Lecture 6 Recognition Memory Flashcards
Examples of how memory is only as good as details that we encode?
- distance of faces
- distraction impairs encoding - doesn’t have to happen at the same time of encoding
- weapon focus
- distinctive faces attract more attention and are remembered better
How has distraction been shown to impair encoding
People were given some numbers to memorise whilst listening to a story - stories were meaningless poems - during the story they were read out numbers that they were meant to recall.
They could recall the numbers immediately, but then dropped off - created a forgetting curve
What’s weapon focus
Refers to witness’s focus on a weapon in the scene…. Leaves less attention available for identifying the perpetrator
Loftus et al: depicted people moving through order line at taco place and second person in line either gave cashier cheque or pulled a gun.
What’s a schema
A schema is a concept or set of ideas for representing some aspect of the world.
They influence now we interpret new informant and influence what we pay attention to, what we learn and how we represent that Knowledge
Can lead to distortions in memory - info that doesn’t fit schema are often reinterpreted or distorted to fit schema
Evidence of constructive memory?
Shown two circles joint by a straight line
If they were told the stimulus was glasses, they curved the line
If told Dumbbells, they drew double lines.
Drawing distorted to fit schema and existing memory to fit label….
Sir Frederick Bartletts experiment?
Presented British participants with a Native American folk tale called the war of the ghosts.
Repeated reproduction.
- after 20 hours, 30 months and 6.5 years
General outline stays constant, forms and items become stereotyped, meanings of symbols added, details are omitted or simplified
Details of story decay, left with schema
How can memory be manipulated by others?
Through questions which suggest specific expectations
Lotus and palmer:
People shown a pic of a traffic accident
Then asked to make an estimate of how fast car was going, in question, used the words hit, smashed, collided, bumped or contacted.
Then asked if they saw any broken glass
More likely to say broken glass was there I’d the word smash was used over the word hit.
Before line ups, if told that appearance may have changed - false alarms double
Example of false memories?
Photoshopped a picture of participant into air balloon
Some people made a story up to fill in the gaps for what they didn’t remember
Providing a misleading cue affects how schema is retrieved and altered to explain it
Cues are data, schema is hypothesis, which admits to explain cue
How does misinformation affect memory?
Warehouse fire experiment - Johnson and seifert
- continued influence effect - persistent reliance on misinformation even when it’s been retracted
Delayed and immediate retraction conditions
When asked about the cause of the fire, people were more likely to allude to or directly refer to negligence
However, this only happened when it was said the volatile materials were inside their house, not across the road - needed to fit into causal schema
In terms of misinformation, when is a correction more effective?
When the correction contains an alternative causal story
Eg: for warehouse fire experiment
No volatile materials were found, but petrol was soaked in rags (arson)
Important bc mock jurors continue to rely on incorrect evidence even when they say they’ve followed instructions not to
Propaganda as well
WMDs and Iraq?
Examined the extent to which people believed retracted statements about Iraq …
Found that Americans were more likely to believe retracted statements because they still believed it was the initial cause of the way.
Skepticism?
Can shield people from misinformation if they have a causal alternative
Eg Germany - they don’t think Destryoying WMD is why US invaded Iraq
Evidence that context affects memory?
Divers were told to learn lists of words on
Dry land
Or underwater
Lists were recalled better in the environment they were learnt
How was the HMAS found
Used zipf’s law
Plotted the suggested places, which was linear and Similar to the “war of the ghosts” data
Therefore consistent with the assumption that survivors were not lying
Where are the bottlenecks of memory?
Attentional bottleneck - we can’t take in everything at once, our sensory systems are limited. But also, we focus on things. Goal directed.
Rehearsal bottleneck - 7 + or - 2
Retrieval bottleneck - we can only rehearse certain things we attend to, through cues
