COG - Reliability of Cognitive Processes + Emotion & Cognition

Cognitive Approach > [Reconstructive memory, Flashbulb memory, Biases in Thinking & Decision Making Biases]

Reconstructed memory

The process whereby memories of an event become distorted by information encountered after the event occurred, or during the storing process due to efforts after meaning.

Reconstructed memory theory

First proposed by Bartlett in 1932, but has since then been developped by psychologists such as Loftus. It proposes that memories are not copies of event but are rather reconstructed. Remembering is not a pasisve but an active process. Pieced together recreation.

→Memory is thus quite unreliable

Misinformation Effect

Misleading information given after an event that facilitates schema processing may influence the accuracy of recall

Efforts after meaning

When we retrieve memories, we fit it to our pre-existing schemas to make them seem more logical

Leading Questions

Questions asked that include language that suggests a preferred answer.

Post Event Information

Information gained after an event.

Reconstructed memory study

Martin & Halverson (1983)

Martin & Halverson (1983) - Aim

To investigate if gender stereotyping would influence recall in 5 and 6-year-old children.

Martin & Halverson (1983) - Procedure

Each child was shown 16 pictures:

• 8 depicted a child performing gender-consistent activities (for example, a boy playing with a truck)

• 8 showing children displaying gender-inconsistent behaviors (for example, a girl chopping wood).

One week later, they tested the recall of the children to see how many of the photos they could recall accurately.

Martin & Halverson (1983) - Results

Schema consistent activities: Children easily recalled the sex of the actor

Schema inconsistent activities: Children often distorted the scene by saying that the actor’s sex was consistent with the activity they recalled.

Martin & Halverson (1983) - Findings

Memory is not a copy of what happened but instead an imaginative reconstruction of what likely happened.

Children performed worse in recalling gender inconsistent activities, showing how they likely tried to remember the cards by applying their schemas, which resulted in more schema-consisted guesses.

ASL

Assimilation: The story started becoming mroe consistent with their cultural expectations.

Sharpening: The participants changed the order and the details in the evnts of the story in order to make sense of teh story

Leveling: They shartened the story and unconsiously ommitted details that were deemed unimportant.

Assimilation

When you add information to pre-existing schema.

Accomidation

When you replace schema

My bias

Anchoring bias

Heuristics

Mental shortcuts — focus on one aspect of a complex problem and using that to solve it.

Partially based off of schemas

Law of least effort

If there are multiple ways of achieving the same goal, we’re going to choose the option which takes the least effort.

Anchoring bias definion

The tendency of people to rely too heavily on the first piece of information given when making decisions.

Both unconscious and conscious

During decision-making, anchoring bias occurs when an individual bases their subsequent judgments on this anchor.

Example of heuristics

Anchoring bias study

Englisch & Mussweiler (2001)

Englisch & Mussweiler (2001) - aim

To investigate if anchoring bias (where sentencing requests by prosecutors serve as anchors) could play a significant role in the determination of the length of a sentence in a courtroom.

Englisch & Mussweiler (2001) - procedure

Fake case of rape

24 senior law students = Control group

Mean = 17.21 months

19 young trial judges

Gave them the case and penal codes to read in 15 minutes. Questionnaire with them in one of Two conditions:

Told that the prosecuter suggested:

1. 2 month sentence

2. 34 month sentence.

• Do you think the sentence was too low, adequate, or too high?

• What sentence would you recommend?

• How certain are you about your sentencing decision? (a scale of 1 – 9)

• How realistic do you think this case is? (a scale of 1 – 9)

Englisch & Mussweiler (2001) - results

Low anchor = 18.78 months (SD 9.11). High anchor= 28.7 months (SD 6.53).

Englisch & Mussweiler (2001) - Findings

Rely too heavily on the prosecutors suggestion (anchor)

PPs might link the suggestion to previous experience when a lower/higher sentencing was a good option and then chose one that sounded right based off of that.

Adrenaline

Hormones which is active in stressful situations and responsible for triggering the fight or flee respose; possible also important to formation of flashbulb memory

Flashbulb memory

• Proposed by Brown & Kulik (1977).

• Highly detailed, exceptionally vivid “snapshot” of a moment when something surprising or emotional occured.

• Special mechanism hypothesis

• All this should cause overt rehearsal (which can lead to distortion)

FBM are biologically different from “normal memories” and are instead resistant to forgetting (otherwise known as displacement of memories).

Special mechanism hypothesis

• Existence of a special biological memory mechanism that creates a permanent record of details and circumstances surrounding an experience that is particularly surprising.

• Special neural mechanism that triggers emotional arousal because a moment is particularly unexpected or important.

FBM study

McGaugh & Cahill (1996)

McGaugh & Cahill (1996) - Aim

To study the role of adrenaline in the creation of flashbulb memories.

McGaugh & Cahill (1996) - Procedure

Divided into two groups. Each group saw 12 slides with a different story.

1. Simple story about a woman and her son who paid a visit to the son’s father in a hospital where they witnessed the staff in a disaster preparation drill of a simulated accident victim.

2. Boy was involved in a car accident where his feet were severed. Brought to the hospital where the surgeons reattached the injured limbs. He stayed in the hospital for a few weeks and then went home with his mother.

Half of each group was administered a beta-blocker called propranolol or a placebo.

Answered questions: How emotional they found the story on a scale of 1 - 10.

Two weeks later, pps answered a recognition task. Series of questions about the slides with three options for them to choose from.

Beta-blockers

Block target cells for adrenaline so that the heart will pump more slowly and efficiently. This was used to prevent activation of the amygdala.

McGaugh & Cahill (1995) - Results

More emotionally arousing story: Demonstrated better recall of specific details of the story and the slides.

Those who had received the beta-blocker did no better than the group that had heard the "mundane" story.

McGaugh & Cahill (1995) - Findings

Adrenaline plays an important role in the formation of FBM through its activation of the amygdala (SMH)

Emotionally significant and surprising events or stories can trigger FBM when adrenaline is not blocked.

Amygdala

The part of the brain that is responsible for the encoding of emotional memories.