Week 3 Flashcards
Herman Ebbinghaus (1885)
Trying to eliminate existing information and somehow contaminating estimates of learning
Wanted to make sure that CVCS did not have inherent learning
All of the info is available in stimuli; bottom up processing as he is starting from what hes got, episodic too.
(sir) Frederick Bartlett (1932)
While most of cognitive psyc was not focused on cognition, he was still interested in memory
Felt that everyday experience was important
Put people in contexts similar to real life events
Often gave people material that consisted of stories, passages and remember them for later report
Wanted this to be in context of everyday encounters
Contributing factors in learning environments
Looking at things and to train people to do certain tasks
Top-down: Semantic
Bartlett’s (1932) Methods
Repeated Reproduction: Give person a story to remember, test them on it, then again, maybe even third
Same person was tested on multiple occasions
Serial Reproduction: Essentially the human telephone game
1 person is given info and they must relay this to next person
E.g., war of ghosts, persons recall changed a lot
Repeated Recall
Dominant Detail: anchor point
Omissions: details, mood
Transformed order: change sequence (esp. in descriptions)
Transformed details: instantiation, > familiarity
Rationalization: increase “sense”
Jist of the story seems to be maintained -> anchor -> recall is to this jist
Information was lost overtime, specific details and the mood (idea of anxiety and fear)
Things appeared out of sequence
Idea that what you are trying to do have the story that you are recalling make sense to how you think it should be organized
This makes it mixed up
Fish attack -> remembered it as shark attack
So if theres something vague, they will remember something more specific
Sometimes convert things that are more familiar to them
E.g., story talked about canoes, in the recall, he said boats
John Branford & Jeffery Franks
revived Bartlett’s approach
* focused on how we comprehend on-line and how that affects remembering
* abstracting and integrating meaning
Really dove into this into more detail
Interested in how peoples ability to comprehend the passage is going to effect memory
Found that people who were given title and picture were able to remember far more details than people who werent given title
Suggested that knowing the title helps comprehend and organize this info making it easier to retrieve
Argued that in addition to this, figuring out how things go together
Putting things together to make sense and inferences
Materials
The rock hit the hut.
The tiny hut was by the river.
The rock hit the tiny hut by the river.
The rock rolled down the mountain and hit the tiny hut by the river.
Bunch of sentences that contained ideas
Presented them to individuals
Asked to recognize and addition, provide a confidence rating
Found that people could not tell the new from old sentences
Confidence at making decision increased, with the number of ideas presented
Performance was the same
Argued that when people are presented with sentences, they are not storing them on their own, but storing them together
Accumulating a integration of all these concepts together
Familiarity increases chance of saying yes, hence why you start to false alarm
Since they match, confidence in the judgement is high
Lecture Results
study sentences from 1-3 “ideas”
* test sentences: studied from 1-4 “ideas” (correct) plus unstudied (incorrect)
* recognition + confidence rating
* results:
– could not tell new from old sentences
– confidence increased with the number of ideas in a sentence, independent of whether the sentence was new or old
Drawing Inferences
- Bransford, Barclay and Franks (1972)
- two kinds of study sentences:
– Three turtles sat beside a floating log and a fish swam beneath it
– Three turtles sat on a floating log and a fish swam beneath it - test sentence:
– The fish swam under the turtles
Two types of sentences were given to people
Then given another sentence, asked if that was the sentence that they saw before
People false alarmed yes, if they got the sentence “the turtles sat down on the log”
You had make the inference; did it automatically
Pragnanit inferences
What you are remembering is the jist, not the exact wordings
Making inferences how these things should be related
Bransford et al. (1972) show much more likely to respond YES to the “on” sentence than to the “beside” sentence
* inferences are normally being computed
Schema & Scripts
Schema(ta): a stored framework or body of knowledge about some topic
e.g., Knowing what a car is, how a story should be organized etc
Script(s): the sequence of actions that typically occur during a particular experience
e.g., Things that we encounter regularly; Script for restaurant, going to dentist
Schank & Abelson (1977)
Scripts consist of 3 different things
Header = title, allows you to retrive the script
Frames = slots, contain details about actions that would be carried out and in what sequence
Default value = typical action that occupies those frames
Assume that people have the scripts similar to you
E.g., friend asking about restaurant, you don’t specify every action
You tell people the things that go beyond the script, e.g., waitress spilling water
Evidence For Schema
Smith & Graesser (1981) – passages about scripted activity
– when corrected for guesses based on reconstructed script knowledge memory was better for atypical events
– schema-copy-plus-tag hypothesis – generic script plus atypical details
* Nakamura, Graesser, Zimmerman & Riha (1985) – natural setting
* incidental and intentional memory behave the same
Gave participants a bunch of passages
Tested them and people remembered the scripted details better than unscripted things
People provided these details not because they remembered, they were using their scripts
Peoples’s memory for atypical events was better
Other colleagues:
Experiment done in classroom
Prof gave lecture and did atypical things
After lecture, asked people to remember everything that happened
People reported typical events more
But when guessing, atypical was recalled more
Eyewitness Testimony
Testimony by an eyewitness to a crime about what he or she saw during the crime
One of the most convincing types of evidence to a jury
– Assume that people see and remember accurately
But, like other memory, eyewitness testimony can be inaccurate
– Mistaken identity
– Constructive nature of memory
People assume if person says who did it, that their memory must be good
Aware of everything that goes around near us
We encoded it and can remember it at some later point
Survey: ask people about memory if it operates like video tape, people said yes
Mistaken identity causes dire concequecnes
Memory is just not recall of previous incidents, rather it is contructive as we are trying to recreate a memory of that situation using information such as previous knowledge
Attention and Memory
integration due to contiguity – Don Thomson story
* weapon focus (Johnson & Scott, 1976)
Weapon focus
E.g., being mugged and looking at victim statement, people remember weapon more than person
Arousal narrows attention to an extent to that people focus on certain things
arousal narrows attention, sometimes too much
Don Thomson studied a lot of eye witness memory issues
Asked to be on live TV show
A woman was in her home watching the show and someone broke into her house
Gave police description of person
Don Thomson was arrested by police while walking
Woman said it was Don
Was on TV and police chief deemed it impossible for it to be him
Person looked nothing like Don
While being assaulted, he was on the screen and didn’t want to think about what was happening to her so she was paying attention to TV
Arsitole said ideas are similar and continuous with eachother
E.g., light turning on with switch
So she associated don with the assault
Stanny & Johnson (2000)
People recalled gun (shoot or no shoot) was recalled more than perpatrator
Samething with victim
Ross et al., (1994)
People watched movies
2 groups: male teacher movie, female teacher movie
Both groups viewed the teacher being robbed
Asked to choose perpetrator
When robber was in spread: likelihood of male teacher goes down (20%)
When robber was not: 60% chose male teacher
Being associated with male teacher with robbery got assocaited and people falsely accused him of being robber
Female was 20% with no robber and 10% with robber
Twice as likely to pick out the innocent person if the robber was not in the photo spread, when the robber was scene then the increase decreased
Idea that simply near will be be associated with situation
When people are given a lineup, they are looking for suspect so they are going to choose someone
The Line-Up
line-up as signal detection
signal = criminal
noise = innocent
need enough distractors to reduce guessing
make the people in the lineup as similar as possible to the description, even in apparently nonessential ways
Presenting people with possible individuals and ask person to determine if any are the perpetrator
Pickup the signal alongside whatever noise is occurring in the environment
If person is biased, they have 50% having a correct guess
But if theres more people, chance reduces to 25%
Want to make the individuals as similar as possible
Keep all details as common as possible. E.g., beard, baseball hat
People should give multiple lineups and told that suspect may or may not be in it
42% drop in choosing a random person
Police officer should be blind to who the suspect actually is, as they may offer subtle cues on who they want you to pick
Just because on stand, person says yes that is who did it and somehow is hesitant
Those 2 individuals may have the same degree of memory in terms of accuracy
Things can bias our memories
Subtle things such as after cop saying thanks for the help, increases the persons confidence
Even there is no basis in that confidence
Some evidence that confidence should not be much affected, should rely more on forensic confidence
Wells & Bradfield (1998)
Participants view security videotape of robbery with gunman in view for 8 seconds
Everyone identified someone as the gunman from photographs afterwards
The actual gunman’s picture was not presented
Everyone chose the person but actual gunman wasn’t in line up
Unless you tell person that suspect may not be in lineup, person will assume they are
Elizabeth Loftus
Univ. of Washington / California - Irvine
foremost expert on eyewitness testimony
helped re-emphasize reconstructive memory
now also a leading expert on false memory
Idea that memory itself is not a video tape, but is reconstructed
Integration
Loftus & Palmer (1974)
* How fast was car 1 going when it ___________ car 2?
* Part I: speed estimates:
– smashed into: 40.8
– collided with: 39.3
– Bumped: 38.1
– hit: 34
– contacted: 31.8
Movie that people watched and asked the speed that it crashed
Brought back again, asked damage estimates (broken glass)
Is it that there being nice or they actually remembered it
More violent, must’ve been broken glass
Question may impact witness answer
Part 2
Damage estimates:
smashed: 32%
hit: 14%
control: 12%
Reconstruction & Integration
Loftus, Miller, & Burns (1978)
Showed subjects a series of slides depicting an accident and later asked a series of questions
Provided info to indivudals about an accident
Asked a bunch of questions
1 group saw the car at a stop sign and the other saw a yield sign
Both groups were halved
Some were asked about a stop, saw a stop, asked about yield, saw a stop etc
How likely should they be able to pick stop sign if they got stop sign, or just guessing
50% probability
If it was accurate suggestion, stop and saw stop, 75% likely to pick that sign
It asked about wrong sign, 41% correct
Simply asking about the other sign reduced accuracy by 34%
These questions can change our memories of the past
Prior Knowledge & False Recall
Participants essentially act as jurors where they heard a mock testsimony
4 typical events, 4 unstated
Participants then left and came back a week later
Asked to recall everything in testimony
Recalled 31% stated
Falsely recalled 15% unstated
Remembered general idea and now that they are trying to recall, they are using their scripts to remember the event
Hard to put knowledge aside
Deese
- Present words and remember them
- 2 lists given and not recall yet
Repressed Memories
Memories were horrific memories that people had experienced presumably as kids
Recovered in therapy
Paul Ingram:
A deputy and in 1988 accused by daughter of SA as child multiple times and also have friends do it too
Confronted ingram
Over short period of time he confessed
Likely this hasn’t happened
Daughter grew up and moved away but she has been suffering from issues and saw a therapist and therapist employed a bunch of techniques
Suggested that maybe her symptoms alligned with SA as a kid and that she repressed memories
Evidence that people who have your disorder were SA as they were younger
This may get people to remember things that actually didn’t happen
Source attribution: lose the ability to know if it actually happened or is this something that was made up in the line
Result: many people recalled child abuse even though it actually didn’t happen
Ingram confessed because he was very suggestible and very religious
Debate between that this does or does not happen
This might happen but there are reasons of possibilities that this may have not happened
PTSD
Reason - PTSD
Occurs when traumatic events happen
These individuals cannot forgot these events
E.g., nightmares, anything similar to their events
Flashbulb Memories
Challenger/Columbia explosion (Jan ‘86/Feb ‘03)
9/11
rehearsal through repeated retellings
Some events are so impactful that we cannot forget them
People remember vividly on how these things happened
Are they actually different than other memories?
Evidence proves that maybe not
When we look at memories, there are things that we rehearse a lot
It’s repetition
Use logic, when people evaluate their memories to later memories, stated that news was given from TV but initial report, they said they got it from friend
You say this because the news wasn’t worthy enough to provide information
So it is possible news was given from TV
Saliency increases strength for particular memory but it is just like any memory
Personal Significance
Brown and Kulik (1977): White participants remembered more about Kennedy assassination than about Martin Luther King assassination; black participants show reverse
Conway et al. (1994): British better than U.S. participants at recalling Margaret Thatcher’s resignation
Memories are dependent on how significant they are
Seems like the importance of these events influence how well you know them
Emotion and Memory
Impact of emotion on memory
Emotion has consequences for it
Feeling associated with memory
Often results in changes in neurotransmitter and various things that released within in the body
E.g., release in adrenaline impacts memories in certain events
Giving things that increase noreponephrine increased
memory and beta blockers negatively impacted memory collection
When you give people films to watch, when viewing an emotional scene, amygdala becomes highly activated
Correlated with recall accuracy
Can also be done with neutral events (ice bath)
Cold causes shock that activiates certain signals
Memory over the Lifespan
What events are remembered well?
* Significant events in a person’s life
* Highly emotional events
* Transition points
Reminiscence Bump
30-40 range is the reminiscent spot; most recallable memories when aged 60
Reasons are: life transitions
Looking at things that complete self-concept ideas, and see when they occurred, it is 30ish range
Lots of sudden changes and a break period in life
Calm period helps fix up/clean the memories -> also in 30 year old range
Source Monitoring
Source memory: process of determining origins of our memories
* Source monitoring error: misidentifying source of memory
– Also called “source misattributions”
* Cryptoamnesia: Unconscious plagiarism of another’s work due to a lack of recognition of its original source
Memories aren’t as accurate as we think they are
We remember something but we have to try to determine where did we hear this
E.g., cryptoamnesia, plagiarism that is not meant to be on purpose
Jacoby et al. (1989)
Explanation: some non-famous names were familiar, and the participants misattributed the source of the familiarity
– Failed to identify the source as the list that had been read the previous day
The reason why it’s more fluent because you cannot remember the name from list, you think that you heard it from sports, news and that it is for sure a famous name.
Lindsay (1990)
Told to ignore misleading narrative for memory test
* Less errors when voice changed between stories (i.e., less source monitoring errors)
Female and male narrator
Female was immediately after and male was 2 days later
Female narrator group 27% MPI, difficult condition (misleading narrative)
Male was 13%
Easier to associate to mistribute information
Quite possible may have been repeated since female narrator was twice
In male, it was easier to distinguish information
Constructive Nature Of Memory
Memory = What actually happens
+ person’s knowledge + experiences since event
* Advantages
* Allows us to “fill in the blanks”
* Cognition is creative
* Understand language, solve problems, make decisions * Disadvantages
Sometimes we make errors
* Sometimes we misattribute the source of information
