Chapter 8 Flashcards
What is autobiographical memory?
Recollections about our life-can be both episodic and semantic
What is an example of episodic autobiographical memory?
Remembering who was at your birthday party, what kind of cake there was etc
What is an example of semantic autobiographical memory?
Remembering your date of birth, the city you were living in.
What are flashbulb memories?
Memories that are incredibly vivid and clear-like a snapshot of a moment in time. Tend to be for very distinctive moments in our lives, have a strong emotional component-positive or negative.
What is the repeated recall paradigm?
Used to test accuracy of flashbulb memories-shortly after a major event, make people write down what they were doing when they heard about it
Then, ask them to do the same thing some time later.
What were the results of the repeated recall paradigm on flashbulb memories?
The memories became less accurate (ex: 20% of people reported watching 9/11 happen on TV, however, when asked years later, that percentage doubles)
What was Talarico and Rubin’s test on flashbulb memories?
Asked people to recall what they were doing when they heard about 9/11 the day after it happenened-also asked them to report a personal event in their life from the past week.
What were the results of Talarico and Rubin’s test?
Details about the event goes down at the same rate for both flashbulb and personal memories
BUT… confidence in their belief of how accurate they are at remembering stays constant for flashbulb and goes down for personal
What was the conclusion from Talarico and Rubin’s test?
Flashbulb memories are special due to how confident we are in our recall of them.
What was Davidson et als test on flashbulb memories?
Started the same as Talarico and Rubins, but instead, scored them from a 0-2 scale on how accurate their recall was of their memory.
What were the results of Davidson et als test?
Found that people were more accurate in remembering flashbulb memories AND were more likely to remember more details about the event.
What was Rimmele et als test on flashbulb memories?
“Remember-Know test”. Showed people 60 pictures (30 neutral, and 30 negative). An hour later, showed people the same 60 pics plus 60 new ones. Asked whether they specifically remembered (episodic) seeing the photo, knew (semantic) they had seen it before, or if it was a new picture. If they “remembered” they were then asked what colour the border was.
What were the results of Rimmele et als test?
People were more likely to “remember” emotional images and also had a higher confidence that they had seen them before. BUT emotion did not enhance memory for details-people were better at remembering the border colour for neutral pics.
What was the conclusion from all the tests on flashbulb memory?
It’s not that special-we think we remember more, but number of details is no better. People are more likely to remember something due to emotions and stories are more congruent due to narrative rehearsal.
Is visual perception like a camera?
No. It’s influenced also by experience, knowledge, expectations, organization, inferences about what is likely and important.
What is source monitoring?
Determining the origin of our knowledge, beliefs, or memories-involves retrieving the memory and then deciding where it came from.
Whta are source misattributions?
Decision making process in deciding where a memory comes from that leads us astray.
What is the famous overnight experiment?
All people in the experiment read a bunch of non-famous names. After, they were told the names were not famous people. Then they were tested (pick out the famous names and non-famous). Then, tested 24 hours later, and suddenly, the non-famous names became famous!
Why did the results from the famous overnight experiment happen?
Because the people hadn’t encoded the names into their long-term memory, but they knew they had heard the names before-assumed they must be famous people.
What is cryptomnesia?
Unconscious plagiarism of someone else.
What is pragmatic inference?
Drawing a probable conclusion even if it was not stated/denied.
What was Marsh et als experiment on inferential reasoning and stereotypes?
Participants asked to read a series of statements; some were more stereotypically male or stereotpyically female. Participants are later told that “Pat” is female, and “Chris” is male (or vice versa). When tested later, they were more likely to associate the male with the more masculine sentence, even if the male speaker was not associated with the male sentence.
What is a schema?
Mental model or representation of something based on knowledge and experience.
What is a script?
A mental conception of the sequence of actions that typically occur in a given situation (eg: script for going out to dinner)
What was Brewer and Treyens “Office Study”?
Participants waited in a room for the study to begin, then got a suprise test! What were the objects that were in the office? 30% remembered there being books in there (but there were none)
What does Brewer and Treyens study represent?
How heuristics and scripts affect our perceptions BUT sometimes they can mislead us.
What is the Deese-Roediger-McDermott Paradigm?
When remembering whether a word was present in a list or not, there was a critical lure added in related to the context of the correct words, but that wasn’t present initally. BUT 87% of people remember seeing the lure.
What does it mean by memory is constructive?
We use inferences, best guesses, and leaps of faith that work most of the time, but the system can be tricked~
What is the misinformation effect?
Information presented after a person witnesses something can change how the person later describes it.
What was Loftus and Palmer’s test on the misinformation effect?
Showed video of simulated car crash-participants were then asked estimated vehicle speed using the same sentence but with ONE word that was changed (either smashed, collided, bumped, hit).
What were the results of Loftus and Palmer’s study on the misinformation effect?
Speed of cars changed depending on the word used (smashed was the highest, collided the lowest)
What did Loftus and Palmer ask participants one week after their car crash videos and how was this misrepresented?
Asked if there was broken glass at the scene (there was not). 14% said yes if cars had “hit” and 32% said yes if cars had smashed.
