Chapter 8- Cognitive psychology

exam 2; ch. 8 study guide

what are ommission and commission errors?

omission errors are when we forget an occurrence of an event, and information is left out.

commission errors are when we remember something that didn’t happen

explain the “war of ghosts” experiment. what does this suggest about how memory works and involves reconstruction?

British individuals read a folktale with cultural elements foreign to them and were asked to recall the story multiple times over long periods. this resulted in shorter stories (omission) & the stories changed over time to be more cultured than those of British subjects.

what are flashbulb memories? how do they compare to regular memories in terms of accuracy and confidence?

memory for circumstances surrounding emotionally rich events; rehearsal without correction. ex. 9/11 attacks. narrative rehearsal hypothesis: keep rehearsing them, results in more confidence and accuracy.

what is source memory? describe the “becoming famous overnight” experiment. how does this demonstrate how source memory can lead to false memories? how can imagination lead to false memories through failure in source memory?

ability to remember the origin or “source” of a specific memory (who told you something/where you saw it). “Becoming Famous Overnight”; read non-famous names, names feel familiar, forget initial source, misidentify non-famous people as famous.

explain the office study. how does this demonstrate how schemas/scripts can lead to false memories? how does it demonstrate that we tend to remember the overall meaning and fill in the rest?

a. participants waited in an office for 30 seconds→ b. later asked to recall what was inside. → c. remembered items typically found in office spaces, even if they weren’t in that one. → d. we tend to remember the overall meaning and use schemas to fill in the rest, which can lead to false memories for schema-consistent items.

explain the general concept of feature matching. how can this lead to false memories? how has this been illustrated in DRM experiment?

we remember specific “features” of an event and, during retrieval, match them to mental representations. DRM experiment: a. given a list of related words (bed, rest, awake, etc.), but the “critical lure” (sleep) is still missing. → b. b/c the words are so closely related to “sleep”, participants falsely recalled hearing it and this illustrates how strongly related concepts can trigger false memories.

explain how suggestion through question wording can lead to false memories. how was this demonstrated with either the first or second Loftus car crash experiment?

based on the 2nd experiment (broken glass), participants asked if they saw any broken glass in a film of a car crash. → b. participants in the “smashed” group were 2x more likely to report seeing glass, showing that suggestive wording actually altered their original memory of the event.

how can misleading evidence lead to false memories? how was this demonstrated by Wade with the balloon rode experiemnt? do people develop rich or weak false memories, and does this happen immediately?

showed that misleading physical evidence, like pictures, can create incredibly rich false memories. people often do not develop rich/weak memories immediately; they grow over time as the person uses “imagination inflation” to fill in the gaps.

describe how social contagion can lead to false memories. explain the experiment by Roediger et al. and the impact of warnings. do warning prevent false memories?

this happens when one person’s report of a memory influences another person’s memory, leading the second person to “infect” their own recollection with others’ (often incorrect) details.

warnings do not generally prevent false memories but can occasionally reduce the effect. they rarely eliminate it because the false information becomes deeply integrated into the person’s own mental representation of the event.

how can suggestion lead to false memories of childhood abuse?

through guided imagery, hypnosis, or repetitive questioning. therapists can enact source monitoring error when they inadvertently encourage a person to “visualize’ events that never happened.

what was the most important factor that was overlooked in previous research on whether eyewitness confidence predicts accuracy or not? when this is followed, does confidence predict accuracy?

research used to suggest that eyewitness confidence was a poor predictor of accuracy. though timing of the confidence assessment can be a strong predictor only if it’s measured at the time of its initial identification (first time the witness sees the lineup). yes, confidence can predict accuracy if the ID is made under fair circumstances and no, if confidence is measured later (at trial) often inflated by outside factors.