Memory 2 Flashcards
Outline possible reasons why we do not have perfect recall
Schacter's Seven Sins 1. Persistence 2. Transience 3. Absentmindedness 4. Blocking 5. Bias 6. Source Misattribution 7. Suggestibility Memory is reconstructive and not a faithful recording Can be flawed at encoding, consolidation and retrieval
What is the sin of persistence?
Unwanted intrusions of memory e.g. PTSD
What is the sin of transience?
Forgetting may result from insufficient consolidation e.g. sleep deprivation
What is the sin of absentmindedness?
Lack of attention during encoding
E.g. parking your car and forgetting where you parked it
OR dual-attention tasks
Failures in prospective memory are also classed under the sin of absentmindedness.
What is the sin of blocking?
An error of retrieval or lack of associations in semantic memory e.g. names
“There are 3 things to remember and the 3rd one escapes me right now”
James (2004) people make name errors more often than occupation errors due to spreading activation
What is the sin of bias?
Expectation can affect how a memory is perceived
Bartlett (1932) War of Ghosts study
PPs asked to remember and recall Native American canoe story, the details changed perhaps because of cultural differences as it didn’t fit in with their expectations.
What is the sin of source misattribution
DRM paradigm: combining a memory with another memory and thinking it comes from one place when it comes from another.
Been produced in a lab environment, a list of words (e.g. nap, bed, night, snore) all related to a main theme (sleep) but the theme isn’t present but PPs still report it (spreading activation)
What is the sin of suggestibility?
Malleable memories (e.g. Loftus and Palmer car crash), flashbulb memories can change over time.
What is an example of a study on false memory?
Loftus and Pickerell (1995)
PPs given information about 4 events
3 events were true, 1 was false and described how the PP got lost in a shopping centre as a child
Asked to write details about these events and provide clarity of the memory
Interviewed 2 weeks later and then again 4 weeks late
29% ‘remembered’ the false event, more detail recalled for real events.
What are some methods used to test recall of episodic memory?
DRM and misinformation paradigms
List recall
Story recall
Outline fuzzy trace theory
When themed lists are presented for study in the DRM procedure, a gist for the list is created and stored in memory
The gist matches the theme items closely because the lists were created to correspond to that theme item
When items are retrieved in a later memory test, the gist for the list is easily available, whereas the details of specific items have been lost.
Theme items are falsely remembered as the gist for the list.
Outline evidence for false memories based on schema
Brewer and Treyens (1981) PPs asked to wait in the experimenter’s office while the experimenter checked that the last subject had finished.
PP then taken into another room and asked to describe the office they waited in, and their schema for a university office likely contributed to that accurate recall but also falsely recalled objects that were not in the office - consistent with a schema of a university office.
What is the misinformation effect?
A memory result where subjects have false memories for an event based on suggestive information provided by others.
Such as in the Loftus and Palmer study, where PPs were asked if they had seen any broken glass in the car crash video, which is a suggestive question and lead people to falsely report seeing broken glass when none was present.
How can DRM/false memories affect everyday life?
Some of the same processes that create false memories in the DRM procedure are suggested as mechanisms of memory errors in eyewitnesses.
Lindsay (1990) source misattributions occur for post-event misinformation. PPs viewed pictures of a man stealing items from an office, narrated in a female voice
They then heard a post-event description of the crime that contained some incorrect information, but half the PPs heard this in the same female voice, making it difficult to discriminate between the two descriptions.
Those who heard the female voice were more likely to be influenced by the incorrect post-event information.
What is the debate that DRM errors are unrelated to the misinformation effect?
The extent to which the DRM effect generalises to other kinds of memory error has not been successfully established.
Ost et al. (2016) concluded that DRM ‘false memories’ and misinformation effect ‘false memories’ are not equivalent.
