Week 9 Flashcards
Fundamental Nature of Memory
3
1) Memory representations are only as good as the input
2) Memory is reconstructive
3) Expectations can be manipulated
Memory only as good as the details which are encoded
1) Sensory limitation
2) Attentional bottleneck
Sensory limitations prevent all of the details of a scene or an event from being registered in memory
Attentional bottleneck limits the amount of information that is perceived
Distance and perception
Distance affects perception => which in turn affects memory
The visual system spatially removes details (proportional to distance)
Practical aspects:
How can someone recognise ppl from line ups?
Often why there are misidentification
Distractions and encoding
Daniels (1895)
Distraction interferes with encoding => thus memory
The amount of interference increases the longer you have to wait before recall
like forgetting the name of ppl you just met.
Distinctive Features attract attention
1) Light, Kayra-Stuart & Hollander (1979)
2) Fleischman et al. (1976)
1) Faces which are dissimilar to prototypical or average faces are easier to remember
2) Attractive & Unattractive faces are recalled better than moderately attractive faces
Weapon focus!
Loftus et al. (1987)
People FIXATE faster and for longer on unusual (i.e., salient) or highly informative (i.e., valid) objects
Weapon focus: Fixating on the salient stimulus rather than the the faces Line up identifications: Control: 38% hits Weapon: 11% hits
1) Memory representations are only as good as the input
Summary
Memory of details is only as good as the perception of those details
Attention, salience, & distraction affect what “gets in” to memory
Construction of memory:
Schema
Schema:
1) is a concept or set of ideas or framework for representing some aspect of the world.
2) influence how you interpret new information and impt in determining what you pay attention to when learning.
3) determine what you learn and how you represent that knowledge.
Construction of memory:
Schema
Pros and Cons
often very beneficial. Schema improves comprehension and recall for passages.
BUT
it can also lead to distortions in memory:
1) Information inconsistent with the schema is often reinterpreted or distorted to fit the schema
2) Schema are very hard to change; even in the face of contradictory information
Constructive Memory
Carmichael, Hogan & Walter (1932)
12 trials; participants can look at the image as many times as possible;
2 Condition: varied by label (the same pic , ambiguous, presented as 7 or 4. etc)
objective: What % of the drawings were distorted to the label?
Recollections were altered in the direction of the label (70%)
Knowledge of the item superseded the actual details of the studied item
Constructive Memory
Sir Frederick Bartlett (1932
Sydney)
Details
Memorise stories or pictures
Examine how those memories changed over time/ or passed along
Experiment 1:
Presented British participants with a Native American folk tale “The War of the Ghosts”
Immidiate repeat
Several days/weeks/years later
each time transcribing the changes in the narrative
Constructive Memory
Sir Frederick Bartlett (1932)
Analysis of changes
General outline stays constant for each subject after first recall
Style and rhythm are altered
Forms and items become stereotyped
Story is rationalized; meaning of various symbols is added
Conclusion
With infrequent reproduction, details are omitted or simplified and items be transformed to more familiar forms (fitting schema)
Summary?
hmm
Memory is reconstructive
thus misleading
Providing a misleading cue affects how the schema is retrieved and altered to explain that detail
Big picture:
Cues are data, the schema is a hypothesis which adapts to explain that data
Oral Traditions:
Lynne Kelly (2016) The Memory Code
Some strange to others is familiar to the ingroup (Indigenous stories)
Oral Traditions:
The fade away of details does not happen for oral traditions. why? (indigenous story: Westeners VS indigenous ppl)
Westerners:
Details fades and the gist remains
Indigenous:
Remembered
Explanation:
In oral traditions, knowledge is protected by being passed on in only in special situations with carefully guarded ritual (salience?)
1) This protects the information from being degraded
2) Important for survival
Expectations can be manipulated:
Questions
Bird (1927); Marshall (1969)
Because memory for detail is poor, people can be influenced by questions which suggests specific expectations
eg:
People are not accurate when reporting numerical details:
car speed: actual (12 mph)
Person: ~10 to 50 mph
Leading qns:
you were at the scene of the crime on the 29th of August, correct?
VS
Where were you on the 29th of August?
Expectations can be manipulated:
Questions
Bird (1927); Marshall (1969)
Because memory for detail is poor, people can be influenced by questions which suggests specific expectations
eg:
People are not accurate when reporting numerical details:
car speed: actual (12 mph)
Person: ~10 to 50 mph
Leading qns:
you were at the scene of the crime on the 29th of August, correct?
VS
Where were you on the 29th of August?
Traffic accident experiment
Loftus & Palmer (1974)
Details and Results
Idea if leading qn.
Participants presented with a pic of car crash
They were then asked to make an estimate of how fast the car was going when it ______ into the other car
Variation:
contacted/Hit/bumped/collided/smashed in the blank
Results:
contacted < Hit < bumped < collided < smashed in terms of speed estimates
Memory:
P’s are more likely to report that they did see broken glass if the word smashed is used compared to the word hit or another control group
Using a leading question influences the estimate of the speed and inferences based on memory for particular events
Line ups: Warning that appearance may have changed
Charman & Wells (2007)
The type of question provides a cue which is used to extract a schema of the events
When given the instruction that appearance may change, more False alarms than when no instructions were given.
False Memories
Wade, Garry, Read & Lindsay (2002)
False memories are notoriously easy to implant
Implanted photos from people’s child hood into scenes that they never experienced
The number of false assertions incorrectly remembered increases (after interviews<3>)
Continued influence effect:
It is very difficulty to remove the influence of misinformation
Continued influence effect:
The persistent reliance on misinformation even when people can recall a correction or retraction
Warehouse fire
Johnson & Seifert (1994)
Details
Description of an fire incident in 3 conditions:
Control: Closet empty
Immediate Retraction:
Flammable materials in closet
immediately Closet was empty
Delayed Retraction:
Flammable materials in closet
after awhile closet was empty
Questions that was asked later:
1) Fact questions
Where was the fire located?
2) Inference questions
Why did the fire spread so quickly?
3) Manipulation check
Do you remember any corrections?
Warehouse fire
Johnson & Seifert (1994)
Results
??
Misinformation results in more references to negligence
No difference in recall of retraction (100% immediate vs 90% delayed)
Even when you KNOW something has been retracted, it still influences your memory
number of references to volatile materials:
Immediate > delayed»_space; sig. control
Belief increases with repetitions
Ecker, Lewandowsky, Swire & Chang (2011)
When misinformation is presented once, it continues to be believed even if retracted more than once
The belief in the misinformation is greater when the misinformation is repeated.
And still doesn’t diminish to baseline levels even if retracted multiple times
The causal role of misinformation (3)
Johnson & Seifert (1994)
Inferences based on misinformation only occurred when the volatile materials could have been the cause of the fire
No increase in misinformation when the volatile materials were mentioned as being located in a store across the street
Not just recall alone but incorporation into the overall schema of the event
The causal role of misinformation:
Alternative theory
Johnson & Seifert (1994)
Corrections are more effective when they contain an alternative causal story
Alternative theory group:
not negligence but arson
=> number of negligence inferences drops back to control levels
Alternative must be plausible and explain all observed features of the event
Causal Information:
Hamby et al. (2019)
Causal alternatives fill in a gap in the story caused by the retraction
This allows for increased comprehension allowing people to build a more complete schema
People prefer complete schemas, even if they are inaccurate, to incomplete schemas
Memory and expectation
Memory is comprised of a few salient details, but is “knitted together” at retrieval by expectation
Practical Importance of Misinformation
(effects)
Crime and Jury
Mock jurors continue to rely on inadmissible evidence even when they claim to have obeyed instructions to ignore it
Accusing an alternative suspect greatly reduced the number of guilty verdicts compared to merely explaining why the defendant wasn’t guilty
Understanding Memory is the Key to Combating Misinformation
3
The “Information Deficit Model” is incorrect
Cannot combat information by providing more true information to counteract the misinformation
Causal alternatives are necessary
Backfire Effects:
1) Familiarity backfire
2) Overkill backfire
3) Worldview backfire
Familiarity Backfire Effect
defination
Cognitive bias that causes people to remember misinformation better, and as true, after retractions, as a result of the increased exposure to that misinformation.
familiarity as a signal that a memory is true
Familiarity and Fluency
Song & Schwarz (2008)
Making something easier to recall increases its fluency:
colour contrast of a printed font => easier to read => increase belief in a statement
Fluency is used as a cue to belief
Familiarity and Fluency
Song & Schwarz (2008)
Information that is inconsistent or incoherent is processed less fluently (Winkielman et al., 2012)
Disfluency makes people think something isn’t “right” and prompts closer scrutiny (Schwarz et al., 2007)
People use the cue of fluency even if it has nothing to do with message content (Song & Schwarz, 2008)
Familiarity Backfire Effect
Skurnik et al. (2005)
After a 3-day delay,
older adults were likely to endorse FALSE events as true if they were initially presented as TRUE (and repeated before their retraction)
1 time => 0.28
2 times => 0.4
Information that is initially presented as true is believed to be true even after correction.
This belief increases with repetition
Overkill Backfire Effect
too much?
Providing fewer counterarguments can be better than presenting more
Fewer counterarguments are easier to process (fluency effect
Worldview Backfire Effect
Counter-arguments can cause people with strong views to strengthen their incorrect beliefs
if we want to change ppl’s belief present the retraction so that it does not challenge their existing prior beliefs in a strong fashion.
Summary on misinformation
Because our expectations affect what we remember, it makes particularly susceptible to misinformation
People are bad discounting incorrect information even when we know it is false
Unless we have a alternative theory (or schema) which explains the incorrect information
How information is presented can affect our belief
