W4 Memory errors & memory and the law Flashcards
(29 cards)
Schacter’s 2002 “Seven sins of memory”
(1)Transcience, (2) Absentmindedness, (3) Blocking, (4) Misattribution, (5) Suggestibility, (6) Bias, (7) Persistence.
7 sins of memory = (1) Transcince
= decreasing accessibility of memories over time
Transience = Ebbighaus’s 1885 experiemnts
Recall as many as participants could, LUP, DES, TAF, NID, FUB, PAB, GEP, XAD, ZES, MUB, LOK, POF
Rows of nonsense syllables (consonant – vowel – consonant trigrams).
Why do we forget?
Interference: forgetting due to competition between memories.
Decay: forgetting due to the passage of time.
Trasience = Thorndike’s (1914) “law of disuse”
The more time elapses without using a memory, the more the memory decays away until it is entirely forgotten.
Critiques (McGeoch’s 1932) = The passage of time causes nothing by itself – time is correlated with processes that cause forgetting. The passage of time alone doesn’t cause rust – oxidation happening over time does.
Transience research moving from decay ==> interference
Proactive interference – older memories impair the retrieval of new memories.
Retroactive interference – new memories impair retrieval of older memories.
Transience – The Brown-Peterson Paradigm (Brown, 1958; Peterson & Peterson, 1959)
1-Learn a list of memoranda - Trigram.
2-Complete a distracting task.
3-Recall the memoranda.
results = The more time passes, the greater the forgetting. But: is it due to the passage of time or due to interference?
Transience = proactive interferences (keppel &underwood’s, 1962)
1.Learn a list of 3 memoranda – Trigram.
2.Complete a distracting task.
3.Recall the memoranda.
Results = Better memory with less proactive interference from old information.
Transience = retroactive interference (Jenkins & Dallenbach’s 1924)
Study a list of sounds, stay awake or sleep, recall after 1, 2, 4 or 8 hours.
Result = Better memory with less retroactive interference from new information.
7 sins of memory = (2) Absentmindedness
= lapses of attention that affect memory and learning
Absentmindedness – Kane et al.’s (2017) experiment
“hat were you just thinking about?”
Correlation of performance on stats test and TUTs. Results = The more off-task mind wandering, the poorer the learning from the lecture.
So what leads to TUTs? Multitasking Habits = The more multitasking habits students reported, the more off-task mind wandering they experienced.
=> Multitasking habits had an indirect effect on learning outcomes through mind wandering – even though students didn’t even use their devices in the study! (Mediation analysis)
7 sins of memory = (3) Blocking
= information is present but temporarily inaccessible
D’Angelo & Humphrey’s 2015 experiemnts = ‘Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon’
“What is the word for goods imported or exported illegally?” = contraband. Resolving tip-of-the-tongue states may prevent them from reoccurring later on.
7 sins of memory = (4) Misattribution
= attributing memories to an incorrect source
Source monitoring (memory)
where do memories come from?
Internal = did I do this, or did I just imagine it?
External = who told me about this?
Reality = did I really see this, or did someone mention it? Flashbulb memories.
Cryptomnesia
Unconscious plagarism. Is this eally my orignial idea?
Types of source information (P + C +A + C)
Perceptual: perceptual detail often higher for memories actually experienced than from other sources – touch, smell, tastes
Contextual: context in which memory was acquired is consistent with an expected source
Affective: emotional reaction in context of information
Cognitive: mental processing of the information
The Unabomber
From 1978 – 1996, mailed or hand-delivered series of increasingly sophisticated bombs. 1987 = 1 eyewitness account – sketch artist captured likeness. 1994 = a revised sketch was asked for from the same witness. It resembled the first sketch artist
Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm.
Study, then recall task then recognition task. Not in original list, but semantically related (river).People falsely recalled related concepts that were never presented. False memories: remembering things that never happened.
7 sins of memory = (5) Suggestibility
= implanted memories that never occurred.
Suggestibility - Loftus & Pickrell’s (1995) experiment
False memories were about “getting lost in a mall” and created with the help of an older relative. Results = About a quarter of participants falsely “remembered” to have been lost in a mall. False memories can be implanted via suggestion.
Suggestibility – Wade et al.’s (2002) experiment.
Showed doctored images of participants in a hot air balloon. Asked them about their experience. Half of the participants demonstrated false memories implanted via suggestion. False “evidence” – such as doctored photograph contributes to formation of fals memories
Suggestibility - Zaragoza et al.’s (2001) experiments
= watch 8-min video excerpt, answer questions with guessing enforced or discouraged, recognition task 1 week later and recall task 4-6 weeks later. Results = Participants assented to confabulated events one week later (although they did not have to). False recognition of confabulated events at 1 week. (dysney film, without blood, saw blood)
Suggestibility- Semantic memory = Fazio et al. 2013 experiement
Knowledge short-answer pre-test, Read fiction story with or without misinformation, Knowledge short-answer post-test.Results = Responses with misinformation to questions that were answered correctly in pre-test. Misinformation effect: Altering memories to conform to recently encountered but incorrect information.
7 sins of memory = (6) Bias
distorting memories of the past based on current knowledge and beliefs
Bias - Blank et al.’s (2003) experiments
July 1998: predict German parliament election outcome. September 1998: election. October 1998: recall predictions.
Results = Hindsight bias: misremember memories as being more similar to the current knowledge state.
