Lecture 24 - (Extra)ordinary Memory

Question 1

Bob is seeing a therapist for depression. The therapist believes that
Bob’s depression may be due to some unresolved issues in childhood. During a session, Bob suddenly remembers being lost at a
carnival as a child and being terrified that he would never see his family again. The therapist has no way of verifying this story, but believes him.

Based only on the above information, what is the most specific
description of Bob’s memory?

Answer 1

Recovered memory

Question 2

Recovered memories

Answer 2

are memories an adult uncovers of a traumatic childhood event.

[Note: extremely controversial.]

are these true? should we doubt?
=> they can be true or false memories that have been induced

Question 3

Can false memories happen with detailed memories from childhood?

Wade et al. (2002)
examined this with a post-event misinformation paradigm.

trying to induce a false memory

Answer 3

• Doctored photos were presented to adults,
showing them doing something as a child
that never happened.

• Participants were asked to recall details about the event.
• With repeated presentations, about half of the participants would recall additional details (false memories) not seen in the (fake) photos.

• This is relevant to the recovered memory
debate because some therapists have been
accused (and convicted) of implanting memories of abuse.

Question 4

False memories can be damaging to others, as in eyewitness testimony or some recovered memories.

However, people’s false
memories can also be damaging to themselves.

Answer 4

false confessions

confession contamination: non-public facts are disclosed to a person during interrogation

a lot of stress can affect the encoding of memory and the recall

Question 5

In the case of a false confession, the suspect may actually believe
(for a time) that they committed the crime. Assuming they have
formed a false memory for the events, which of the following is most
likely the cause?

Answer 5

Post-identification feedback effect:
the police are giving encouragement

misinformation effect:
the police gave the suspect info that only they knew and that only the person that committed the crime would know: feeding info that’s privileged, if that’s going into a story you’re telling how else would you know it unless you committed the crime?

source monitoring effect too:
competing memories and you’re not sure which one to choose
=> source monitoring error because you’re recalling the wrong one

Question 6

Why would anyone admit to a horrific crime they hadn’t committed?

Answer 6

• High emotional stress of interrogation and lack of sleep makes some people say anything to make it stop (especially if they’re highly suggestible).
• Social pressure, including feedback and misinformation, can make people doubt what they believe.

• Just as some people believe traumatic recovered memories are
repressed, you might think it possible that you repressed the memory of having done something terrible.

Question 7

It has been shown that people will sometimes
confess to actions they haven’t committed. This
can be due to misinformation or suggestion (feedback).

Nash and Wade (2009)

Answer 7

• took videos of people
playing a computer game. When they received a
green check, they took money from the “bank.” If
they received a red cross, they had to return money.

• After playing the game, they were shown a
doctored video which made it look like they
cheated.

• While some subjects were surprised by the
evidence, they all admitted to cheating.

• A different group was told the video existed, but it wasn’t shown. 73% admitted to cheating.

=> You’re being told by someone of authority that you cheated, so there is a confession => people very susceptible to social pressure => memory is a reconstruction, you’re constantly putting things back together

Question 8

Recovered memories

It is impossible to use theory and laboratory experiments to resolve an issue like this (they lack the ecological validity);
however, it may help us evaluate possibilities.

Answer 8

• Due to the highly emotional nature of abuse, you would expect accuracy for detail to decline while confidence remains high.

• If people are more ‘suggestible’, they are more prone to false
memories.

• Because feedback/ suggestion can affect recall, careful consideration needs to be given to the therapeutic approach.

In the end, corroborating evidence (not memories) likely will play a part in prosecutions.

Question 9

Everyday memory failure…

“Why is my memory for names and dates so bad?”

Answer 9

• Compared to something like a face, a name is an impoverished (simple, factual, brief) stimulus. Unless is it rare (“Oprah”), it won’t stand out.
• Common names (“Steve”) will have a lot of proactive interference from other sources (source monitoring issues).
• It is typically a failure of attention (initial encoding issue). We don’t encode the information during a brief encounter and there is no opportunity to rehearse it.
• proper name anomia.

Question 10

Your memory for names is good when you have an

Answer 10

emotional connection to the source.

Question 11

Some tips for remembering names:

Answer 11

• Pay very close attention to a person’s name when first introduced.
• Elaborate the encoding with some specific detail of the person’s appearance or personal background.
• Repeat/rehearse the name immediately (keep alive in working memory).
• Ask them to repeat the name. This will give you an additional auditory cue.
• Imagine the name printed on their forehead. Visual associations help encode the memory (occipital cortex is pretty big). (What is “rabbit” in Spanish?)

Question 12

So far, we’ve heard how memories for emotional events may be worse (e.g. eyewitness testimony when a gun is fired), or
simply average (flashbulb memory). 

Can emotion ever help memory?

Answer 12

• We saw earlier that state-dependent learning gives an advantage during reconstruction if the internal state at recall matches the internal state at encoding.
• Flashbulb memories are often wrong about details, but the basic structure of the episodic memory seems strongly encoded.
• How else might emotion affect memory?

Question 13

proper name anomia

Answer 13

This is a type of aphasia in which you can’t produce (declarative memory) specific types of info.

family, long-term friends, etc…

Question 14

How else might emotion affect memory?

Cahill et al (1995) did a series of studies which examined the role of emotion during encoding on later recall of detail.

Answer 14

• Subjects were told a story (with pictures) about a boy going to the hospital.

• The boy’s trip to the hospital was either (1) as part of a disaster drill (neutral control) or (2) following a traumatic
accident (emotional stimulus).

• Both stories had the same beginning and ending, but the story
diverges in the middle (either drill or accident).

• Participants read the stories and viewed the pictures. Two weeks later, they are shown the pictures and asked to supply the narrative.

Question 15

Emotional memories
Cahill et al (1995) pictures and narrative.

same pictures different narrative

Results

Answer 15

same pictures different narrative

Those who had heard the emotional narrative had superior memory for
the middle (facts: the accident, what happened to the boy, etc..). 

• Interestingly, the detail at the beginning and the end were not remembered as
well.

• Cahill and colleagues suggested that the
emotional nature of the events and only those events lead to deeper encoding of the narrative.

• This could be similar to the inaccuracies of flashbulb memories. We tend to forget (make source monitoring errors) when the details are less important.
=> the emotional nature of the stimuli improves the memory only for the really charged details