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Memory Errors Flashcards

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1
Q

Memory capabilities

A
  • Memory does not operate like a DVD/ video recorder
  • Memory is reconstructive
  • We fill in the gaps
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2
Q

Eyewitness Errors

A
  • are the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions worldwide
  • 75% of convictions that have been overturned through DNA testing, even cases with multiple eyewitnesses
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3
Q

7 sins of Memory

A
  1. Transience
  2. Absent-mindedness
  3. Blocking
  4. Misattribution**
  5. Suggestibility**
  6. Bias**
  7. Persistence
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4
Q

DRM Paradigm

A
  • Used to study false memories in humans
  • Activation- Monitoring Theory (why the paradigm works?)
  • Ex: Heard a list of words associated with sleep & then listed the word sleep during recall (false memory)
    1. Spreading activation (come up with word)
    2. Source Monitoring (where you got the information from)
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5
Q

DRM Paradigm - False memories affected by ..

A
  • Stereotypes

- cognitive biases or Individual Differences

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6
Q

Gender Stereotypes, Lenton, Blair, & Hastie (2001)

A
  • If primed are the participants going to falsely remember more traits or jobs.
  • Given traits (feminine or masculine trait)
  • Masculine or femenine jobs list
  • If primed more likely to remember false related jobs of traits exposed to
  • People made stereotype consistent errors
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7
Q

Hostile Attribution Bias

A
  • Why are some people so quick to anger? Are people that are put into an angry state have more false memories?
  • Prime to put group in state of anger or non anger
  • List of words
  • Primed subjects with list with ambiguous list (can be categorized to kitchen or violent words)
  • aggressive & primed = more likely to develop violent false memories
  • Not violent & not primed = did not at all remember lured words
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8
Q

PTSD, Brennen & Colleges

A
  • war vs. non-war list
  • how many words did participants come up with that were not on the list
  • PTSD Group more likely to develop “war related” false memories
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9
Q

What can influence memory errors?

A
  • peoples pre-existing stereotypes & cognitive biases (due to personality characteristics or clinical diagnosis)
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10
Q

Post event information

A
  • any information received after an event that effects how we remember an event
  • Fill a gap
  • Supplement
  • Transform
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11
Q

Post event info - Fill a gap

A

add a correct detail

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12
Q

Post event info - Supplement

A
  • reenforce correct detail

- increase confidence

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13
Q

Post event info - Transform

A
  • change your memory
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14
Q

Eyewitness memory, Loftus & Palmer (1974)

A
  • participants watched serious of slides depicting a car crash
  • asked questions about it
  • Changing nature of the word changed estimate speed (mph)
  • asked a leading question - did you see the broken glass at the scene?
  • Smashed + higher MPH = said they saw glass
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15
Q

Misinformation effect

A

• misleading information presented after a person witnesses an event can change how the person describes the event later.
1. Event occurs
2. Post-Event Information (to change/alter memory), or misleading post info
3. Test: Force choice (Forced to choose what you saw in the movie or read about)
• PERFORMANCE IS WORST WHEN PEOPLE GET MISLEADING INFORMATION
• CONTROL BAR ALWAYS HIGHER THAN THE MISLEAD BAR TO SHOW MISINFORMATION EFFECT
• IF ARROWS OVERLAP = NO MISINFORMATION EFFECT

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16
Q

How is the misinformation effect amplified?

A

Susceptibility increases with

  1. Authority
  2. Stress, fear
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17
Q

Discrepancy detection

A

The ability to notice difference btwn. what was seen & what was told that was seen

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18
Q

What can increase the likelihood of discrepancy detection?

A
  • Discrepancy detection increases (up) , the less likely the misinformation effect will occur (down)
  • Warning to pay attention to detail
  • When attention is drawn to an interesting stimuli
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19
Q

Who is susceptible to the misinformation effect?

A 
• Coginitive abilities (lower/worse)
1. Lower intelligence
2. Lesser perceptual abilities
3. Lower working memory
4. Worse performance on face regcognition
• Personality characteristics
1. High in cooperativeness
2. Reward dependence
3. Self-directiveness
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20
Q

Who is less susceptible to the misinformation effect?

A

People with..

Lower fear of negative evaluation & harm avoidance

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21
Q

Social influences (alcohol study); Assefi & Garry (2002)

A
  • 1/2 told placebo
  • 1/2 told alcohol
  • created ambiance
  • subjects that were told alcohol said it affected cognitive abilities more than the tonic water group (the told placebo group)
  • subjects that believed that they were given alcohol more susceptible to the misinformation effect
  • PERFORMANCE IS WORST WHEN GETTING MISLEADING INFORMATION
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22
Q

What are the pro’s of co-witness discussion?

A
  • prompt witness to recall forgotten details
  • Reinforce memory (rehearsal)
  • Aid recovery from trauma
  • more complete overall picture of event
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23
Q

What are the cons of co-witness discussion?

A
  • Can contaminate independent recollection
  • weaken the prosecution case
  • Become unsure of their testimony
  • May lead to reports of “common things”
  • Collusion (conspiracy)
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24
Q

Co-wtiness discussion- Gabbert, Memmon, Allan & Wright (2004)

A
  • if discussed what was seen more errors that lead to the misinformation effect
  • People incorporated elements of each other memories into their own reports even if those details contradicted with what they saw.
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25
Q

The type of memory errors that we make are caused by what

A
  1. individual differences
  2. Social influences
  3. Cognitive processes (such as attention & biases)
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26
Q

Flashbulb Memories – Brown & Kulil (1977)

A
  • Suggested that there is a special mechanisms about how a person heard about a surprising & traumatic event
  • vivid recall
  • detailed
  • clear
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27
Q

Flashbulb Memories – Nessier & Harsch (1992)

A
  • Questionnaire w/in 24 hours about all details of event
  • Repeated the event 3 years later
  • 25% completely wrong
  • 50% more than half wrong
  • Shown original reports
  • CONFIDENCE NOT RELATED TO ACCURACY
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28
Q

Flashbulb Memories - Schmidt (2004) - 9/11 Attacks

A
  • High confidence in memory

* less than 50% information consistent

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29
Q

What did Talarico & Rubin’s Study Show (flashbulb v. everyday memories) ?

A
  • the number of details reduced for everyday
  • the number of details falling off overtime
  • expected to be more accurate for flashbulb memories
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30
Q

What can be concluded about Flashbulb memories?

A
  • No evidence for flashbulb memories
  • There does not seem to be a special mechanism for “flashbulb memories”
  • Even highly traumatic or surprising memories are subject to forgetting and distortion
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31
Q

What is the 3 step process in Freud’s definition of repression?

A
  1. Event banished from conscious recollection until one can deal with it.
  2. Emotion seeps in everyday relationships – emotion is affecting you now.
  3. Recall memory in pristine detail (w/ help of therapy)
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32
Q

What is repression?

A

Not conscious that there is a blocking of event.

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33
Q

Is there any evidence of repression?

A

•No empirical research that support the concept of repression

34
Q

What is the false memory paradigm (Loftus & Pickrell, 1995)

A
  • Given 3 events that happen & 1 false event
  • Interviewed 3x
  • Guided imagery instructions
  • 25% come to remember
35
Q

What is the percentage of people that develop false memory (across many studies)?

A
  • 37%

* SD of 18%

36
Q

What is Hyman & Loftus 1998 Theory on false memory

A
  1. Suggestion
  2. a) Plausibility
    b) belief
    c) memory construction
  3. Source monitoring errors leads to false memory
37
Q

What other factors contribute to false memories (in loftus theory)

A 
• discussion
• personalizes detail
• age: childhood amnesia
• guided imagery
• true photographs
= more likely to believe false memory
38
Q

True photographs

A
  • 78% came to remember putting slime into the teachers desk.
  • Image pushing the memory
39
Q

What are the types of false confessions?

A
  • Voluntary
  • Coerced-compliant
  • Coerced-internalised
40
Q

What is a voluntary confession?

A

When there is no external pressure to confess

41
Q

What are some reasons a person may voluntarily falsely confess?

A
  • Notoriety = to become infamous for the crime
  • Need for self-punishment
  • Reality monitoring issues
  • Aid/protect real criminal
42
Q

What is a coerced-complaint confession/why may a person do this?

A
  • external pressure to confess to gain something.
  • Eager to please
  • Escape situation
  • Avoid explicit/implicit threat
  • Gain promised/implied threat
43
Q

What is a coerced-internalised confession/ why may somebody do this?

A
  • suspect believe (sometimes temporarily) that they are indeed responsible for the crime.
  • Social pressure
  • Imagination
  • Source monitoring errors
  • False evidence presented
44
Q

Is an internalized false confession a true or false memory?

A

internalized false confession=False memory

45
Q

What is the presentation of false evidence experiment about (kassin & kiechel, 1996)?

A

• 3 measures
1. compliance - sign confession
• With a witness more likely to comply in the fast condition
•witness more likely to sign confession if said that there was a witness.

  1. Internalization - took responsibility for key-press
    • fast condition = more likely to comply
    • more likely to believe they did it with a witness
  2. Confabulation - reported additional details
    • fast condition + witness = more likely to give more details, or explain what might have happened.
46
Q

Suggestibility, “Gudjosson Compliance Scale”

A

•Instrument asses individual differences in interrogative suggestibility
• 2 Components
1. Eagerness to please & protect self-esteem in social situations
2. Desire to avoid confrontation & conflict w/ others

47
Q

What are the characteristics of those who score higher in the Gudjosson Compliance Scale?

A
  • worse memories
  • high levels of anxiety
  • low self-esteem
  • lack assertiveness
  • all compared to control group
48
Q

Age & false confessions

A
  • waive right to silence & counsel
  • susceptible to interrogation
  • authority
  • compliant & suggestible
  • less likely to consider long-term consequences
49
Q

Intellectual impairment & false confessions

A
  • more suggestible
  • more compliant
  • tendency to say yes
  • limited ability to see the consequences of saying yes
50
Q

psychological impairement & false confessions

A 
• false confessions of people with psychological impairments, but do not know how disorders might impair crime suspects
•Common symptoms in many disorders
- distorted perceptions/memories
- impaired judgement
- anxiety
- mood disturbance
51
Q

What can be concluded about false confessions?

A
  • have been observed in the real world & the lab

* influenced by external & internal factors

52
Q

Alien abductees study

A
  • do abductees haver the same physical reactions as people with PTSD?
  • Control & self-report abductee participant listen to the “abduction script” & test physiological responses
  • results: control participants = no reaction, abductee = increased heart rate, tensing of muscles in the face
  • 60% of abductees behaved as though had PTSD
  • Their experience becomes their identity
  • nothing feels false for the abductees
53
Q

What is Roberto Cabeza’s (2004) A- Photo & L-Photo about

A
  • a photo (the participants photo)
  • L photo photo taken of the same place, but by a different person in a different angle.
  • Results: When showed the A photo, more areas of the brain activated. The activation of the a photo activating more areas of the brain shows the richness of experiencing autobiographical memories.
54
Q

Reminiscence bump

A

Enhanced memory for adolescence and young adulthood

55
Q

What are some explanations for the reminiscence bump?

A
  • Self-Image
  • Cognitive
  • Cultural-life script
56
Q

How does self-image explain the reminiscence bump?

A

Proposes that memory is enhanced for events that occur as a person’s self-image or life identity is being formed.

57
Q

How does the cognitive hypotheses explain the reminiscence bump?

A
  • Proposes that memory is enhanced during periods of rapid change
  • e.g: Immigrating to a different country
58
Q

How does the cultural life script explain the reminiscence bump?

A

• Proposes that events in a persons life become easier to recall when they fit the cultural life script for that persons culture.

59
Q

What is the “now print” mechanism?

A

Suggests that circumstances about learning about an event are preserved in photographic detail

60
Q

What is the repeated recall technique?

A

The technique of comparing later memories to memories collected immediately after the event.

61
Q

Barlett’s “War of Ghosts” experiment

A
  • Used repeated reproduction
  • Read the story, “war of ghosts”
  • Periodically told to remember the story at longer and longer intervals
  • results: used two sources to recall the story (source 1: the original story, source 2: what they knew about stories in their culture)
62
Q

What is the repeated reproduction technique?

A

• Had the same participants come back a number of times to try to remember the story at longer and longer intervals after they first read it

63
Q

Cryptomnesia

A
  • source monitoring error
  • unconscious plagiarism of the work of others.
  • ex: president retelling a story of hero, which was really seen/closely resembled a story of a hero in a movie.
64
Q

Pragmatic inference

A
  • occurs when reading a sentence leads to a person to expect something that is not explicitly stated or necessarily implied by the sentence
  • ex: fill in the blank examples, I filled in the blank with a word that I believed was implied by the sentence
65
Q

What is a schema?

A
  • A persons knowledge about some aspect of the environment

* ex: we have a schema of what an office looks like

66
Q

What is a script?

A
  • conception of the sequence of event that usually occur during a particular experience
  • we have a general idea of what it is like to walk into a dentist appt. (check in, wait, see the dentist)
67
Q

What are some explanations for the misinformation effect?

A
  • memory trace replacement
  • Retroactive interference
  • Source monitoring error
68
Q

How does memory trace replacement (loftus) explain the misinformation effect?

A

The misleading information replaces the original memory

69
Q

How does retroactive interference explain the misinformation effect?

A

When the misleading (new) information interferes (but does not eliminate) the original memory.

70
Q

How does source monitoring errors (loftus) explain the misinformation effect?

A

The misleading information can be mistakenly identified as the original exprience

71
Q

Weapon focus

A

• Focusing on the weapon instead of the perpetrator

72
Q

Weapon focus, Claudia Stanny & Thomas Johnson (2000)

A
  • No shoot condition: No gun fired, participants remembered details of the victim, perp & gun
  • Shoot condition: less detail, focused on the gun, distracted from seeing who the perp was.
73
Q

What may be a reason for weapon focus?

A
  • unusual objects attract attention

* The presence of a weapon does attract attention & impair the ability to describe or ID perp.

74
Q

Errors due to familiarity

A
  • being familiar with something or familiarity of context can lead to error.
  • e.g: The woman in the txtbook identified an innocent regular customer as the perp, bc he frequently went to purchase tickets at her job.
75
Q

Error due to suggestion

A

•Suggestions can distort account of what happened

76
Q

“Good you identified the suspect” Garry Wells & Amy Bradfield

A
  • View video of crime
  • Participants choose who they believe they saw commit the crime
  • Confirming feedback from experimenter increased participants confidence in who they believed the perp was (post-identification feedback effect)
77
Q

Post-identification feedback effect

A

increase in confidence due to confirming feedback after making an identification

78
Q

Effects of post-event questioning: Chan et. al (2009)

A

•Test group: tested -> misinfo -> cued recall test
- more sensitive to misinformation effect
- 50% said yes to incorrect detail
• No test group: play game-> misinfo -> cued recall
- 30% said yes to incorrect detail
• Results show reverse testing effect: recall test right after increased sensitivity to the misinformation

79
Q

Reverse testing effect

A

Recall test right after increased sensitivity to the misinformation

80
Q

What can be concluded about Effects of post-event questioning: Chan et. al (2009)

A
  • Test group results can be explained by reconsolidation effect (reactivating memory can make it susceptible to being eliminated or modified)
  • When a crime occurs victims and/or witnesses are questioned, the information is vulnerable to change by SUGGESTIBILITY, MISINFORMATION OR OTHER POST-EVENT EXPERIENCES
81
Q

What can improve eyewitness testimony?

A
  1. Inform witness that perp may not be in the line up
  2. When constructing a line up, use fillers who are similar to the suspect, if the suspect is there. If the suspect is not there do not increase similarity can lead to wrong ID
  3. Sequentially present line up
  4. Improve interviewing techniques
    - Cognitive interviews (based on what is known about memory retrieval)

Cognitive Psychology (9 decks)

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