LTM In Practice Flashcards
Autobiographical memory (AM)
Memory about ourselves (Episodic and semantic memories)
Why is autobiographical memory hard to study?
What are the ways of studying AM?
Hard to verify since it relies on self-report
Measure memory for public events - But have to wait until it occurs
Confirm w/ family - But family members’ reports may also not be accurate
Diary studies - Causes elaborative rehearsal since person has to write events
What are the three functions that memory can play?
Directive: To guide current actions
Social: To allow people w/ shared exp to bond
Self-representation: Analyzing what you’ve done in the pst can help determine what kind if relationships you engage in to maintain a stable identity in the future
Infantile amnesia
Can’t recall memories before age of 2
Earliest memories are disjointed fragments from 2-4 years old, usually related to major life events or transitions
Why is infantile amnesia difficult to investigate?
Early memories are impossible to verify
Memories may be from secondary source (memory of early event retold by parents)
Participants have trouble dating the memory
Why is the theory about neurological maturation causing infantile amnesia coming back in favour?
Originally proposed that development of hippocampus and frontal lobes are required for AM
but early memories occur before they fully mature
Evidence for the theory that language development is required for autobiographical memories
Simcock and Hayne
Women have earlier offset of infantile amnesia (women develop linguistic abilities faster)
Ppl w/ strong linguistic abilities at 3 have more early memories
Children whose mothers use elaborate reminiscence style (reviewing day) report earlier memories
Memories encoded in nonverbal form stay that way
2-4 year olds watches shrinking machine and tested vocab for items that shrunk. Later, they only remembered objects that were in their vocab at the time
Reminiscence bump
Memories of life events tend to peak in adolescence/early adulthood
Usually memories that are positive or a time when person is undergoing a lot of change
Reminiscence bump hypotheses:
Cognitive
Self-image
Maturational account
Cultural life script
Cognitive: Memories occur in periods of rapid change followed by stability
- Elaborate and distinct cues
Self-image: Formation of personal identity strengthens memories
- Self-reference effect
Maturational: Cognitive processes are at their max during that time
- Helps to attract mate
Cultural: Improved memory for positive culturally shared exp
- Causes more elaborative rehearsal
Flashbulb memories
Memory for highly public emotionally charged events
Usually causes strong confidence in memory of details despite high forgetting over time
- Seen in Talarico and Rubin’s 9/11 study
Narrative rehearsal hypothesis (flashbulb memories)
Flashbulb memories occur because:
1) They’re distinctive
2) We retell/rehearse them
3) They’re important and can change an aspect of our lives
4) Inconsistencies in memory tend to match people’s schemas
Bartlett’s repeated reproduction technique
Retrieval is constructive (anything that happens while pulling up a memory can be encoded into the memory)
Participants drew the same drawing every time but could only see their last drawing. They use schematic memory (knowledge they already have) to determine what the object they drew is
Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) procedure/paradigm
Activation monitoring theory
Source monitoring error
Semantically related list of words lead participants to falsely remember non-presented semantically related words
Theory proposes that we activate a schema and then falsely attribute the source to episodic memory
- Source monitoring error: Forgetting that a memory came from someone/where else
Misinformation effect
Loftus, Miller, Burns + other studies
If told misleading info, ppl tend to recall what they were told rather than the actual event
Loftus and other studies showed:
- More ppl showed effect when question talked about yield sign (misinformation) than stop sign
- Words used (hit, smashed) to describe car crash can change person’s memory
- Shopping mall study; ppl couldn’t tell which of the 4 childhood memories was a fake
Why are false memories a problem for eye-witness testimony?
Attention and memory
- Weapons focus causes change blindness
- Mainly easily accessible memories recalled
Misinformation effect
- Asking question about suspect may cause person to think who they saw matched description
Source monitoring error
- Suspect in mind might actually just be bystander
Confirmation bias and confidence
