Myths Imperative Flashcards
Evidence why memory is not like a video camera.
A unsuspecting character (subject) asked for directions on campus by lost student (who is actually an experimenter). Half way through conversation, door is carried through, door carrier and student swap over. Only half students noticed.
Questionnaire the day after Challenger disaster. Repeated after about 3 years. Compared responses and score. 25% of subjects were wrong on every single remembered attribute.
Describe a flashbulb memory.
- Traumatic events, eg death of loved one.
- Vivid and detailed imprint.
- Will never be forgotten.
- Special clarity.
- High confidence in accuracy of memory.
Evidence for implanting of memories.
Learnt events from childhood from parents, experimenter adds false events. After repeated tests, false memories appear.
“Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction”
–US Vice President, Dick Cheney, 2002.
“We know where they are”
–US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, 2003.
There were no WMDs. Many respondents to questionnaire believed there were WMDs.
Evidence for truthful but inaccurate memory.
Water gate scandal, Nixon affiliates broke into opposition party (Democrats) headquarters and got caught. Nixon denied all involvement and organized cover-up in response to investigations. Nixon secretly taped all his conversations in Oval Office. A witness recalled details of conversation and was known as the ‘human tape recorder’, after listening to tapes turns out he was completely truthful but rather inaccurate eg inflated his own contributions to conversations and ignored others.
Nazi crimes in Netherlands during WII, witnesses were interviewed twice, 40 years apart. Direct contradictions between reports, eg whether he wore a uniform or not. Also differences across years, first interview said he was unable to walk but later said only remembered occasional kicks.
Examples of a ‘photographic memory’.
Elizabeth, using a random dot stereogram could look at first square, leave, sleep, look at second square and still see the stereoscopic image. BUT researcher Stromeyer married her, and refused further tests. Replicability issues. Other researcher tried to find someone else like Elizabeth, 1 million tried test, nobody could repeat it.
Stephen Wiltshire, could fly over a city he’d never seen and accurately draw the skyline.
Do expert chess players have photographic memory? Discuss.
Chess masters found to have 91% correct recall for chess positions compared to 41% for less expert players.
BUT NO! They use chunking and recognition of familiar patterns. Typical chess master knows 50,000 chunks.
For completely random chess positions, masters no better than the average person.
How are mnemonics used to remember?
- Used to memorise decks of cards, or pi to 100,000 digits.
- E.g., associate cards with people (J♥ = Jack Nicholson).
- Method of Loci (attributed to Simonides, 5th century BECAUSE).
- Associate items with locations on a route.
Why do people believe in a photographic memory?
Simple explanation of superior memory.
An excuse for “the rest of us”?
Appeals to our desires.
What is an explanation?
A statement or account that makes something clear.
What must happen to make an explanation useful?
Must understand them, must be simpler than what it seeks to explain.
How do people link to explanations?
Unskilled in explaining things, knowing what knowledge is, and feel like they understand the world in greater detail, coherence and depth than they really do.
Illusion of explanatory depth.
May misattribute “knowledge” to external world.
Confusion with higher and lower level of analysis.
⇒ understanding notion of a “brake” does not imply understanding of how it works.
People asked to explain how things work (eg how a differential helps a car turn). Rated understanding at beginning (1-7), explained it, rated understanding, answer diagnostic question, rated level of understanding, read expert explanation, rate level of understanding.
Level of understanding U shape on graph.
The allure of simplicity.
Lombrozo - People prefer simpler explanation, even if more complex explanation is 3× more likely.
Illusion of argument justification
- People over-estimate the quality of their argument for their own position.
- The strength of this “illusion” increases with greater strength of caring for a given issue.
Cultural cognition of knowledge.
Facts are accepted based on cultural criteria, risks are perceived based on cultural norms. Risk judgements are inherently subjective. Cultural factors, or people’s view worldviews, determine how risk judgements are made. People often polarize along cultural (political) lines when risk judgements are involved.
How do spoken language production systems work?
When you want to say a word, eg ‘cat’, activate semantic representation of cat, then whole word system, then phonics.
When you speak multiple languages, one shared non-linguistic semantic representation, but different word representations. Phoneme store is one store.
Inhibit one language to speak the other; inhibition is one aspect of cognitive control.
What is cognitive control?
The ability to direct mental function and behaviour according to internal intentions or goals.
Square study for bilingual control.
Can use this to measure a congruency effect or Simon effect (press left if green, press right if blue. congruent = green and shows on left side, as matches).
Suggestion is that if you are used to these inhibitory processes, such as bilinguals, than this is why bilinguals have a better global inhibition.
BUT switching between languages is local cognitive control, and for there to be a cognitive advantage it needs to be global cognitive control.
Evidence and examples of bilingual cognitive advantage.
There are bilingual cognitive advantages in/for:
Children, young adults, older adults, dementia
Ellen always finds a cognitive advantage, making news papers excited.
Bilinguals were found to be 4.5 years older at the time of occurrence of the first symptoms of dementia
Even more depending on the sub-type of dementias. Statistically included sociology-economic status (SES) variables (such as education and occupation) and still found a bilingual advantage.
Metanalysis
4-5 year delay of dementia for bilinguals
Delayed onset but not prevention.
