Final Memory

  • ●  Flashbulb Memories: Vivid, detailed memories of highly emotional and significant events (e.g., 9/11, presidential elections).

  • ●  Special Mechanism Hypothesis: Flashbulb memories are encoded via a unique, biologically-based mechanism due to emotional arousal.

  • ●  Ordinary Mechanism Hypothesis: Flashbulb memories result from standard memory processes like rehearsal, distinctiveness, and emotional salience.

  • ●  Support for Ordinary Mechanism:

    • ○  Flashbulb memories change over time despite high confidence.

    • ○  Emotional content increases rehearsal, not accuracy.

    • ○  Shared experiences are more rehearsed publicly and privately.

  • ●  Talarico & Rubin (2003):

    • ○  Compared recall of flashbulb and everyday events.

    • ○  Findings: Flashbulb memory accuracy declined over time like everyday memory, but confidence remained high.

    • ○  Supports ordinary mechanism explanation.

  • ●  Own-Race Bias: People are generally better at recognizing faces of their own race.

  • ●  Fusiform Face Area (FFA): Specialized brain area involved in face perception.

  • ●  Occipital Face Area (OFA): Processes facial features; early visual processing.

  • ●  Prosopagnosia: Face blindness; inability to recognize familiar faces due to damage (often in FFA).

  • ●  Correspondence: Accuracy of memory compared to actual event.

  • ●  Source Monitoring: Determining the origins of memories.

  • ●  Reality Monitoring: Distinguishing between imagined and real memories.

  • ●  DRM Procedure:used experimental method in cognitive psychology, particularly in the study of false memory formation. It is designed to demonstrate how individuals can develop false memories for words or concepts that were never presented to them. The DRM procedure is particularly useful for studying semantic memory and the mechanisms behind false memory.

    • ○  Participants study a list of related words (e.g., bed, rest, awake).

    • ○  Critical Intrusion: Non-studied but semantically related word (e.g., sleep) is

      often falsely recalled.

  • ●  Explanations of DRM Results:

    • ○  Spreading activation in semantic memory.

    • ○  Source monitoring failure.

  • ●  Imagination Inflation: Imagining events can increase belief they actually occurred.

  • ●  Misinformation Effect: Post-event misleading info can distort memory (e.g., Loftus & Palmer car crash study).

  • ●  Perfect et al. (2008):

    • ○  Watching others remember can influence your own memory.

    • ○  Memory conformity due to social influences.

      Lecture Topics – Eyewitness Memory & Interviews

  • ●  Estimator Variables: Uncontrollable by legal system (e.g., lighting, stress).

  • ●  System Variables: Controlled by legal system (e.g., interview technique).

  • ●  Yerkes-Dodson Law: Moderate arousal leads to optimal performance; too much/little

    arousal impairs it.

  • ●  Easterbrook Hypothesis: Stress narrows attention; central details remembered better than peripheral ones.

  • ●  Weapon Focus: Presence of a weapon draws attention away from other details.

  • ●  Face Processing:

    • ○  Holistic/configural processing is typical for faces.

    • ○  Inversion or partial occlusion impairs recognition.

  • ●  Hypermnesia: Memory improvement over repeated attempts.

  • ●  Hypnosis: May increase false memories; high suggestibility.

  • ●  Confabulation: False memory without intent to deceive.

  • ●  Cognitive Interview:

  • ○  Designed for eyewitnesses.

  • ○  Uses psychological principles to enhance recall.

  • ○  Four Components:

    1. Context reinstatement

    2. Report everything

    3. Recall in different order (extra credit)

    4. Change perspective

  • ○  Context Reinstatement: Based on encoding specificity principle.

  • ○  Effectiveness: Yields more accurate info than standard police interview.

  • ○  False Memory Susceptibility: About 25–30% of participants can be led to remember false events.