Problem 3: Amnesia & photo taking impairment effect Flashcards
What is autobiographical memory?
memory of self and our experiences
What is childhood amnesia?
barely any memories from age 0-3
What is the reminiscence bump?
Much remembering between 10-30
what is the period of forgetting?
last 20 years of life, much forgetting
What did Galton & Crovitz do to test autobiographical memory?
They gave the participant a cue, the participant had to recall an autobiographical memory & write a description of the event
What did Usher & Neiser test about childhood amnesia?
They tested which events were better remembered: a hospitalisation, the birth of a sibling, moving houses or the death of a family member.
Result: hospitalisation and the birth of a family member were remembered best.
What is the neuroscientifical perspective on childhood amnesia? And what is a criticism on this perspective?
Childhood amnesia happens because the child’s brain if very immature. The procedural system for memory develops earlier than the declarative system for memory, however, the declarative system serves as the basis for autobiographical memory. Therefore, autobiographical memories can’t be formed.
Criticism: children aged 2 can remember stuff from when they were 1.5, so their memory works fine.
What is the language approach to the development of autobiographical memory?
Children start to remember as soon as they can describe memories using language.
What is the language approach to the development of autobiographical memory?
Children start to remember as soon as they can describe memories using language.
What is the ‘cognitive self’ approach to autobiographical memory? Which two studies supported this view?
it criticises the language approach (just because you can’t describe memories, does not mean they are not there). Howe and Courage proposed that autobiographical memories can only emerge as a sense of self emerges.
Study 1: Americans should have better autobiographical memories than Taiwanese people because of their sense of self (individualistic vs collectivistic) –> US children had earlier childhood memories & memories tended to reflect personal autonomy
Study 2: Social relationships research: mother-child interactions were recorded –> more elaborate conversations resulted in earlier autobiographical memories
What is the social cognitive development approach to autobiographical memory?
More complex factors are merged together: the development of the brain, the use of language and the child’s sense of self all contribute to the creation of autobiographical memories. Theory of mind also plays a role in the sense of self.
What are 3 possible reasons for the reminiscence bump?
1 - important events are more often rehearsed between 10-30 = ‘cognitive mechanism account’
2 - identity formation = events are more defining
3 - neurological development = ‘peak functioning account’ = especially high functioning encoding leads to better memories
What is Conway & Playdell-Pearce’s self memory system model? Which components does it have?
two ways of processing self-memories:
1= autobiographical memory knowledge base
- lifetime periods (major ongoing situations like school)
- general events (single & repeated events like holidays)
- event-specific knowledge (images, feelings, shorter time periods)
2= working self: concerned with self, your future, and your goals. Your goals influence wat you remember
According to the self memory system, through which 2 systems can autobiographical memories be accessed?
1: Generative retrieval = deliberate, related to goals
2: Direct retrieval = spontaneous, does not involve working self
What is retrograde amnesia? What type of memory does it affect?
forgetting of events before getting brain damage. Patients often struggle with retrieving episodic memories
What became clear from research on agentic and communal personality types and their memory?
more agentic people (focused on independence, achievement and personal power) remember more experiences like a graduation
More communal people (interdependence and similarity to others) remember more experiences like marriage
-> memories recalled were in line with their personality types
Limitations of the self memory system
-Model does not capture the complexity of retrieval of autobiographical memories
-we need to know more about how the working self interacts with autobiographical knowledge
-autobiographical memories vary in the extent to which they contain episodic vs semantic information, this is not addressed in the model
What is anterograde amnesia?
loss for the ability to make memories after brain damage, they have trouble on explicit memory tasks but perform just as well as a control group on implicit memory tasks
What is source amnesia?
amnesic patients have trouble recollecting the strove of a given memory
What are 2 consequences of amnesia?
- greater susceptibility to interference (results: retrieval deficit, faster forgetting &incapacity for deep processing)
- amnesia disrupts the ability to associate a specific event/episode with its context
What is the episodic memory link theory?
there is an associative link between events and their context, enabling retrieval at a later time.
What is the simplified modal model of amnesia? What does it entail? Also give 2 criticisms.
recall & recognition involve the same underlying storage processes, although they place different restraints of subsequent retrieval.
Semantic memories are a residue of many episodic memories. Episodic memories might have gone lost, but semantic memories can still be accessed through a different mechanism.
Criticism 1: how can semantic memories remain if they are built on episodic memories?
Criticism 2: Jon (amnesiac) cannot recollect experiences, however, he can learn in the sense of building familiarity
What is consolidation? By what research was it supported?
Memory traces are initially fragile, but become more resistent to forgetting over time
Supported by sleep study
What is the photo taking impairment effect?
participants are less likely to remember objects they photograph, than objects they only observe
What is the offloading hypothesis?
taking photos allows people to ‘off load’ their organic memory onto the camera’s prosthetic memory, which they can rely upon to ‘remember’ for them
What is transactive memory?
Splitting the cost of remembering, each remembers a part
What is the attentional disengagement hypothesis?
taking a photo leads to less deep encoding because your are not paying full attention
In the experiment on the photo taking impairment effect, what did they do and what hypothesis was supported?
In experiment A snapchat was used to not save the photo, the knowledge of not saving would counteract the effect –> not true, effect remained so offloading hypothesis was not true
In experiment B participants had to delete the photo after taking it + they were given extra view time of the picture –> still effect, offloading hypothesis was not true
