Problem 3: Amnesia & photo taking impairment effect

Question 1

What is autobiographical memory?

Answer 1

memory of self and our experiences

Question 2

What is childhood amnesia?

Answer 2

barely any memories from age 0-3

Question 3

What is the reminiscence bump?

Answer 3

Much remembering between 10-30

Question 4

what is the period of forgetting?

Answer 4

last 20 years of life, much forgetting

Question 5

What did Galton & Crovitz do to test autobiographical memory?

Answer 5

They gave the participant a cue, the participant had to recall an autobiographical memory & write a description of the event

Question 6

What did Usher & Neiser test about childhood amnesia?

Answer 6

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.

Question 7

What is the neuroscientifical perspective on childhood amnesia? And what is a criticism on this perspective?

Answer 7

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.

Question 8

What is the language approach to the development of autobiographical memory?

Answer 8

Children start to remember as soon as they can describe memories using language.

Question 8

What is the language approach to the development of autobiographical memory?

Answer 8

Children start to remember as soon as they can describe memories using language.

Question 9

What is the ‘cognitive self’ approach to autobiographical memory? Which two studies supported this view?

Answer 9

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

Question 10

What is the social cognitive development approach to autobiographical memory?

Answer 10

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.

Question 11

What are 3 possible reasons for the reminiscence bump?

Answer 11

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

Question 12

What is Conway & Playdell-Pearce’s self memory system model? Which components does it have?

Answer 12

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

Question 13

According to the self memory system, through which 2 systems can autobiographical memories be accessed?

Answer 13

1: Generative retrieval = deliberate, related to goals
2: Direct retrieval = spontaneous, does not involve working self

Question 14

What is retrograde amnesia? What type of memory does it affect?

Answer 14

forgetting of events before getting brain damage. Patients often struggle with retrieving episodic memories

Question 15

What became clear from research on agentic and communal personality types and their memory?

Answer 15

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

Question 16

Limitations of the self memory system

Answer 16

-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

Question 17

What is anterograde amnesia?

Answer 17

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

Question 18

What is source amnesia?

Answer 18

amnesic patients have trouble recollecting the strove of a given memory

Question 19

What are 2 consequences of amnesia?

Answer 19

• 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

Question 20

What is the episodic memory link theory?

Answer 20

there is an associative link between events and their context, enabling retrieval at a later time.

Question 21

What is the simplified modal model of amnesia? What does it entail? Also give 2 criticisms.

Answer 21

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

Question 22

What is consolidation? By what research was it supported?

Answer 22

Memory traces are initially fragile, but become more resistent to forgetting over time
Supported by sleep study

Question 23

What is the photo taking impairment effect?

Answer 23

participants are less likely to remember objects they photograph, than objects they only observe

Question 24

What is the offloading hypothesis?

Answer 24

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

Question 25

What is transactive memory?

Answer 25

Splitting the cost of remembering, each remembers a part

Question 26

What is the attentional disengagement hypothesis?

Answer 26

taking a photo leads to less deep encoding because your are not paying full attention

Question 27

In the experiment on the photo taking impairment effect, what did they do and what hypothesis was supported?

Answer 27

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