CA - Reliability of Cognitive Processes

Cognitive Approach > Reliability of Cognitive Processes > [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.

Study (Reconstructed memory)

Bartlett “War of the Ghosts“ (1932)

Bartlett “War of the Ghosts“ (1932) A,P,R,F

Aim: to investigate how memory of a story is affected by previous knowledge. / how cultural schema may effect reconstructed memory.

INFO: True Experiment, Independant measures, 20 Brit Uni students.

IV: Method of the recall of memories (repeated reproduction or serial reproduction)

DV: Accuracies/ inaccuracies to the original folk story in the recounted versions given by partcipants.

Procedure: The students were asked to read the unfamiliar Native American folk tale, “The War of the Ghosts“. Each were randomly assigned to one of two conditions (repeated reproduction & sereal reproduction).

Results: There was not a significant difference in the results of the two groups (Null retained).But, in both conditions participants changed the story as they tried to remember it. Thus the memory of the original story was distorted. ASL.

Findings: The process of remember is not a passive but an active process where information is recieaved and stored to fir our existing schemas in order to make them seem logical, a process called efforts afer meaning. This supports the theory of RM; that memories are not copies of experiences but rather are an imaginitive reconstruction of how an event likely occured based on a persons relevant schema. →Memory is not always reliable.

Repeated and Sereal reproduction

Repeated = Same person tells teh story oevr and over a couse of weeks months or event years

Sereal = Participants recall the story and repeat it to another participant in a chain.

ASL Bartlett

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 schem.

Accomidation

When you replace schema

Example for Bartlett

Sereal Reproduction:  He goes back home, tells his friends, lights a fire, and the next morning at sunrise falls down: "something black came from his mouth. He was dead."

After 9 reproductions,

He died, and his spirit left the world.

-Spirit, less detail

Repeated reproduction: In repeated reproduction a subject's own earlier versions gain an increasingly important influence as time elapses. Upon its first presentation a story or picture is considered from a certain point of view, or under the influence of a certain attitude. This attitude not only, persists, but usually plays a greater part with the lapse of time.

Study (in defense of Reliable memory)

Yuille & Cutshall (1986)

Yuille & Cutshall (1986) A,P,R,F

Aim:

Procedure:

Results:

Findings

Flashbulb memory (Definition)

Clear and vivid memories of emotionally intense and important events.

Flashbulb memory Theory

Proposed by Brown & Kulik (1977). Defined FM as an exceptionally vivid snapshot of a moment when smth surprising or emotional occured. They then created the special mechnism hypothesis whcih implyed that FM are biologiclaly differnet from ‘“ordinary memories“ and are resistant to forgetting.

Special Mechanism Hypothesis

Argues for the existence of a special biological memory mechanism that creates permanent records of FM (circumsances surrounding a particularly surprising event). This special neural mechanism is triggered because of the peculiarity of teh event.

At the time (1977) it was only a hypothesis but today, modern neuroscience supports it; emotional memories are better remembered than non-emotional ones.

Importance Driven Model

The most commonly accepted model of flashbulb memory today is called the importance-driven model. This model puts special emphasis on the personal consequences of an event on the determination of emotional reaction.

Adrenalin

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

Study:

Sharot et al (2007)

Sharot et al (2007) A,P,R,F

Aim: To determine the potential role of biological factors on flashbulb memories

Sample: 24 participants recreated through advertisements (volunteer sample) and they were all people who were in New York during the 9/11 attack in 2001.

Procedure: 3 years after the attacks. Part.s were placed in an fMRI machine and then were presented with word cues on a screen. They would be given a word off of a list (eg. Hands, reading, sleep, or coffee) along with either the word “Summer” or “September” to have them relate the word with summer holidays or the 9/11 attack. Brains were monitored while they recalled the event. The personal memories of summer holidays were established as baseline brian activity evaluated against the nature of the memories of 9/11. After the fMRI scan, participants were asked to write a description of their memories along with evaluating the vividness, details, confidence of accuracy, and arousal of the memories.

Results: Half of participants experienced FM. Those that did were closer to WTC. Those that did, wrote more vivid and detailed accounts of the memory. In the recall of the memory part.s who experienced FM had a stronger activation of the amygdala comp to no FM part.s. Part.s further away had little change 9/11 or summer.

Findings: Amygdala could play role in the formation of FM. Personal consequence could play a role in engaging neural mechanisms that produce the vivid FMs.