PSYC 230 Exam 2

Encoding

Acquiring information (first in sensory memory, then in STM//WM) and transferring it to LTM

Consolidation

Making long-term memories more permanent

Retrieval

Bringing information into WM from LTM

Shallow Processing

Involves little attention to meaning (memory depends on the depth of processing that an item receives)

Deep processing

Involves attention to meaning and/or relating an item to something else

• elaboration: “6” is the number of my favorite soccer player, 9 is how many lives a cat has, and 2 is the last digit of my phone number

Which level of processing leads to better memory?

The deeper the process the better the memory

• Ex) Stimulus word: BIRD

• The __ chirped early in the morning vs Is it printed in capital letters?

Mnemonics

Devices that aid in retention or retrieval of information

• often use elaboration encoding, retrieval cues, and imagery

Visual Imagery

Visual imagery enhanced memory more so than repetition, validated via paired-associate learning

Paired-associate learning

Remember the following word pairs: boat-tree, hat-glass, pen-chair

half of participants rehearsed with repetition, half of participants did visual imagery

Using imagery to improve memory

method of loci - placing images at locations in a mental image of a spatial layout (“mind palace”)

Self-reference effect

improved memory after relating the item to yourself

read adjectives: loyal, happy, talkative, lazy, etc.

self condition (does it describe yourself?) vs common condition (is the word commonly used?) —> better performance for words in the self-condition

Generation Effect

improved memory for material when the person generates it themselves than when they passively receive it

28% better performance for the generate group compared to the read group

Organization and Categorization

better memory for semantically organized word trees than for randomly-organized word trees

Elaboration

giving material meaning by relating it to other things you know

• linking concepts in class to prior knowledge and/or things in your life

  • episodic memory activity (describe high school graduation)

• Mnemonics

Organization

creating a framework that shows the relation of some information to other information

• ex) study guide/chapter overview set up

• trees

Stanny and Johnson (2000)

participants more accrate at recalling details in the no-shoot condition than the shots-fired condition

Ross et al. (1994)

familiarity and eyewitness testimony experiment

• viewed either male or female teacher reading to students

• viewed film of female teacher being robbed

• when picking robber from photo spread, when actual robber not in photo spread, more likely to pick male teacher

• when actal robber was in photo spread, there was no familiarity error

What does informing the witness that the perpetrator may not be in the lineup do

42% decrease in false IDs

What does adding images of “filler” people who are similar to the suspect to the lineup

led to decrease in correct ID from 71 to 58% when perp present, but decreased false IDs from 70 to 31% when perp not present

Wells & Bradfield (1998)

view video of crime —> pick perpetrator from photo spread —> receive confirming feedback or receive no feedback or receive disconfirming feedback

• feedback to eyewitnesses distorts their reports of the witnessing experience

• post-identification feedback dramatically distorts eyewitnesses’ retrospective accounts of how they observed a crime

cryptoamnesia

memory bias that occurs when forgotten thought returns to your mind without you realizing it is a memory, resulting in assumption that it is a brand new idea (caused by source misattribution)

The experiment for which people were asked to make fame judgments for both famous and nonfamous names (and for which Sebastian Weissdorf was one of the names to be remembered) illustrated which?

source misattribution

For most adults over age 40, the reminiscence bump describes enhanced memory for

adolescence and young adulthood

Which is appropriate to draw as a conclusion about research on false memories?

false memories arise from the same constructive process that produces true memories

Despite scientific evidence to the contrary, Harry believes that drinking dandelion tea would improve his long-term memory because he saw several news stories and articles about it online. What is Harry experiencing?

illusory truth effect

Language

a system of communication using sounds or symbols that enables use to express our feelings, thoughts, ideas, and experiences

Rule-based

governed by rules that specify the permissible ways for arranging words and phrases

• what is the cat saying vs cat my saying is what

universal

language is universal - occurs wherever there are people

• typical children develop language automatically (learn the complex rules of language without being “taught”)

language development is similar across cultures (babbling ~7 months old, a few single words before 1 year old, first multi-word utterances ~2 years old)

every culture in the world uses language

different languages have different rules, but for the same underlying functions

• I walk —> I am walking is similar to Yo camino —> Yo estoy caminando

Hierarchical

made up of a series of small components that combine to form larger units

different levels of analyzing the message

letters, phonemes, morphemes, words, sentences, text

How do we study language?

LOW YIELD

early scientific investigations began in the 19th century

1. Paul Broca and Carl Wernicke - studied patients with brain damage who had problems in processing language (aphasia)

2. Skinner - behaviorism and operant conditioning

3. Chomsky and Cognitive Revolution - idea of universal grammar

4. Psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics - how do people produce and comprehend language? what are the roles of other cognitive functions in processing language? what brain networks are associated with language processing? how do these networks change and linguistic abilities change across the lifespan?

Psycholinguistics

psychological study of language

how do humans acquire, use, and process language?

Descriptive vs prescriptive linguistics

observing and analyzing how people use language in real world vs directing them to correctly use linguistic structures

psycholinguistics adopt the former

there are different ways of communicating the same message (some may be “incorrect”) —> psycholinguists job is not to correct ungrammatical mistakes but to understand why people use the language in the ways they do

Comprehension

ability to understand spoken and written language

• conversations

• reading

Representation

how language is represented in the mind

• where are words “stored” in the brain?

Speech production

ability to produce language

• how do we decide what we are going to say?

• how do we know how to produce words?

Four main areas of psycholinguistics

comprehension

representation

speech production

acquisition

acquisition

the process of learning a language

• how do children learn their first language?

• how do children/aduluts learn a second language?

How can we understand language?

comprehension and representation

Phonemes

smallest unit of sound

• sit: s/i/t

• wait w/ai/t and mate m/a/te share the same middle phoneme

Morphemes

smallest unit of sound that has its own meaning (words, prefixes, and suffixes)

• cook: cook

• cooks: cook/s

• cooked: cook/ed

• uncooked: un/cook/ed

Understanding Phonemes

there is variability in how phonemes are produced

• different speakers/accents

• different contexts

how do we perceive phonemes

visual cues (McGurk Effect)

prior knowledge/expectation (Phonemic restoration effect)

McGurk Effect

perceptual illusion showing that speech perception is multisensory (relies on both what you see and hear)

visual input often overrides auditory signal

Phonemic Restoration effect

auditory illusion where human brain mentally fills in missing or masked speech sounds (phonemes), listeners often cannot tell which sound was removed or where interruption happened

Word Superiority Effect

written letters are easier to recognize when they occur within a real word (did K appear in fork vs rfok)

Step 1: present the test stimulus

Step 2: present a visual mask

Step 3: test participants about which letter they saw previously

Lexicon

all of the words we know (vocabulary)

“mental dictionary”

Spacing effect

better memory performance caused by numerous short study sessions separated by breaks, as opposed to fewer and longer study sessions

cramming not effect

sleeping after learning - enhances consolidation

Typing vs handwriting notes

Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014)

typers took more notes

typed notes contained more word-for-word transcriptions

writers performed better on exams

difference between active note taking vs mindless transcribing (should summarize material)

Testing effect

enhanced memory caused by being tested on the material to be remembered as opposed to restudying

Retrieval practice - active form of learning

Restudying - passive form of learning

Generation

creating your own test questions and answering them (helps you think about which information is the most important)

may help you organize material mentally

Frase (1975) showed self-generating questions and answering them led to better test performance

Passive studying illusions

more difficult to assess if you “know” the material from passive studying

re-reading familiarity effect - may feel that each time you read the material you understand it more, but really it is just more familiar

highlighting is not really an active process - does not help encode definitions

• Peterson (1992)

Multitasking and Memory

hundreds of studies have shown that divided attention (DA) hurts memory performance

participants studied/retrieved either under FA vs under DA in which they had to perform a secondary task

• DA is more disruptive to memory performance if it occurs during encoding vs during retrieval

• people can sometimes correctly predict that they will perform worse under DA vs FA

consolidation

process that transforms new memories from a fragile state (during which they can be disrupted) to a more permanent state (where they are resistant to disruption)

involves physiological changes at the synapse and hippocampus/cortex level

Slow-wave sleep and REM particularly important for consolidation

How can memories change over time

can be strengthened/consolidated

can be forgotten

can be updated (reconsolidation)

Retrieval

process of bringing information from LTM into STM/WM

Factors that affect how well we can retrieve something

cued recall

retrieval cues

matched conditions (environment, internal state, task)

Cued recall

participant presented with retrieval cues to aid in the recall of previously studied stimuli

experiment with 504 nouns (write down 3 words associated with each noun) —> cues help recall, especially if self-generated

Retrieval cue

a word or stimulus that helps a person remember information

Tulving and Pearlstone (1966)

gave participants lists of randomly-ordered words, some of which were in the same categories —> cued recall remembered more information

Matched conditions at encoding and retrieval

retrieval is enhanced when the conditions at retrieval match the conditions in which the information was encoded

encoding specificity

we learn information together with its context

• presence of the context during retrieval can lead to enhanced memory for the information

• learning in the same environment/conditions as testing led to better performance

• Godden & Baddeley (1975): diving experiment

• Grant et al. (1998): quiet vs background noise

State-dependent learning

memory is best when a person is in the same internal state (mood) for encoding and retrieval

Eich & Metcalfe (1989) - induced moods via music (studying when sad and sad when testing led to better performance)

Learning in the same state as testing led to better performance

Transfer-appropriate processing

better memory when the type of task/level of processing that occurs during encoding matches the type of task that occurs during retrieval

Morris et al. (1977)

• encoding conditions:

  • meaning: does the word fit in the sentence?

  • rhyming: does the word rhyme with X?

• retrieval:

  • rhyming task: was a word that rhymed with X in the original list?

Bransford & Johnson

participants shown picture either before or after reading confusing paragraph: researcheres found participants shown picture before established a schema which made it easier for participants to organize new information and thus led to better comprehension and memory

Autobiographical Memory

memory for specific experiences from our life, which can include both episodic and semantic components

multidimensional (sensory, spatial, and emotional information)

Cabeza et al. (2004), autobiographical memory

no differences in activation of parietal cortex

more activation for own-photos in prefrontal cortex - processes information about the self

more activation for own-photos in hippocampus - processes recollection/episodic-type memories

Influences on autobiographical memory

self relevance

timing of the event

reminiscence bump

emotionality of the event

state of mind

Self relevance

importance of the event to self

• events with greater self-relevance better remembered than events with lesser self-relevance (high school graduation vs normal day in high school)

impact of the event

• events with a large significance better remembered than events with lesser significance (being stuck in traffic one day vs getting into a car accident)

Timing of the event

recent events better remembered than older events

reminiscence bump

people over 40 years old have enhanced memory for events from adolescence and early adulthood, compared to other periods of their lives

Emotionality of the event

events with greater emotionality better remembered than events with lesser emotionality (activity in amygdala)

State of mind

recall for emotional pictures is better than for neutral pictures when subjects are exposed to stress

there is no significant difference between emotional and netural recall in the no-stress condition

Source monitoring

process through which we determine the origins of our memories and knowledge

• memories do not come with tags or labels that indicate their sources

• we attribute sources to our memories (based on the characteristics of our memories and judgment process, we infer the source of our memories) —> metacognitive process

Source monitoring errors

cryptoamnesia

incorporating fiction as fact —> when information learned from a fictional source is later remembered as historical fact bc content of message is stored separately from source of message

misattributing familiarity

eyewitness testimony

Sebastian Weissdorf

incorrectly identified name as famous because his named seemed familiar —> familiarity influences judgements even when people cannot remember source of familiarity

Source monitoring errors

after given both nonfamous and famous names, the delayed test group (after 24 hours) were more likely to identify nonfamous names as famous because unsure if familiar name is because person is famous or because you heard it 24 hours ago

Illusory Truth Effect

increased tendency to believe that a piece of information is true as a consequence of repeatedly encountering it

• e.g.) present a set of statement to participants (often with cover task), once the statements are presented again with some new statements, participants are more likely to rate the old statement as true

occurs for both true and false statements

can occur even when the statements contradict the prior knowledge of the participants

How is memory constructive

We construct our memories based on what actually happened plus other factors (prior knowlege/experiences, emotions, expectations)

so when we “remember” something we are remembering our construction of the event rather than exactly what happened (mix of bottom up and top down processing) —> leads to memory errors

Do memory errors result from encoding or retrieval errors?

inaccurate memory of something can stem from either (or both) encoding and retrieval

• issue of perception or attention during encoding (if you didn’t look at something, it won’t be encoded. if you looked at it but didn’t pay attention to it, it won’t be encoded.)

• issue of construction during retrieval (allowing new information to inaccurately influence your construction of the memory, confusion or mixing of components of different memories)

Advantages of constructive nature of memory

allows us to “fill in the blanks”

cognition is creative (understand language, solve problems, make decisions)

Disadvantages of constructive nature of memory

sometimes we make errors

sometimes we misattribute the source of information (was it actually presented or did we infer it?)

False memories (DRM Paradigm)

When you try to reconstruct the list, your memory activates all of the associated information, even information that wasn’t experienced.

Ex) participants presented with semantically related words and when asked to recall words they saw, individuals misattribute and recall the most strongly associative word (which did not appear)

schema

knowledge about a scene

Script

knowledge about the sequence of actions that usually occur during a particular experience (going to the grocery store)

False memories (schema and scripts)

Memory can include information not actually experienced because it is expected and consistent with the schema

• people add false information to their memory based on schema and scripts

Misinformation effect

misleading post-event information (MPI) presented after a person witnesses an event can change how the person remembers the event

Infantile amensia

most adults do not have memories of childhood before age 3-4

possible explanations: brain (esp. hippocampus and PFC) development, language, cognitive devvelopment, social influences

creating false childhood memories (wade et al. 2002)

photoshopped childhood photos into a photo of a hot air balloon

initial presentation: people do not remember the event

try to close their eyes and try to visualize it (elaborating)

2 sessions later: 50% of people now “remember” the fake event

False Confessions (legal implications)

There have been at least 375 DNA exonerations. Nearly a third (29%) involved false confessions, and 31% of those false confessors were 18 or younger at the time of their arrest

Repressed/Recovered Memories (Legal implications)

weak scientific evidence for the existence of “repressed childhood memories”

people who were being treated by therapists experienced a return of a “repressed childhood memory” - memories that have been pushed out of the person’s consciousness (hypnosis, guided imagery, strong suggestion)

Childhood memories can thus be influenced by suggestion

Eyewitness Testimony

testimony by someone who has witnessed a crime

False accusations and confessions - Use of DNA evidence has exonerated 575 people in the US who had been wrongfully convicted of crimes, most of which involved eyewitness testimony

Why are there so many errors in eyewitness testimony?

issues with encoding (perception and attention) at the time of the event

issues with retrieval (construction) after the event

Errors of perception

people do perceive objects differently

such differences combined with the constructive nature of memory can lead to false memories

Weapon focus

tendency to focus attention on a weapon

• results in a narrowing of attention to other details

• details are remembered better/more accurately when no weapon is present

high emotionality of crime scenes often affects attention

Stanny and Johnson (2000)

participants more accurate at recalling details in the no-shoot condition than the shots-fired condition

West et al., 2025

demonstrated anti-WFEs where participants exhibited better memory for armed perpetrators

traditional weapon focus effect many not be reliably replicable or depends heavily on specific situational and methodological boundaries

Assumptions (errors of perception and attention)

Assumption perpetrator is in a lineup —> 100% of participants identified someone as gunman from photographs afterwards even when actual gunman’s picture was not presented

Errors of familiarity

falsely recognizing an innocent bystander is the perpetrator

• because they seem familiar and were associated with the crime scene (source monitoring error)

Ross et al. 1994

familiarity and eyewitness testimony experiment

view film of male teacher reading to students vs view film of female teacher reading to students

shown film of female teacher being robbed, when actual robber not in photo spread, large number of participants identified male teacher as robber. but when actual robber was in photo spread, smaller percentage (albeit larger than control) misidentified male teacher as robber.

Errors of suggestion

Post-identification feedback effect - feedback from officer/detective may confirm uncertain information (if receive confirming feedback, witness more confident in identifying perpetrator vs if receive disconfirming feedback)