. When witnesses are presented with the suspects BEFORE they are given an account of what happened or before they are asked to tell what happened.
3. When police officers do not provide feedback about their identification/s.
   If any of these conditions are violated, then the accuracy/confidence of the eyewitness’ memory is compromised.