General Psychology 2301

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General Psychology 2301

• Memory

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Can Memories Be Wrong?

• What is confabulation?
• What is source amnesia?
• How reliable is eyewitness testimony?

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Factors in Confabulation

• Frequent recall
• Addition of detail to fabricated events
• Easily imagined events
• Our memory has no built-in error checker to
  warn us of confabulations

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Memories

• Our brain reconstructs our lives through
  memories
• Memories are stored throughout the brain, and
  must be rebuilt when recalled
• Source amnesia ? misattribution of memory source
• Flashbulb memories ? strong, vivid memories of
  particular events
• Where were you on 9/11?
• Flashbulb memories and confabulation

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The 9/11 Study

• 54 college students asked to recall the 9/11
  events as well as a mundane event from that day
• Some recalled at one week, some at 6 weeks, some
  at 32 weeks
• Students reported more vividness and confidence
  in the 9/11 memory, but
• Both memories were equally erroneous

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But I Saw It!

• Eyewitness testimony is vulnerable to
  confabulation
• Children are even more vulnerable than adults
• Can be induced by
• Differences in language
• Misleading information from outside sources
• Leading questions

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The Car Crash Study

• People viewed short films of car crashes
• Afterwards, asked How fast were the cars going
  when they ______ each other?
• Smashed 40.8 mph
• Collided 39.3 mph
• Bumped 38.1 mph
• Hit 34 mph
• Contacted 31.8 mph

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Children and Memory

• Did _____ do _____? (act did not occur)
• Note that influence techniques
• Increase false response rates
• Negate the advantage of age

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The McMartin Daycare Fiasco (1983)

• Children reported that the owners son and the
  owners ritually abused them
• Examples included
• Acting in pornographic movies and posing for
  millions of photographs
• Engaging in Satanic rituals (i.e., murder of
  infants, drinking of baby's blood)
• Being forced into a coffin and buried
• Being taken to abuse room through trapdoors and
  underground tunnels (none were ever found)

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A McMartin Child Recants

• "Anytime I would give them an answer that they
  didn't like, they would ask again and encourage
  me to give them the answer they were looking for.
  It was really obvious what they wanted. I know
  the types of language they used on me things
  like I was smart, or I could help the other kids
  who were scared.
• I felt uncomfortable and a little ashamed that I
  was being dishonest. But at the same time, being
  the type of person I was, whatever my parents
  wanted me to do, I would do. And I thought they
  wanted me to help protect my little brother and
  sister who went to McMartin."

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A McMartin Child Recants

• "I think I got the satanic details by picturing
  our church. We went to American Martyrs, which
  was a huge Catholic church. Every Sunday we had
  to go, and Mass would last an hour, hour and a
  half. None of us wanted to go It was kicking and
  screaming all the way thereWhat I would do was
  picture the altar, pews and stained-glass
  windows, and if investigators said, 'Describe
  an altar,' I would describe the one in our
  church. Or instead of, 'There was a priest in a
  green suit (someone who was real), I would say,
  'A man dressed in red as a cult member.' From
  going to church you know that God is good, and
  the devil is bad and has horns and is about evil
  and red and blood. I'd just throw a twist in
  there with Satan and devil-worshipping."

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Priming and Memory

• Prior exposure to cues can influence recall
• Can also influence how attention is allocated

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A Demonstration
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A Demonstration

• Sleepy
• Gloomy
• Grumpy
• Joyful
• Hungry
• Happy
• Dumpy
• Musty

• Doc
• Sneaky
• Bashful
• Sweaty
• Curly
• Sneezy
• Dopey
• Playful

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Quick!

• Write down all the words you can remember. You
  have 2 minutes.

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The Structure of Memory

• How can we model the memory system?
• How do the different parts work?
• How can we improve our memory?
• How does forgetting happen?
• Can you really get amnesia?

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Breaking Down Memory

• Explicit memory ? conscious recall of an event or
  item of information
• Recall ? retrieving information completely
• Recognition ? identifying information previously
  encoded
• Implicit memory ? largely conscious recall of
  information, usually knowledge and skills
• Demonstrated through priming and skill recall

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Modeling Memory

• The Three-Box Model (Atkinsons Modal Model)
• Sensory register
• Short-term memory (STM)
• Long-term memory (LTM)

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Sensory Register

• Two types iconic (visual, 0.5 seconds) and
  echoic (auditory, 2 seconds)
• Holds information briefly to ready for transfer
  to STM
• The VAST majority of sensed information does NOT
  get passed on and is forgotten

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Short-Term Memory (STM)

• Duration Likely less than 30 seconds
• Accepts information from sensory register
• Must be encoded to be passed to long-term memory
  (LTM)
• Capacity Limited to about 7 chunks of
  information
• STM can be vulnerable to serial position effects

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Serial Position Effects

• The tendency to
• Recall first and last items on a list, and
• Fail to recall of items in the middle of the list
• Primacy effect
• Recency effect

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Working Memory

• Accepts information from long-term memory
• Center of executive function for memory
• Inhibiting responses
• Updating information in real-time
• Task switching
• Separate stores for visuospatial information
  and auditory information

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Baddeleys Model
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Can You Do It?

• Draw an 8x8 grid in your notes
• Mark the squares occupied by pieces use W for
  white and B for black
• You will be able to see the board for 5 seconds

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(No Transcript)
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How Did You Do?

• If you are average, you probably got 7 ( or 2)
  right
• More than likely, you were more accurate in the
  upper left quadrant
• Do you think someone could do the whole board?
  What if we dropped the time to 1 second?

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Encoding Strategies

• Used to organize information for LTM and to
  overcome limited capacity of STM
• Elaborative v. maintenance rehearsal
• Chunking
• Mnemonics
• Method of loci
• Exaggerated imagery

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A Practice List

• Dollar
• Dice
• Tricycle
• Clover
• Hand
• Soda
• Dwarves
• Pool

• Baseball
• Toes
• Football
• Roses
• Baker
• Heart
• Taxes
• License

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Long-Term Memory

• Duration and capacity Limitless
• Organized by semantic and orthographic categories
• This can cause confusion in recall (i.e., tip of
  the tongue phenomenon)

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Semantics
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Long-Term Memory

• Different types
• Procedural memories
• Semantic memories
• Episodic memories

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Quick Check

• What kind of memory is your memory for the fact
  that the earth is round?
• A. Procedural memory
• B. Semantic memory
• C. Episodic memory
• D. Flashbulb memory

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Quick Check

• What kind of memory is your memory for the fact
  that the earth is round?
• A. Procedural memory
• B. Semantic memory
• C. Episodic memory
• D. Flashbulb memory

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Forgetting

• Three points where it can occur
• Encoding from sensory register to STM
• Encoding from STM to LTM
• Retrieving from LTM
• Therefore ? 2/3 of forgetting isnt forgetting at
  all!

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Reasons for Retrieval Failure

• Decay
• Replacement (usually through misleading
  information)
• Interference (proactive v. retroactive)
• Cue dependence
• State-dependence

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Interference Effects

• Retroactive interference (recent)
• Recently learned material interferes with the
  ability to remember older, similar material
• Proactive interference (previous)
• Previously learned material interferes with the
  ability to remember recent, similar material

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Cue and State Dependencies

• State-dependent memory
• Tendency to remember something when we are in the
  same physical/mental state as during the original
  learning
• Mood-congruent memory
• Tendency to remember experiences consistent with
  ones current mood

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Amnesia

• Two types
• Psychogenic amnesia psychological causes
• Embarrassment, guilt, shame, disappointment
• Traumatic amnesia psychological and/or physical
  causes
• Specific traumatic events are forgotten,
  sometimes for many years

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Childhood Amnesia

• Limited to declarative types of memory
• Procedural memories can form very early in life
• Main theory Encoding strategies must be learned
• Other ideas
• No sense of self / theory of mind
• Reliance on adults questions for retrieval cues
• Focus on routine rather than distinctiveness