Everyday memory

• Factors affecting memory


  • Attention
  • How we encode information (levels of processing)
  • What other people tell us
  • Other information (our prior knowledge and beliefs)
• Autobiographical memory


  Memories of information related to yourself
• Cue-word method


  Given a list of words and write down a memory associated with those words
• Bahrick, Bahrick, & Wittlinger (1975)


  Used highschool yearbooks to test people's memory
• Bahrick, Bahrick, & Wittlinger (1975) findings


  • 392 graduates
  • Showed yearbook photos, asked for names to pictures
  • 90% accuracy 3 months after graduation
  • 90% 25 years after graduation
  • 80% 45 years after graduation
• Linton(1975)


  Kept a diary, recorded at least 2 events every day, for 6 years
• Linton found very little forgetting, and recalled pleasant events better than unpleasant ones
• Childhood/infantile amnesia


  We typically have no memories from the first 3 years of life
• Reasons for childhood/infantile amnesia: Development of language, sense of self, etc. Information is processed differently once these have developed, making it hard for us to retrieve things that were processed in a different way. Biology: brain continues to develop during first few years of life (e.g, hippocampus)
• Reminiscence bump


  Older adults show an increased tendency to recall events from 15-25 years of age
• Life-script events tend to occur in the 15-25 year age range, which is the typical autobiographical-memory event period
• Flashbulb memory


  A special type of memory and memory process for surprising and consequential events
• Examples of flashbulb memories

  • Challenger disaster (1986)
  • 9-11 (2001)
  • Princess diana's death
• Flashbulb memories are supposedly permanently remembered and have lots of detail, very vivid
• Brown and Kulik (1977)


  Asked people to describe their memories of significant events, years (13 and 8 years) after the events, and people seemed to have photographic memory
• We do not know if flashbulb memories are accurate
• Preferred research protocol for flashbulb memories

  Wait for a surprising consequential event to occur, ask people right then, and then ask them about their memories again months or years later
• McClosky, Wible, and Cohen (1988)

  Surveyed people right after the disaster and then again 9 months later, found participants' recollections were less specific and somewhat inconsistent after 9 months
• Neisser and Harsch (1992)

  Surveyed 106 students in PSY 101, just 24 hours after the Challenger event
• Conway (2008)


  Studied memories from 9-11, found fairly high accuracy and better recall on 9/11/02 than 9/10/02, news media provided cues to help recall
• Talarico and Rubin (2003)


  Surveyed memory for 9-11 in 54 students one day after the event, retested either 1 week, 6 weeks, or 32 weeks later, found about the same number of details recalled but emotions are higher for flashbulb memories
• Flashbulb memories are not really any better than, or different from, regular memories (except, perhaps, that we have high confidence in them)
• Extreme emotion at time of encoding does not necessarily lead to memories that are less prone to forgetting
• Wagenaar and Groenweg (1990)


  Explored memory of concentration camp survivors 40 years after event, found many details were remembered accurately but survivors also made mistakes
• The judicial interest is usually in the minute details of eyewitness testimony, such details are not always available, and if they are available, they are not always correct
• Loftus and Palmer (1974)

  Studied influence of leading questions on memory accuracy, showed participants film of a traffic accident and later tested their memory
• Loftus, Miller, & Burns (1978)


  Showed participants 30 slides of a red car turning a corner at a stop sign hitting a pedestrian, one question contained misleading information for half of the participants, participants who were given inconsistent information chose the stop sign slide only 41% of the time
• Post-event information can change the memories of the original event, and different testing methods do not help the original memory resurface
• Misattribution: The case of Donald Thompson


  A woman identified Donald Thompson as her attacker, but she had actually seen him on TV when the attack happened and confused his face with the attacker
• Source misattribution: Having a memory, but losing track of where it came from, can lead to confusing imagined events with real events, or self with friends
• Police questioning and lineup/photo arrays can lead to false memories and overconfidence in witness identifications
• In psychotherapy, therapists can easily suggest that trauma might have occurred and then the client incorporates that information into a false memory of trauma
• Combating false memories


  Make a statement of the event as soon as possible, use a cognitive interview (mentally reconstruct the context, report everything, recount in backwards, recount from different perspectives)
• Mnemonics


  Strategies for remembering, including first letter methods, pegword method, link/story method, method of loci, and keyword mnemonics
• Mnemonics work well because they make information more meaningful, connect new information to existing knowledge, provide organization, and involve elaboration and imagery
• False memory lab


  Presents lists of words closely associated with a common 'lure' word, and tests whether participants falsely recall the lure word as if it was studied
• Participants falsely recall the lure words at a rate similar to the studied words, due to our knowledge and schemas interacting with what we are studying, and spreading activation in semantic memory
• Memory of the past can incorporate our current knowledge and beliefs