W7

Question 1

What is everyday memory?

Answer 1

Everyday memory refers to memory phenomena experienced in normal life, including autobiographical memory, which involves memories of one’s own life events. It is often reconstructive in nature.

Question 2

What is Schematic Processing Principle?

Answer 2

The schematic processing principle suggests that memory involves the interaction between events and our pre-existing schemata, which are integrated knowledge structures capturing commonly encountered aspects of life. Schemata help us form expectations, draw inferences, and go beyond the explicit information provided.

Question 3

What is it called when you form a large number of memories at around 20 years old?

Answer 3

This is known as the reminiscence bump, a period during which individuals tend to form a significant number of memories, typically between the ages of 15 to 25.

Question 4

What is Childhood Amnesia?

Answer 4

Childhood amnesia refers to the almost total lack of autobiographical memories from the first three years of life.

Question 5

Why is there a reminiscence Bump at age 15-25?

Answer 5

The reminiscence bump during ages 15-25 may be attributed to neurological factors, identity formation, and cognitive factors such as the primacy effect and experiencing significant life events for the first time.

Question 6

What are Flashbulb memories?

Answer 6

Flashbulb memories are highly detailed and vivid memories for surprising events that are relatively resistant to forgetting. However, research suggests that they may not be more accurate than other memories.

Question 7

What is the Cross-race effect?

Answer 7

The cross-race effect refers to the phenomenon where cross-racial identification is more difficult compared to identification within one’s own race. This effect may be attributed to the expertise hypothesis (More experience distinguishing faces of same race. (small effect)) and social-cognitive hypothesis (More thorough facial processing of faces of the in-group compared to the out-group)

Question 8

What is confirmation bias?

Answer 8

Confirmation bias is the tendency to remember information that confirms one’s existing beliefs or expectations, leading to selective memory recall.

Question 9

Factors (stage) that affect eyewitness memory?

Answer 9

• perceptual stage: darkness, distance, duration, lighting affect accuracy, identification of person eg during full moon is difficult
• encoding stage: stress, violence, emotional arousal levels affects attention - stress causes narrowing of attention so less peripheral memory and increase weapon focus = no face identification can be given
• storage stage: time (decay, interference), memory decay overtime, children forget faster, unconscious transference due to inference - incorrect identification of perpetrator, proactive interference - memory before event affect recall
• retrieval stage: Questioning, expectations, misremembering’s, leading qs - retroactive interference

Question 10

Explanation for misinformation effects?

Answer 10

• Source misattribution: Source of post-event information memory trace is wrongly attributed to the original event
• Vacant memory slot: Misinformation more likely to be accepted if original correct info did not get stored.
• Memory coexistence: both original and misleading info, but misleading is more recent and obscures other memory trace
• Blending: Correct info and misinformation combined together
• Response bias.

Question 11

How to perform a good Cognitive Interview?

Answer 11

A good cognitive interview involves recreating the external and internal context of the event, encouraging witnesses to report everything even if fragmented, eliciting reports in different orders and perspectives, and avoiding interruptions during the retrieval process.