Memory Research Findings

Wagenaar's (1986) Diary Study

More cues improved retrieval

Who, what, where cues were better than when cues

Typically remembered events eventually

Gluck and Bluck (2007) Study Emotional valence, personal importance, and level of control over events study?

Positive memories= reported the most, negative memories reported more when age goes up, neutral stays the same

Rubin, Groth, and Goldsmith (1984) Tested if cues to memory needed to be words

Smell-cued memories were earlier and more emotional than word-cued memories

Berntsen & Thomsen (2005) Tested what kind of situations tend to cause flashbulb memories

Participants who were involved with the Danish resistance had higher accuracy scores for invasion/ liberation memories

Suggests that flashbulb memories are motivated by strong social and emotional relevance

Neisser and Harsch tested how accurate flashbulb memories are

11/3 wrong to right ratio

People are way too overconfident

Talarico and Rubin (2003) tested difference between normal memories and flashbulb memories through 9/11

Flashbulb memories are not different than typical AB memories in accuracy

Difference is how long they remain vivid and are regarded as highly accurate

Bernsten (1996) diary study to determine emotional valence of involuntary memories

Positive and neutral memories are reported at a higher percentage than others

Highly negative is the lowest percentage of memories

Walker, Vogl, and Thompson (1997) extended Autobiographical Events

More of a drop over time in pleasant memories

Unpleasant memories grow over time

Conway, Wang, Hanyu, and Haque (2005)

All countries decline at remembering memories when age gets older

China and the US are the two highest percent of memories

Storm and Jobe (2012) Tested if positivity bias is the result of reporting bias, or is it due to difficulty accessing negative memories?

Negative memories= The lower your retrieval-induced forgetting is, the better Autobiographical Recall you have

Lindholm and Christianson (1998) Tested how biases and expectations about crimes affect our memory

Non-swedish people had a higher false alarm percentage

Tuckey and Brewer (2003) Tested how Schemas about crimes can also affect our interpretation of ambiguous stimuli

In unambiguous condition (no gun)= more correct responses than schema intrusions

In ambiguous condition (gun)= More schema intrusions than correct responses

Lindsay, Allen, Chan, and Dahl (2004) Tested if previous narratives affect memory for a current event?

The similar group had more false recall then dissimilar

Biggs, Brockmole, and Witt (2013) Participants viewed actors holding either a weapon or a neutral object

People always look at the actors faces more than the object

When object in scene is a weapon, they always look at the weapon vs a neutral object

However, strong memory for salient details may lead to weak memory for "irrelevant" details

Bruce et al. (1999) Asked participants to match a video of a person with a picture of that person, filmed on same day

~65% correctly matched

Worse when viewpoints were different

Watching a longer video did not help

Performance for unfamiliar faces is low even under ideal circumstances

Davis, Loftus, Vanous, and Cucciare (2008) participants watch a video with two bystanders and one perpetrator

Innocent bystander selected as perpetrator ~26% of the time

Wilson, Seale-Carlisle and Mickes (2018) Tested what factors tend to cause verbal overshadowing

No effect of discriminability (ability to tell guilty from innocent) if description of face was obtained immediately

After a 20 minute delay, discriminability was worse for group that gave description

People rely less on specific details because they have been forgotten over time

Gabbert, Hope, Fisher, and Jamieson (2012) Showed bank robbery, some immediately recall events

Immediate recall protects against misinformation because it protects memory traces.

Geiselman, Fisher, Mackinnon, and Holland (1985)

1. Mental reinstatement of environment
2. Encourage reporting of every detail
3. Describe incident in multiple orders
4. Report incident from multiple viewpoints

Jones, Dwyer, and Lewis (2017) Tested if viewing a face from multiple angles improve recognition

Yes

Lineups should be constructed to enhance hits and prevent false alarms

Charman, Wells, and Joy (2011)

Dud effect: when lineups contain individuals who are very different from each other, people are more confident in their mistaken identifications

Wells, Steblay, and Dysart (2015) Studied eyewitnesses to real crimes, using both types of lineups

Found that innocent people were identified more often with simultaneous lineups

Also found more "not sure" responses with sequential

Wixed et al. (206) Studied eyewitnesses to real crimes, using both types of lineups

Found that performance was slightly better with simultaneous lineups and suspect is more likely to get identified

However, an innocent person is more likely to be misidentified

Park & Reuter-Lorenz (2009) Tested speed of cognitive processing, working memory, long-term memory, and world knowledge

World knowledge increases with age

Ronnlund and Nilsson (2009) Tested the flynn effect

The Flynn effect is primarily driven by social change

Bopp and Verhaeghen (2005) Tested STM, WOrking memory, and Backward digit span for younger and older adults

Working mem is more sensitive to age compared to STM

Riby, Perfect, and Stollery (2004) Tested divided attention

Older adults show larger deficits when they must do a concurrent task

Craik and McDowd (1987) Taught participants phrase-word pairings

Younger adults had better recall than older adults

Older adults had better recognition than younger adults

Castel, Benjamin, Craik, and Watkins (2002) Tested if older adults are still able to selectively encode items that are more important

Older adults are more selective about what they learn and recall (more attention to higher point value words)

Used cognitive control ability to prioritize points

Castel (2005) Tested how schemas support the memory of older adults

Older adults did better at recalling the realistic/ market price

Younger adults did better at unusual price

Older adults did better because of more world knowledge

Naveh-Benjamin, Guez, and Shulman (2004) Asked adults to learn pairs of faces and names

Young: Full attention had the best mem performance in everything ( Face recognition, Name recognition, and name-face associative recognition)

Older adults show deficits in both item memory and the ability to create new associations

Rahhal, May, and Hasher (2002) Tested if all sources are equally difficult for older adults to remember

Older adults do a better job when the source is more meaningful

Colcombe and Kramer (2003)

when older adults complete cardiovascular exercises, they improve cognitive skills with working memory

Rahhal, Hasher, & Colcombe (2001)= Tested stereotypes about aging

Stereotypes based on aging can have a negative impact on Older adults' memory performance based on how the task is characterized

Saxton et al (2001) Speed of comprehension vs. Spot the word

SOC is noticeably getting worse with age

STW= stays the same as age gets older

Klooster, Tranel, and Duff (2020)= Compared ppl with amnesia (AMN) with 2 groups= current age matched control (CA) and ppl of the same age as when amnesia was onset (AoO)

Older group is outperforming the younger group because semantic memory IS enriched over time

May, Hasher, and Foong (2006)= Tested how circadian rhythms affect explicit and implicit memory in younger and older adults

Younger adults are better at explicit

No difference between younger and older adults in implicit

Older adults show fewer deficits in nondeclarative memory systems compared to declarative systems