Long Term Memory Flashcards
(16 cards)
When is each type of autobiographical memory used?
Field: for more recent memories
Observer: for much older/more remote memories
Reminiscence Bump
Enhanced memory from ages 10-30 (adolescence to young adulthood)
Better memory for pop culture, world events, etc
Two Reminiscence Bump Hypotheses
Self image hypothesis: during important life changes and the formation of identity, memories are better stored
Cognitive hypothesis: memories are better formed and encoded during periods of rapid change, i.e. transition to adulthood (followed by stability of adult life)
Testing the cognitive hypothesis
Studied people who emigrated during their 20s or during their mid-thirties
Reminiscence bump shifts to 15 years later for people who emigrated later (though it is a smaller bump)
Cultural Life Script Hypothesis
Events that commonly occur at a particular time in the life span of a particular culture (i.e. prom, learning how to drive, etc etc)
Bahrick et al.
Educated guesses
College students guessed their high school grades, accurately remembered A’s 89% of the time, accurately remembered D’s 29% of the time
Most (79/99) inflated their grades
Jacoby et al.
Becoming famous overnight
Subjects read fake names, then select names of actual famous people from new non-famous and previously seen non-famous names either immediately or after 24 hours
For delayed, participants more likely to remember the previously read names as being famous (source misattribution)
Inference Making
Based on schemas
Experimental vs control sentence (implied that hammer was involved). 57% of subjects thought the test sentence was the same as the sentence where the hammer was implied, whereas only 20% of control sentence subjects thought it was the same
Brewer and Treyens (office space study)
Brewer and Treyens
Office study - had participants recall what was in an office
Many (30%) recalled books, but there were none. Few recalled weird things like the picnic basket
Loftus et al.
Car accident experiment
Study 1: yield vs stop sign (accurate vs. misleading post-information)
Study 2: rhetoric surrounding the accident (smashed versus hit or bumped), asked about broken glass (32% in smashed condition reported glass)
Misinformation Effect
Misleading information presented post-event can change how the person remembers or describes the event later
Memory trace replacement hypothesis: old memory is being rewritten by new info
Source monitoring error: not enough detail is remembered so misinformation fills in the gaps
Approaches to categorisation
Definitional: determining if something meets the definition of the category
Family resemblance: resembling one another while still having variance
Memory Categorisation Models
Prototype (Rosch): average or idealised item that represents a category (i.e. birds). High prototypicality is recognised faster, named first, and responds more to priming
Exemplar: store all possible examples of a category. Better for atypical cases and small categories, usually later in learning
Rosch’s Hierarchy
Hierarchy of categorisation: global/superordinate, basic, specific (furniture, tables, dining room table)
Basic level is best - global is too broad (3 common features, info lost) and specific is too narrow (10.3 common features, don’t really learn much more)
Depends on your knowledge of the category
Familiarisation/Novelty Preference
Familiarise infants with cats, show them a picture of a cat and dog and see which one they stare at longer (dog)
2mo old: can represent mammals and exclude furniture
3-4mo old: can represent basic level categories (i.e. cats being different than dogs) but no distinction between types of cats
6-7mo old: can distinguish between types of cats (domestic vs wild) but not subspecies (tabby vs Siamese)
Autobiographical Memories
Experienced in two ways: field perspective and observer perspective
Field perspective: replaying it as you experienced it
Observer perspective: seeing yourself in the memory
