Lecture 6 - Long Term Memory in Practice

what is autobiographical memory?

memory about ourselves that consists of episodic and semantic memories (things that we did and facts)

how do we approach studying autobiographical memory?

by measuring memory for public events, confirming everyday events with family members and the use of diary studies

how does a diary study work?

participants write down whatever happens to them at the end of the day longitudinally so that researchers have a record of the event to verify the accuracy of autobiographical memory

what aspect of autobiographical memory are researchers concerned with?

concerned with quality which refers to accuracy detail and vividity of the recollection of events

why is autobiographical memory hard to study?

because it is hard to verify since researchers are not present at encoding

what is the issue associated with diary studies?

when people write down their memories its could mean that memory for those events is better than usual cause it uses elaboration so its not an exact picture of the events that happened

how is elaboration avoided in diary studies?

researchers call or text participant at random times and tell them to write down whatever they were doing in that moment preventing the act of choosing what to write down but doesnt fully overcome the problem but still a major improvement

infantile amnesia

the fact that we don’t have memories from very early childhood starting from the age of 2 and under, not that 2 yr olds dont have memory at all just that they aren’t maintained through adulthood

what is our memory like from ages 2 to 5

these are early memories that we might remember bits and flashes of

when do tru memories start?

from age 5

what is the issue with using family members to verify the accuracy of memories?

since they are very early memories, when family members talk about an event that happened when you were under 5 you might just be remembering the retelling of the event and not the memory itself, even if its accurate its most likely a secondary memory, shown by participants being unable to date a memory

how do researchers study infantile memory?

they ask participants to free recall early events or provide target events of probe words cueing early memory, getting you to remember things that you don’t think are particularly important

probe word

neutral word then cues participants to tell the researcher something that happened in childhood that is related to the word

earliest infantile memory theory

because of rapid neurogenesis at such a early age the brain isnt developed enough to remember, store and support memories at 2 years old, the view that neurological maturation causes infantile amnesia

why dont we believe the earliest infantile memory theory to be true?

cause the hippocampus for example isnt developed at birth, prefrontal cortex continues to develop until we are 25 (early memories occur before these key things are fully mature)

Josselyn and Frankland’s theory

that rapid hippocampal development leads to forgetting early memories and that neurogenesis stops after birth

why was Josselyn and Frankland’s theory found to be wrong?

cause neurogenesis still happens after birth particularly in the olfactory cortex and hippocampus which are key for memory

what is the 2nd theory for infantile amnesia?

Language development requirement for forming autobiographical memories, before that memories are non linguistic without a narrative form 

what evidence supports the language theory for infantile amnesia?

women have an earlier offset of infantile amnesia, young girls tend to develop language earlier than boys

transfer appropriate processing

memories encoded in a nonverbal form stay that way

simmcock and hayne experiment

children from 2 to 4 yrs old watched a shrinking machine and were tested on their vocab for items that shrunk and their memory was tested for that event a year later then another 6 yrs later. Parents completed a vocab questionnaire before to know what words the children know and what words they didnt

what were the results of the simmcock and hayne experiment 1 year later?

all children remembered they did the experiment, that they had a memory of using the objects and if their was vocabulary for that object prior to that event so if they had a word for it they remembered

what were the results for the simmcock and hayne experiment 6 years later?

most remembered they did the test and tendency that children remembered more of the items that they had a word for it prior to the initial test (same pattern from yr 1)

what does the simmcock and hayne experiment prove?

that both self-concept and language skills are likely related to infantile amnesia

reminiscence bump

Peak in memory accuracy in around the time of early teens to late 20s (episodic and semantic memories), memories of life events peak in adolescence and early adulthood

cognitive hypothesis for reminiscence bump

there is nothing special going on related to the reminiscence bump what’s special is what happened in that time, distinct cues that we elaborate on because they have big effects in our later life, memories in early adulthood occur in periods of rapid change followed by stability, it just happens cause this is where most of the special distinct life events happen

self image hypothesis for the reminiscence bump

formation of personal identity strengths memories for that period of time, due to self reference effect and that the bump shows a critical time where we are forming our self identity

proof for the cognitive hypothesis theory of the reminiscence bump

in immigrants their reminiscence bumps is 30 yr old and later so they have a shift in the bump corresponding to the years where they move to the country, because there are a lot of firsts that happen

self reference effect

things that happen when we are forming our identities are relevant to us

maturational account hypothesis of the reminiscence bump

the goal of life is to attract a mate and reproduce at this time is in our 20s, cognitive processes are at their maximum during period of reminiscence bump

cultural life script hypothesis of the reminiscence bump

certain expectations that are generally during early adulthood, its that we keep hearing about important things that are supposed to happen to us in that time frame so elaborate on them, memory is improved for positive culturally shared experiences results in increased elaborative rehearsal but doesn’t explain bump shift

what do the self-image and maturational account hypotheses fail to consider in the reminiscence bump?

it doesn’t explain the shift because you can learn things and not change your identity and you’re not at your cognitive peak in your 30s

flashbulb memories

Memories that we have that are like a video, exactly what happened at that event exactly as it happened, only happens for surprising events that are also emotional, generally negative and emotional, usually big world events and they are uncommon

Talrico and Rubin flashbulb memory study

Studied flashbulb memories for 9 - 11 in people that didn’t live in New York, asked participants where they were and what happened when they learned about the event, and also tell them something else they did in their everyday life that day and tested accuracy as well as false memory 

talrico and rubin flashbulb memory study results

Increasingly more false memories overtime and less accurate, no difference in performance between the everyday event memory and the flashbulb memory

• people predicted the opposite would occur: their flashbulb memories would persist in accuracy overtime but their everyday memories overtime would declined

schema

knowledge structure for an event or situation. They can act as heuristics that tell us what we should expect

scripts

set of directions and understandings that people use to categorize and navigate situations that arise in their lives, helps us organize our memories, focus our limited resources, reduce memory load, and make inferences

Heuristics

mental shortcuts that can facilitate problem-solving and probability judgments.

what did bartlett’s repeated reproduction experiment prove?

we use general knowledge and expectations based on past experiences to organize memories, that memory is reconstructive and we fill in the blanks with things we already know

bartlett’s repeated reproduction experiment

participants presented with a stimuli than asked to reproduce it from memory over and over again but they are only presented with the stimulus once

what were the results of the Bartlett repeated reproduction experiment?

Overtime depiction becomes worse, some delay between each reproduction and detail was lost because if the participants didnt remember what the stimulus was they started to add in detail from their common experience/schemas

Deese-Roediger-Mcdermott (DRM) procedure

An effective technique for creating and investigating false memories where semantically related lists of words lead participants to falsely remember non-presented semantically related words

• the effect of false memory was done using source monitoring error by implementing the divided attention condition

activation monitoring theory

Proposes we activate a schema and then falsely attribute the source to episodic memory

source monitoring error

thinking you did something but you just thought about doing it before, you never actually did it (remember effect but don’t remember source)

misinformation effect

When you are actually remembering something that never happened, when someone else provides missing information and you end up remembering what you were told rather than the actual event,

in what condition does the misinformation effect apply?

only applies into a situation where you act as a witness to an event, not an autobiographical event 

misinformation paradigm (Loftus and Burns) encoding phase

stimuli watched a video of a car and participants were partial witnesses cause they saw the car come up the side and heard the crash

misinformation paradigm (Loftus and Burns) misinformation phase

• some participants are given false information, did another car pass the red car when it was stopped at the stop sign?

• Other half were asked misleading questions: did another car pass the red car when it was stopped the yield sign?

misinformation paradigm (Loftus and Burns) recognition phase

two images and one is a still from the video, participants are asked which one they saw 

misinformation paradigm (Loftus and Burns) results

those who didnt get misleading info correctly recognized the image 75% of the time and those who got the misleading info correctly recognized the image 47% of the time

• people tend to recall what they are told rather than what they actually saw

misinformation paradigm results for with the subtle information

How fast were the cars going when they hit(or)smashed each other?

• smashed = more likely to report seeing broken glass

shopping mall study (loftus and pickrell, implanted memories)

memory of being lost in the mall as a child was implanted in the participants, recruited participants and their family members, experiment about childhood memories and created booklets with 3 events that family members said happened in the child’s life and then she added the false mall memory as a 4th description.

They were mailed the booklets and they had to write down anymore details they remembered and if they don’t remember anything else leave it blank ( it was repeated twice, then 3rd time came into the lab and do the same thing)

shopping mall study (loftus and pickrell, implanted memories) results

In the lab, told that 1 was false and they had to pick out which one was false and found that at the end of the trials ¼ picked a real memory as the false one meaning implantation was successful in those participants

wade et al (implanted memory study)

had family members send them a bunch of photographs and some of them were a picture of them in a hot air balloon that was photoshopped

wade et al (implanted memory study) results

At the end of the trial ½ of the participants falsely remembered the air balloon memory

what is the issue of false memories in eye witness testimony

You are convicting someone of a crime based on what someone remembers, not saying there’s any attempt to falsely accuse someone it just happens by accident

change blindness in eye witness testimony creating false memories

if there is a weapon used that would have attracted the witness’ attention and so they rarely attend to what the person holding it looks like

how does the misinformation effect play a role in eyewitness testimony?

types of question that are asked can alter eye witnesses’ memories, ex: witnessing a robbery and asking how bushy robber’s moustache is even if they don’t remember it they will now think the robber has a moustache 

how does the source monitoring error play a role in eyewitness testimony?

accusing innocent bystanders of committing a crime, not really paying attention to identity of anyone there

how does confirmation bias and confidence play a role in eyewitness testimony?

juries believe confidence, if person was there and saw the same person they are sure that they did the crime it is believable but that does not confirm accuracy