Memory and its distortions

What were Schachter’s seven sins of memory?

• Transcience

• Absent-mindedness

• Blocking

• Misattribution

• Suggestibility

• Bias

• Persistence

The first three relate to issues around forgetting, the next three relate to distortion or inaccuracy and the final one to ‘pathological’ remembering

What are flashbulb memories?

Distinct, vivid, detailed memories, often
for some sort of public event

• 2015 Paris attacks (Gandolphe & El
  Haj, 2016)
  • Death of Princess Diana (Hornstein,
  Brown & Mulligan, 2003)
  • 9/11 bombings (Talarico and Rubin,
  2003)
  • Resignation of Margaret Thatcher
  (Conway et al., 1994)

• Participants report very strong memories
  about which they are extremely confident
  • They report details like who told them,
  where, ongoing event, emotional
  responses (self and other) and any
  consequences
  • Memories for crimes may be like FB
  memories

What did Diamond, Armson and Levine (2020) discover about forgetting over time?

They reported that what was recalled was
accurate (c. 94%), but that quality and
details diminished (especially as age and
retention interval increased)

What does the working memory consists of?

• Central executive

• Visuo-spatial sketchpad

• Episodic buffer

• Phonological loop

What are slave systems?

• Visuo-spatial sketchpad and
  phonological loop store a limited
  amount information

• Information is stored here in a
  temporal and serial fashion

• Allows rehearsal for the retention
  of information

What did Baddeley and Hitch (1974) discover about the phonological loop?

• Responsible for ‘inner speech’
  • Measured using memory span
  tasks
  • Most people can remember 7±2
  items (though debated)

• Unless attended to and ‘rehearsed’
  information may be lost very quickly

What case is an example of transience?

• Patient HM was unable to remember
  information for more than a few
  seconds
  • Could retain some information from
  the past, but unable learn anything
  new

  
  • HM had drastic brain surgery to
  reduce epilepsy
  • non-functioning hippocampus
  • the hippocampus must be crucial
  in memory formation
  • Not where memories are stored,
  but involved in the gradual
  transition from STM to LTM

Why does absent mindedness occur?

• Absent mindedness occurs due to paying
  insufficient attention at encoding (Reason
  & Mycielska, 1982), or encoding has been
  only superficial (Craik & Lockhart, 1972)

How does blocking differ?

• Different from transience
  The information has been encoded
  The information is still stored (has
  not been ‘lost’)

• Different from absent-mindedness
  The information has been encoded
  You are often able to retrieve partial
  information

Bjork & Handal (1995) reported inhibitory effects of practice on recall, leading to blocking what did they find?

Participants observed slides of a ‘crime scene’
• They were asked repeated questions about some items from some
categories (e.g. clothes), but some items from that category were not asked
about at all
• Some categories were not asked about at all (e.g. books)
• In later tests participants recalled more about items from non-asked about categories than they did about the non-retrieved items from ‘asked about’ categories – successful retrieving of some items blocks access to related
items

How did Bernstein, Laney, Morris, & Loftus (2005) demonstrate false memories?

• 228 participants given false memories
  of a negative experience with an
  unhealthy food

• “You felt ill after eating strawberry ice-
  cream”

• Believers showed more avoidance of
  strawberry ice cream at test (c. 20%)

Loftus and Palmer (1974)

How fast were the cars going when they ______ each other?
• Smashed: 40.8 mph
• Collided: 39.3 mph
• Bumped 38.1 mph
• Hit 34 mph
• Contacted 31.8