Psych CH8 Everyday Memories and Memory Errors

Source Monitoring

Ability to keep track of the origins or ‘source’ of some information

Source monitoring error (source confusion, misattribution)

When we attribute the information to a different (wrong) source

Source Confusion and Familiarity Experiement

Jacoby et al 1989

• ppnts read a list of 100 non famous names (read 1 or 4 times each name)

• then experienced a delay then a test, or the test immediately and the test was to identify famous vs non famous names (60 famous, 40 previously seen, 20 NEW names)

RESULTS:

• immediate test = they remembered which were nonfaomus they had good results… strongest effect for the 4 repitioins

• delayed test: memory was less consciously accessible, ESP for info they only saw once, but b/c there was familiarity → they incorrectly judged them as famous

Familiarity/fluency

AKA illusory truth effect

familiarity/fluency experiment

Fazio - a sentence someone saw previously = they’re more likely to rate it as true

Reconstructive memory errors Experiment

Bewer 1977

tested whether ppl remember sentences or IMPLICATIONS of those sentences

• ppnts listed to 46 sentences and were given a test

  • the test gave a cue and asked the ppnt to recall the sentence and 1/3 of sentences they recalled on the test were IMPLICATIONS (and implications %> correct #)

*They recall what they inferred,, not what they read

Schemas

semantic knowledge of frequently occurring situations

Schemas experiment

1981 Brewer & Treyens

• ppnts waited in an office for 35 seconds and asked to free recall what was inside the office

• results: they recalled many things that were not actually inside the office, but are still items that would typically be present/items they expected to be present

False Memory Paradigm

Deese, etc

• 3 lists of words based on (sleep, thief, chair) but those words weren’t actually in the list

• when asked if words were/weren’t on the test, many answered yes to those words above, (the lure words)

Normalization of memory

we reconstruct memories at retrieval and reconsolidating to make the memory more closely related to our culture/our own experiences

Repeated recalls + normalization experiment

Frederick Barlett

• showed subjects unfamiliar stimuli (a folklore story - war of the ghosts)

• they had to recall the story over several weeks

• the story changed a LOT and semantic memory normalizes usual stimuli so over time, less and less traces of the cultural supernatural elements were present, and it just became more normalized to the pant’s culture

reconstructive memory error

• we encode and recall → involved inferences

• reconstructive memory error occurs when we lose track of what occurred vs what we inferred

misinformation effect

misleading information presented after a person witnesses an event → can change how the person describes the event later

misleading post event information

it’s like after the event, you ask a question that leads to the misinformation effect

Misinformation experiment

Loftus -

• misleading questions about traffic accident: had a car at a stop or yield sign and asked misleading questions to imply something about the sign

  • ppnts were asked if they saw a yield or a stop sign and if they were misled by this, they had less than 50% chance of identifying the picture correctly vs if not misled, it was almost 90% chance of getting it correct

Misinformation experiment 2

Loftus + palmer

• did they smash?… collide? bump into? hit? each other…. this verbiage led to different results for how fast ppnts described the cars to be going

AND another one was if there was glass?

Strategy or Unconscious Confusion?

Stephen Lindsay

• does a warning about the misleading information effect eliminate the misinformation effect?

• basically, ppnts watched a narrated slide show of someone stealing a calculator and money and the narrator said misleading suggestions 3/6 times.

• those being misled by a narrator with the same voice lead to more errors in cued recall test

• RESULTS:

  • basically it was intrusion and the ppnts had trouble distinguishing the misleading info from the original info

False memory research

emphasizes the conditions in which people remember complete events that never happened

Creating False Memories Experiment

Hyman et all

• they asked these undergrads to recall some events and threw in a FAKE event and asked them to recall this event over the series of a few days (day 1, day 3, day 5) and

• by day 5 25% of ppnts were recalling and saying they had memory of that fake event

• and in fact people would even start throwing in random details that they were never told so that they really jsut made up

Causes of false memories

hypnosis

*use of imagery

*suggestions by authority figures

False meme and imagery experiment

Hyman & Pentland

• they asked ppnts to recall a few childhood events and then ONE FAKE ONE, and they had 2 groups

• imagery condition vs non imagery condition

  • ppnts either visualized the event

  • or just thought about it quietyly

• RESULTS

  • those who visualized it had way more % recall so imagery is a powerful way to create false memories and people forget the source of the memory/imaged (it was them)

False meme and authority figures

suggestions from authority figures can be potent source of false mems

• law enforcement

• religious figuresre

repression

blocking of painful memory from ones consciousness …. can still cause psychological problems

memory-recovery techniques

• helps clients recall repressed memory so they get better

• BUT like this can cause problems and can cause implantation of false memories

Memory recovery techniques experiments

loftus

• therapist suggests possibility that current symptoms are due to a past event and asks client to do imagery to recall the event…??

• and then the client thinks those created images are the actual event

Eyewitness testimony

testimony by someone who witnessed a crime'

• but they often confused SOURCES of info

  • most common is bystander vs criminal

Analysis of wrongful convictions

as of 2014, 349 ppl in the US have been exonerated by DNA evidence and faulty eyewitnesses = most common reason

Convicting An innocent bystander

Ross et al - how likely for witnesses to misidentify bystanders

• ppnts watched a video of schoolteachers

• then they watched a crime where the criminal looked or didn’t look like one of the teachers and

for the experimental group (teacher and criminal were both similar/male): when the robber wasn’t in the photo spread, 60% of the ppnts picked an innocent bystander (the male teacher)

when the robber was in the photo, experimental group = 2x as likely to pick the male teacher than the control group (saw a female teacher and a male criminal) BUT still most likely that the criminal was picked

Power of Suggestion

Similar to misinformation effect → all about implications and how this influences ppl (like eyewitnesses)

The Power of Suggestion experiment

Wells and Bradfield 1998

• eyewitnesses = affected by hearing feedback

• ppnts watched video of a man entering target and then told that he murdered someone and were told to identify him in a photo spread of 5 ppl where the murderer was in in the photos (but the ppl in the pics were similar)

• they were given confirmation as they were identifying a murderer and then asked about how confident they were afterwards

• RESULTS

  • confirming feedback → 5.5 confidence (most confident in their incorrect ID)

  • no feedback → 4.0

  • disconfirming feedback → 3.5

so reactions/feedback do impact confidence and choice picking

improvements for lineup procedures

tell witness that the criminal may not be in the lineup

use a person who doesn’t know anything about the suspect to create the lineup to avoid biases

have the witness indicate confidence immediately to avoid feedback and that influencing their choices