W4 Memory errors & memory and the law Flashcards
Schacter’s 2002 “Seven sins of memory”
(1)Transcience, (2) Absentmindedness, (3) Blocking, (4) Misattribution, (5) Suggestibility, (6) Bias, (7) Persistence.
7 sins of memory = (1) Transcince
= decreasing accessibility of memories over time
Transience = Ebbighaus’s 1885 experiemnts
Recall as many as participants could, LUP, DES, TAF, NID, FUB, PAB, GEP, XAD, ZES, MUB, LOK, POF
Rows of nonsense syllables (consonant – vowel – consonant trigrams).
Why do we forget?
Interference: forgetting due to competition between memories.
Decay: forgetting due to the passage of time.
Trasience = Thorndike’s (1914) “law of disuse”
The more time elapses without using a memory, the more the memory decays away until it is entirely forgotten.
Critiques (McGeoch’s 1932) = The passage of time causes nothing by itself – time is correlated with processes that cause forgetting. The passage of time alone doesn’t cause rust – oxidation happening over time does.
Transience research moving from decay ==> interference
Proactive interference – older memories impair the retrieval of new memories.
Retroactive interference – new memories impair retrieval of older memories.
Transience – The Brown-Peterson Paradigm (Brown, 1958; Peterson & Peterson, 1959)
1-Learn a list of memoranda - Trigram.
2-Complete a distracting task.
3-Recall the memoranda.
results = The more time passes, the greater the forgetting. But: is it due to the passage of time or due to interference?
Transience = proactive interferences (keppel &underwood’s, 1962)
1.Learn a list of 3 memoranda – Trigram.
2.Complete a distracting task.
3.Recall the memoranda.
Results = Better memory with less proactive interference from old information.
Transience = retroactive interference (Jenkins & Dallenbach’s 1924)
Study a list of sounds, stay awake or sleep, recall after 1, 2, 4 or 8 hours.
Result = Better memory with less retroactive interference from new information.
7 sins of memory = (2) Absentmindedness
= lapses of attention that affect memory and learning
Absentmindedness – Kane et al.’s (2017) experiment
“hat were you just thinking about?”
Correlation of performance on stats test and TUTs. Results = The more off-task mind wandering, the poorer the learning from the lecture.
So what leads to TUTs? Multitasking Habits = The more multitasking habits students reported, the more off-task mind wandering they experienced.
=> Multitasking habits had an indirect effect on learning outcomes through mind wandering – even though students didn’t even use their devices in the study! (Mediation analysis)
7 sins of memory = (3) Blocking
= information is present but temporarily inaccessible
D’Angelo & Humphrey’s 2015 experiemnts = ‘Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon’
“What is the word for goods imported or exported illegally?” = contraband. Resolving tip-of-the-tongue states may prevent them from reoccurring later on.
7 sins of memory = (4) Misattribution
= attributing memories to an incorrect source
Source monitoring (memory)
where do memories come from?
Internal = did I do this, or did I just imagine it?
External = who told me about this?
Reality = did I really see this, or did someone mention it? Flashbulb memories.
Cryptomnesia
Unconscious plagarism. Is this eally my orignial idea?
Types of source information (P + C +A + C)
Perceptual: perceptual detail often higher for memories actually experienced than from other sources – touch, smell, tastes
Contextual: context in which memory was acquired is consistent with an expected source
Affective: emotional reaction in context of information
Cognitive: mental processing of the information
The Unabomber
From 1978 – 1996, mailed or hand-delivered series of increasingly sophisticated bombs. 1987 = 1 eyewitness account – sketch artist captured likeness. 1994 = a revised sketch was asked for from the same witness. It resembled the first sketch artist
Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm.
Study, then recall task then recognition task. Not in original list, but semantically related (river).People falsely recalled related concepts that were never presented. False memories: remembering things that never happened.
7 sins of memory = (5) Suggestibility
= implanted memories that never occurred.
Suggestibility - Loftus & Pickrell’s (1995) experiment
False memories were about “getting lost in a mall” and created with the help of an older relative. Results = About a quarter of participants falsely “remembered” to have been lost in a mall. False memories can be implanted via suggestion.
Suggestibility – Wade et al.’s (2002) experiment.
Showed doctored images of participants in a hot air balloon. Asked them about their experience. Half of the participants demonstrated false memories implanted via suggestion. False “evidence” – such as doctored photograph contributes to formation of fals memories
Suggestibility - Zaragoza et al.’s (2001) experiments
= watch 8-min video excerpt, answer questions with guessing enforced or discouraged, recognition task 1 week later and recall task 4-6 weeks later. Results = Participants assented to confabulated events one week later (although they did not have to). False recognition of confabulated events at 1 week. (dysney film, without blood, saw blood)
Suggestibility- Semantic memory = Fazio et al. 2013 experiement
Knowledge short-answer pre-test, Read fiction story with or without misinformation, Knowledge short-answer post-test.Results = Responses with misinformation to questions that were answered correctly in pre-test. Misinformation effect: Altering memories to conform to recently encountered but incorrect information.
7 sins of memory = (6) Bias
distorting memories of the past based on current knowledge and beliefs
Bias - Blank et al.’s (2003) experiments
July 1998: predict German parliament election outcome. September 1998: election. October 1998: recall predictions.
Results = Hindsight bias: misremember memories as being more similar to the current knowledge state.
7 sins of memory (7) Persistence
= unwanted recollections that cannot be forgotten. (such PTSD)
Amnesia
a deficit in memory caused by brain damage, disease, or psychological trauma.
Charles Brainerd (memory and law)
The science of memory is as central to law as biology is to medicine.
Memory = Eye witnesses
Investigations and subsequent convictions often rely on evidence from eye-witness-testimony (EWT). Can be inaccurate leading to wrongful conviction. Understanding EWT and memory is crucial for functioning justice.
Retroactive interference
when new information interferes with the storage or retrieval of old information
