Week 9-Memory Errors

Question 1

What classification types are there for memory errors? (Schacter, 1999; 2021)

Answer 1

■ Transience: Forgetting of memories (iconic memory, echoic memory, forgetting from working memory, forgetting from long-term memory)

■ Absent-mindedness: Memory errors due to attentional failures (i.e., not paying attention) at encoding or retrieval.

■ Blocking: The inability to retrieve information although it has been encoded deeply
– Tip of the tongue feeling
- Intentional suppression of memories

■ Bias: Memory distortion of previous experiences due to influences of present knowledge, beliefs, and feelings.

■ Misattribution: Accurate memories assigned to the wrong source (e.g., remembered the wrong person saying it)

■ Suggestibility: Memories which incorporate inaccurate information from an external source.

■ Persistence: Inability to avoid unwanted, intrusive memories of traumatic or arousing events.

Question 2

Encoding errors: How do encoding errors occur?

Answer 2

■ Very often, we fail to remember because the memory was never encoded properly e.g., forgetting where the car keys are.

■ We tend to encode more efficiently when we focus our attention and process information at a semantic level, or when the encoding operations are the best suited to the future retrieval demands.

■ So, most of the failures will be either due to slips of attention or inefficient information processing.

■ As an example, we can look at how the use of technology can cause memory problems.

Question 3

Encoding errors: What is a GPS?

Answer 3

■ Global Positioning System (GPS) is a satellite-based system that provides spatial navigation guidance in real time and tends to be pretty accurate.

■ Includes both visual and voice instructions. It has replaced the need of maps or verbal instructions.

■ Can be part of multiple devices (phones, smart watches, computers)

Question 4

Encoding errors: What is the link between the use of GPS and spatial memory? (Gardony et al., 2015)

Answer 4

■ Participants were asked to navigate different virtual environments in four different conditions: With and without GPS, both with attention divided and undivided.

■ They first saw an overhead view of the environment and then navigated across 10 landmarks (city hall, hotel, library, garden, etc.).

■ Receiving GPS-type instructions made it much easier for participants to navigate through the unknown environment,
in particular in the undivided condition i.e., full attention

■ After completing the navigation task, spatial memory was tested in a variety of ways including:
– Landmark recall
– Map organisation (draw the map themselves to see how they organised the space in their mind)
– Pointing (pointing directions for specific landmarks)

■ The aid (GPS-like instructions) affected memory only in the undivided (full) attention condition i.e., made it worse. It did not have any impact in the divided attention condition.

■ The presence of navigational Aids such as GPS affect the creation of new spatial memories by reducing people’s attention to spatial information.

Question 5

Incidental forgetting: Define Decay

Answer 5

Mnemonic traces simply fade away with time i.e., neural connections fade (hard to test this as a cause of forgetting as we cannot exclude any other factors)

Question 6

Incidental forgetting: What are some causes of forgetting?

Answer 6

■ Interference
– Proactive: previous learned information interferes with new memories
– Retroactive: newly learned information interferes with old memories

■ Retrieval failure: memories present but inaccessible

■ Context dependency: changes in environment between encoding and retrieval affect recall of information

■ Directed forgetting: conscious, deliberate forgetting

Question 7

Incidental forgetting: What is the rate of forgetting?

Answer 7

■ Rate of forgetting is non-linear with maximum loss shortly after learning and little additional loss of information at longer delays.

■ Forgetting curves for different types of information and different degrees of learning are comparable.

■ Forgetting has been linked to interference between current and past information.

■ Proactive and retroactive interference effects

Question 8

Motivated forgetting: What is Freud’s theory behind suppression of memories?

Answer 8

■ One of the basic elements of Freudian theory is the notion of “repression” or “suppression”.

■ Undesirable or painful feelings, images and thoughts are pushed out of memory to stop them interfering with our everyday lives.

■ According to Freud this banishment of unwanted memories can be either a conscious or an unconscious process.
– Sometimes repression is used for unconscious and suppression for conscious forgetting

Question 9

Motivated forgetting: What is the item method seen in directed forgetting? (Anderson & Hanslmayr, 2014)

Answer 9

■ In the item-method, after each item is presented at encoding, participants are asked to either remember or forget the preceding item

■ At tests they are asked to retrieve all items and participants
retrieve more remember than forget items

■ The effect is found for both pictures and words and in both
recall and recognition tests suggesting deficits at encoding
than difficulties at retrieval
– Perhaps, the memory was not created at the first place

-Recall is a harder test whereas recognition is an easier test as you are limited with the information to recognise it.

Question 10

Motivated forgetting: What is behind the item-method forgetting?

Answer 10

■ The Selective Rehearsal hypothesis suggests that people restrict elaborative processing of
the Forget items
– There is more cognitive effort in Remember than Forget trials

■ The Encoding Suppression hypothesis suggests that forgetting is an active process
– There is more cognitive effort in Forget than Remember trials (you engage a different mechanism and try your hardest to forget what you’ve seen before).

■ There is evidence that reaction times to a secondary task is slower after Forget than Remember items (Fawcett & Taylor, 2008)
– One possibility is that there are fewer resources available in Forget trials because Forget trials involve additional processing

Question 11

Motivated forgetting: what is the list method in directed forgetting?

Answer 11

■ Another way to induce forgetting is to interfere with retrieval processes

■ In the list-method, two lists are presented. At the end of one list
and without expecting it (i.e., researcher “realising” they gave the wrong list), participants are asked to forget the previous items.

■ At test, they are asked to retrieve all items and participants retrieve more from the remember than the forget list.

■ The effect is found only in recall (recognition memory is not
impaired) suggesting the deficit affects locating the memory (i.e.
retrieval). This is because in theory, they have pushed out the previous information so they can remember the newer ones better.

Question 12

Motivated forgetting: Intentional Retrieval Suppression: What is the Think-No Think paradigm? (Anderson et al., 2004)

Answer 12

Phase 1-Training
■ Ss learn a series of unrelated word-pairs
…pen-cherry, table-crane, glass-fur…

Phase 2-Experimental session (multiple presentation of cues)
■ Some pairs (pen-cherry) are tagged as respond (Think):
“when you see the cue pen think of its pair”
■ Some pairs (table-crane) are tagged as suppress (No Think):
“when you see the cue table do not think of its pair”
■ Some pairs (glass-fur) are not repeated (Baseline)

Phase 3-Test
■ All pairs are tested and participants are asked to try hard to remember
“….try to remember the word that was paired with pen”

Question 13

Motivated forgetting: Intentional Retrieval Suppression: What are the findings of the Think-No Think paradigm? (Anderson et al., 2004)

Answer 13

 Recall for No Think pairs worse than the baseline (but no difference for Think pairs).

 Forgetting increases (recall drops) with greater successive suppression attempts.

 Forgetting under strategic, executive control i.e., we have control over our forgetting

 Active inhibition of retrieval in our brains.

■ The Bilateral anterior hippocampi showed reduced activity during suppression (Forget!) trials.

■ These areas showed increased
activity during suppression (Forget!) trials:
– Ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC)
– Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC)
– Anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)
– Intraparietal sulcus (IPS)

■ Increased activation in DLPFC & left VLPFC predicted increased memory inhibition in the behavioural task.

■ Other non-memory but similar tasks that also require subjects to override strong responses also activate the DLPFC, the VLPFC and the ACC.

■ The hippocampal reductions are in agreement with the well known role of the hippocampus in memory processes and in memory encoding in particular.

■ Suppressed activity of the
hippocampus may explain the fact that these items were subsequently less likely to be
remembered.

■ In addition, the study provided some evidence of executive control over the hippocampus.
Increases in DLPFC correlated with increased suppression for SF items in the right hippocampus.

Question 14

Give an overall summary of motivated forgetting

Answer 14

■ There is strong evidence that we can explicitly and to a certain extent control what information we will remember or forget.

■ This can be accomplished not just by controlling encoding (i.e. pay more attention) to the
information we wish to remember but by actively suppressing unwanted memories.

■ Studies using the think/no think paradigm have also revealed a network of brain structures
which interact to suppress memories.

■ Not all studies have replicated the results of the think/no think paradigm; the neural correlates of conscious and unconscious suppression mechanisms are still under investigation.

Question 15

Bias: What is emotional bias?

Answer 15

■ When asked to note (autobiographical) memories that come to their mind effortlessly, people show a tendency to retrieve more pleasant than unpleasant memories.

■ In one study, 49% were pleasant and only 19% unpleasant (Bernsten, 1996).

■ We also tend to remember the positive more than the negative feedback that we receive
(Sedikides & Green, 2000).

■ This does not extend to all negative information.
– We don’t tend to forget negative information about us but we remember negative feedback directed more towards others especially those we do not
personally know!

Question 16

Bias: What is the Inconsistency-Negativity Neglect Model? (Sedikides & Green, 2000)

Answer 16

■ Individuals are “motivated to neglect the processing of information that challenges their positive self-conceptions […] The more challenging the information is, the more likely the individual will be to neglect it.” (p. 909)

■ Feedback inconsistent with self image and which targets central self-conceptions is seen as particularly threatening because it affects the stability of the self-concept.

■ Ignoring negative feedback ensures stability of self-concept.

Question 17

Bias: What is emotional bias like in the elderly?

Answer 17

■ Older adults show a positive affect bias in their learning and memory (i.e., they tend to remember more positive memories than negative ones).

■ Although overall memory performance drops with age, older people remember a greater proportion of positive than negative stimuli compared to the young.

■ This relates to both the encoding of new information and retrieval of autobiographical memories.

■ Similar effects have also been found with Chinese participants suggesting cultural independence (Chung & Lin, 2012).

Question 18

Bias: What is emotional bias like in the elderly? Why do we develop a greater bias for positive memories rather than negative as we age? (Mather & Carstensen, 2005)

Answer 18

■ Socioemotional selectivity theory suggests that the consideration of one’s “time horizon” (how much we think we have left to live) influences our goals and motivation.

■ With a short time-horizon, greater emphasis is placed on emotional states and improving our sense of wellbeing.

■ Under normal conditions, elderly have a shorter time-horizon and that explains their memory (and also attentional) bias.

■ When the time-horizon for younger people changes (e.g. terminal illness), a positive affect bias also emerges. Conversely, if older people believe that their lives can be extended, the positive
bias reduces.

Question 19

Bias: What is the own race face bias?

Answer 19

■ Own race face bias (ORB) (also known as the cross race or other race face effect): People tend to remember faces of their own race better than faces of other races.

-For example, white participants will have worse memory for black than white faces and vice versa.

Question 19

False memory: What is the Deese, Roediger & McDermott paradigm?

Answer 19

■ Ps are shown a series of words which are all highly associated with a lure word that is NOT studied:
- study: thread, pin, sewing…sharp, haystack, injection
- they are all strongly associated with needle (related lure-not presented)

■ On free recall and recognition memory tests the related lure was
retrieved as often as any of the presented words, the true targets.

■ Not only were the lures retrieved but these memories were also
judged to be as vivid and rich in contextual detail as any true memory.

Question 20

False memory: What is the rate of false memories?

Answer 20

■ Rate of false memories is very high, comparable or slightly lower than that of true memories.

■ Participants’ subjective experience does not discriminate between true & false memories.

Question 21

False memory: How can False memories be more robust than true memories?

Answer 21

– Increasing the number of unrelated words in the list affects true but not false memories.

– Levels of processing does not affect false recognition.

– Repeated tests following a single presentation increases the false memory rate.

– Tested at longer delays false memories are better retained than true memories.

– Divided attention at either study or test impairs both true & false memories.

– BUT false and true memories differ in reported sensory detail. (when we are asking for details relating to the perceptual differences, this is where we could see the difference between the two as there is no associated sensory information for false memories).

Question 22

False memory: Theories of false memory: What is the Activation of
Associative Responses? (Roediger & McDermott, 1995)

Answer 22

■ During encoding, the processing words which are semantically linked to a target word will also activate by association the target word.

■ Because the target word has been activated by a number of different words its overall activation level is high.

■ At test, participants retrieve information on the basis of its activation strength making it
likely that a target word will be falsely retrieved (people would retrieve it as why is it so familiar if thats not the word).

■ …Or, because the target was activated at study by association, participants believe that they have actually experienced the item whereas in fact they have only thought about it. False memory then is similar to a source error.

Question 23

False memory: Theories of false memory: What is the Gist memory & sensory reactivation? (Schacter, 1999)

Answer 23

■ Presentation of word lists consisting of semantically related items creates a certain theme, a
well organised representation of the “gist” of the study list (sort of like word association in a way? e.g., diamond is linked to the gist which is jewellry)

■ Participants then approach the task by relying on their memory for the “gist” rather than individual features and as a result they make more semantically related errors.

Question 24

False memory: What Evidence is there from functional neuroimaging? (Cabeza et al., 2001)

Answer 24

■ In this study, participants heard lists of words (related lists) spoken by two different speakers.

■ At test, while in the scanner, they were asked to recognise studied, related false and unrelated false words.

■ As expected they showed high levels of related false alarms.

■ Brain (haemodynamic) responses to related false items
were almost identical to studied items in prefrontal and
hippocampal sites. These areas were influenced by semantic similarity (i.e., even if not real, semantically it should be there).

■ By contrast, parahippocampal cortex which is involved in
perceptual processing classified related and unrelated false alarms together as neither class of item had a pre-existing perceptual record (i.e., it distinguishes the true memories from the false as this particular area is linked to perceptual processing, and in these cases, the false memories have never been perceived hence how it is recognised as false).

Question 25

What are false autobiographical memories?

Answer 25

■ Suggestibility through misinformation (Loftus, 1975).

■ Is it possible to convince people that specific events happened during their childhood to the extent that they can then produce false memories related to the event?

■ Studies have intermixed false and true events and asked people to recall their memories of these events.

■ The number of people that are susceptible to false recall varies considerably among studies possibly due to a number of factors including the plausibility of the event, their emotional significance, their suggestibility, scoring method among others.

Question 26

False autobiographical memories: What does the technique involve in the procedure?

Answer 26

■ Participants get a description of several real and one false childhood event

■ True events supplied by family acting as confederates

■ Asked to remember details of the events over 2-3 interview sessions

■ Wade et al. (2004) went a step further and manipulated pictures of events to involve the participants when were children. Pictures…
– Are considered objective, reliable, undisputed evidence of a plausible event
– Provide a lot of detail that can be used to construct a memory narrative

Question 27

False autobiographical memories: What were the results of Wade et al’s (2002) study?

Answer 27

-“At Interview 1, 1 subject reported a clear false memory, 6 reported partial false memories, 3 were trying to recall, and 10 had no memory responses.”

-“By Interview 3, the one clear false memory remained clear; two
partial false memories became clear; and one trying to recall false
memory developed into a clear false memory. The other four partial false memories stayed partial false memories, whereas two trying to recall memories became partial false memories.”

-“Of the 10 no memories at Interview 1, half remained so, and the other half became trying to recall memories. In short, at the end of the three interview sessions, a total of 10 (50%) subjects recalled the false event either partially or clearly—claiming to remember at least some details of a hot air balloon ride during childhood.”

-True memories more confident than false

Question 28

False autobiographical memories: What were the results of Wade et al’s (2002) study? CLEAR MEMORY

Answer 28

■ Interview 1- Subject S.B.

■ Interviewer: And again, if you want to tell me as much as you can recall about this event without leaving anything out.

■ Subject: Mm . . . no, never actually thought I’d been in a hot air balloon, so there we go.

■ Interviewer: You can’t remember anything about this event?

■ Subject: Nah. Though it is me . . . no memory whatsoever.

■ Interviewer: If you want to take the next few minutes and concentrate on getting a memory back, something about the event.

■ Subject: No, yeah, I honestly . . . no I can’t. That’s really annoying.

Question 29

False autobiographical memories: What were the results of Wade et al’s (2002) study? CLEAR MEMORY PART 2

Answer 29

■ Interview 3 - Subject S.B.

■ Interviewer: Same again, tell me everything you can recall about Event 3 without leaving anything out.

■ Subject: Um, just trying to work out how old my sister was; trying to get the exact . . . when it happened. But I’m still pretty certain it occurred when I was in form one (6th grade) at um the local school there . . . Um basically for $10 or something you could go up in a hot air balloon and go up about 20 odd meters . . . it would have been a Saturday and I think
we went with, yeah, parents and, no it wasn’t, not my grandmother . .
not certain who any of the other people are there. Um, and I’m pretty certain that mum is down on the ground taking a photo.

-They’re filling in the gaps with false details now

Question 30

False autobiographical memories: What were the results of Wade et al’s (2002) study? PARTIAL MEMORY

Answer 30

■ Interview 1 - Subject F.J.

■ Interviewer: Okay, so if you turn over, same case again. Can you tell me everything you remember?

■ Subject: I didn’t even know I had been in a hot air balloon! I’ve never seen this photo in my life.

■ Interviewer: You can’t recall anything that happened in this event?

■ Subject: No, I can’t recall, I mean, the only thing I can assume is that when I was a really small child down in (city), at the (city) fair they had hot air balloons there. And that’s like the only place that I think that could have happened. I’ve never even seen that photo before in my life.

Question 31

False autobiographical memories: What is the three stage process of implantation?

Answer 31

An individual…
■ Accepts that the event is plausible

■ Generates contextual information for the event (could be a mental image, a story, etc.)

■ Misattributes the created event to personal experience rather than a mental construction

■ I would add a precondition: Weak memory for the specific life period

Question 32

Social influence: What is the links between social influence with conformity and memory?

Answer 32

■ Social influence & conformity: The basics
– Informational influence
– Normative influence
■ Social influence & memory
– The social contagion and other paradigms
– False memory and forgetting

Question 33

Social influence: Who is Tim McVeigh?

Answer 33

■ On 19th April 1995, Tim McVeigh and an accomplish carried out a bombing attack on a federal building in Oklahoma City, USA.

■ The bomb killed 168 people and injured more than 680 others.

■ McVeigh was arrested, sentenced to death and executed
by lethal injection.

■ The Oklahoma city bombing represents the deadliest domestic terrorism attack in the USA.

Question 34

Social influence: What was noticed during the investigation with Tim McVeigh?

Answer 34

■ As part of their investigation into the Oklahoma city bombing, the FBI were looking for an additional
accomplice who together with the main perpetrator (T. McVeigh) had rented the car that was used in
the attack.
– Although McVeigh had accomplishes, they were not with him when he rented the car.

■ The misleading information was due to eyewitness testimony:
– Witness 1 claimed to have seen a second man
– Witness 2 initially denied the man’s existence but later changed his testimony.

■ It later emerged that witness 2 changed his testimony after discussing the incident with witness 1. Is it possible that the discussion made witness 2 accept a memory that was not his own?

■ How accurate and independent can eyewitness testimony be if witnesses discuss the event?

Question 35

Social influence: What is Informational Influence?

Answer 35

■ Motivated by the need to be accurate. Subject adopts the opinions of others as evidence
about reality (i.e., relies on others)
– Sensitive to degree of uncertainty
– Proposed to explain the formation and change of social norms

■ Informational influence likely to result in both public conformity & private change
– Present when S is tested individually
– Can persist for a long time (permanent change)

■ Information influence affects both behaviour and memory.

Question 36

Social influence: What is Normative Influence?

Answer 36

■ Motivated by the need to be accepted and considered part of the group.
– The subject conforms to the opinions of the majority even when there is little doubt that
the majority view is incorrect
– Sensitive to size of majority, attractiveness of the group, interdependence between
individual and group
– Reduced when dissenter is present
– Proposed to explain the influence of the group even to matters of undisputed fact

■ Normative influence likely to result in public conformity BUT NOT private change
– Likely eliminated when S is tested individually

■ Normative influence affects behaviour but not memory

Question 37

Social Influence: What is Social contagion? (Roediger et al., 2001)

Answer 37

■ Social transmission of false memories

■ Participants and a confederate viewed six photos of house scenes and then took turns to
recall as many items as they can from each.

■ For two of the scenes the confederate made a false recall (mentioned an item not in the
scene). These were the critical items.

■ Manipulated memory strength
– One group looked at each scene for 15s the other for 60s

■ Manipulated semantic relatedness of false memories
– High and Low probability (semantic relation of item to the scene-likely to be in that photo)

■ Individual recall
– Probability of false recall of critical item vs. baseline & quality of memory

Question 38

Social Influence: What were the results for Social contagion? (Roediger et al., 2001)

Answer 38

■ Strong effects of social influence (greater than baseline)

■ Greater conformity when memory was weaker
– Memory strength correlates negatively with conformity

■ Greater conformity for high vs. low probability items
– If a false memory “belongs more” to the scene, conformity is greater

■ Effect appears greater for know responses
– Related more to familiarity than recollection

Question 39

Social influence: Do we see any evidence of memory improvement as a result of social influence?

Answer 39

■ Evolutionary, it makes sense to rely on others’ memories to gain accurate information.

■ There has been limited research: Allan and Gabbert (2008) found little evidence to
suggest long-term social influence effects for accurate memories.
– But false memories tended to be more long-lasting.

Question 40

Social influence: What is the link between social influence and memory?

Answer 40

■ Social factors also affect the magnitude of social influence effects
– Effect greater for face to face or (perceived) face to face interactions
– Small effects linked to the confidence displayed by confederate at immediate testing

■ Memory conformity more likely to be due to informational influence
– Social influence results in long lasting and private change
– Normative influence effects cannot be excluded but more likely to occur at face-to-face and
public testing

■ Strong social element. We tend to follow certain people more than others:
– People we consider more likely to have got the correct answer
– People to whom we feel socially closer

Question 41

Social influence: Social influence effects on memory: What are some Possible mechanisms?

Answer 41

■ Explanation for the social influence effect have mainly tried to discuss implantation of false
memories

■ Social influence errors are source memory errors
– Item information recalled but source is lost (misattribution)
– False memory is greater if similar to the schema of the episode (gist memory)

■ Efforts to reduce source memory errors reduce conformity
– Drawing attention to the source of information
– Distinctiveness of false memory (dissimilar to episode)

■ More likely to remember Fake News?