Chapter 8 - Memory Errors

Cabeza et Al - Photo Experiment

Participants shown photos that they took and photos taken by the lab

-Own-photos resulted in greater activity in the prefrontal cortex (processing information about self) and in the hippocampus (involved in episodic memory)

Reminiscence Bump

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

Three Hypotheses on why:

Self-Image hypothesis

Cognitive hypothesis

Cultural Life Script hypothesis

Self-Image Hypothesis

Memory is enhanced for events that occur as a person’s self image of life identity is being formed

-’I Am’ Study: Participants created “I Am” statements, average age applied to these statements was 25

Cognitive Hypothesis

Memories are better for adolescence and early adulthood because encoding is better during periods of rapid change that are followed by stability

-Bump for people who emigrated at 34-35 is shifted towards older ages compared to ages 20-24

Cultural Life Script Hypothesis

Events in a persons life story become easier to recall when they fit the cultural life script for that person’s culture

-Cultural Life Script - Life events that commonly occur in a particular culture

-Youth Bias - Tendency for the most notable public events in a person’s liufe to be perceived to occur when the person is young

Emotion Enhances Memory

Laber and Phelps Experiment - Tested participants’ recall ability to recall arousing words and neutral words, observed better memory for arousing words

Dolcos et Al Experiment - Had participants look at emotional/neutral photos, after a year delay they had better memory for emotional photos

Amygdala

Subcortical structure that is involved in processing emotional aspects of experience, including memory for emotional events

-Patient B.P - Suffered amygdala damage. When shown emotional moments, his memory was not enhanced for the emotional parts

Emotional Effect on Memory is Enhanced by Stress

Cahill et Al. Experiment

-Showed participants neutrally/emotionally arousing pictures, then had the stress group immerse arms in ice water, causing the release of cortisol and had the non-stress group immerse their arms in warm water (no cortisol release)

-A week later, the stress group recalled more of the emotionally arousing pictures than the non-stress group

Flashbulb Memories

Memories connected to significant emotionally charged events

Kuilik and Brown Experiment

-Tested accuracy using ‘repeated recall’ task, which shows that these types of memories actually change overtime

Narrative Rehearsal Hypothesis - Reason why we remember these events so strongly is due to repeated rehearsal over the years.

-Evidence suggests that flashbulb memories fade just like other memories

Constructive Nature of Memory

What people report as memories are constructed based on what actually happened plus additional factors, such as expectations, other knowledge, and other life experiences

Source Monitoring

Process by which people determine the origin of memories, knowledge, or beliefs

-Example; Remembering that you heard about something from a particular person

-Source Monitoring Error - Misidentifying the source of a memory

Jacoby et Al Experiment

-First had participants read nonfamous names, then split them into two groups

Immediate Test Group - Read non-famous names from the acquisition and new non famous names and new famous names

• Results; Most non-famous names were correctly identified as non famous

Delayed Test Group - Delay of 24 hours after acqusition then performed the same task as the immediate test group. 

• Results; Some non-famous names misidentified as famous

Illusory Truth Effect

Enhanced probability of evaluating a statement as being true upon repeated presentation

-Fazio et Al found that repetition increases perceived truth

Due to fluency - ease with which a statement can be remembered