Cognitive Psychology Chapter 8

which age range tends to be over represented in memory for MOST people?

10-30 years old (adolescence through young adulthood)

flashbulb memory

A rich, detailed memory for circumstances surrounding a big event; very specific memory of one's experience of finding out about a big (and usually tragic) event

Is autobiographical memory different?

Evidence suggests that it can be because it is multidimensional in nature; think about Cabeza's study

Semantic Memory

Factual memory, things you've learned

Cabeza's Study

Gave participants a list of places on campus and a camera. Task was to go to each place and take a picture of that spot. They were then brought back into the lab to review the pictures, and placed into an FMRI. They were shown pictures that they took, and also that other people took and what he found was that when shown one's own picture their prefrontal and hippocampus lit up with more activation than if shown another individuals picture.

Wells and Bradfield

Had participants watch a video of crime, and then asked them to identify the perp in a photo line up, however none of the men were actually the criminal. Once they picked who they thought it was, they were given either positive, negative, or no feedback based on their decision. They were then asked to rate their confidence at the time of selection, and for people with positive feedback, it was way up. For people with no feedback it was more neutral, and for people with negative feedback, they had less confidence in their choices suggesting that giving feedback can change memory

Weapons focus

If one witnesses a crime with a weapon involved, they'll be great at remembering that sole fact, but not so great at remembering other details about that event. If someone witnesses a crime without a weapon involved, chances are they'll be much more likely to remember other specifics about that crime.

How was the self image hypothesis tested?

Participants were asked to create "I am" statements, and most of those "I am" statements occurred around the age of 25. (Life shaping events that can define who a person really is)

What are the three different theories that try and explain why the reminiscence bump may occur?

Self image hypothesis, cognitive hypothesis, and cultural life script

Why can source monitoring be harmful?

The source of a memory can fade over time, causing mistakes in one'e memory whether it be trouble remembering or completely replacing a memory with something inaccurate

Cahill and McGaugh

There are two groups of participants in this study. The first group see's three phases of images accompanied with a neutral story. The second group sees the exact same images, but during phase two their story is manipulated into becoming more emotional. All participants are brought back two weeks later and tested on what they could recall about the images and stories, and while results about memory remain consistent between the two groups for phases one and three, the group that got the emotional story during phases two remembered more than the group that had a neutral story. This would suggest emotion does enhance memory.

Talarico and Rubin

These two brought participants in 24 hours after 9/11/01 and asked them to recall about how they'd found out about the attacks and also asked them to recall an event about everyday life. It was expected that their memory for 9/11 would be enhanced because it was a flashbulb memory. When brought back one week, 6 weeks, or 32 weeks later one's memory for 9/11 was no greater than for their everyday event which suggests that flashbulb memories aren't special. What they did discover was that one's confidence about the memory tended to increase over time because we believe that event to be more special.

Schrauf and Rubin

These two were interested in testing the cognitive hypothesis theory; To do so, they tested two different groups of people. Group one had migrated to america during their twenties, and group two had migrated during their thirties. What they discovered was that this who migrated later in life had that reminiscence bump much later than those who migrated in their twenties. This can prove that the age does not matter as much as the pattern of one's life.

Brewer and Tyrens

These two would tell their participants that they has arrived early, and simply had them sit in an office to 'wait.' They would then ask the participants all about the details of the office they had been sitting in, and even though there were no books present, 30 percent of those individuals recalled seeing books. Why does this happen? Because schema's fill in blank spots in our memory

Brown and Kulick

These were the first two to propose what a flashbulb memory was, stating that when one of these big events happened an individual stops and takes a mental photograph of it. They believed flashbulb memories were complete, accurate, and immune to being forgotten and asked people about what they remembered from being told about JFK's assassination. Ended up being criticized because there was no way to verify how accurate these people's memories really were.

Spreading Activation

concepts that are related are saved in memory in a way that they're connected

Cultural Life Script Hypothesis

distinction between a person's life story (all of the events that have occurred in one's life) and a life script which is the culturally expected events that are "supposed" to occur at a particular time in a life span; suggests that memory enhancement is stronger when script and story seem to match up

Activation monitoring model; drm paradigm

during encoding, activation spreads from listed items to related critical items. This is why when we were told to remember a list of words, most of us remembered cold even though it had not been on the list. Some of the other words were connected to that one, causing the activation of that word in our memory

Hymen

false memory for early events; called parents of participants and asked about real childhood events, then brought participants in and asked them about real childhood events and one fake one. 20 percent of the participants would give specific details about the made up events suggesting that we can create false memories

Brewer; McDermott; Chan

gave their participants a series of sentences on screen. Once they had all flashed, participants were asked to recall all of the sentences they had just seen on screen with fill in the blanks for missing words. What they discovered was that most of the time, the exact words of a sentence could not be remembered but that participants were making pragmatic inferences with the sentences by filling in words not 100 percent correct but that showed they understood the jist of the sentence. this proved that inference that we make do get encoded with information into our memory

Script

knowledge about a sequence of events/actions that usually occur during a particular experience; can be biased but when something is really abnormal we tend to notice

Autobiographical Memory

memory for specific experiences from our life, which can include both semantic and episodic components; one's own life experiences

source monitoring error

misidentifying the source of a memory

misinformation effect

misleading information presented after a person witnesses an event can change how a person describes that event later

pragmatic inference

occurs when reading a sentence leads a person to expect something that is not explicitly stated or implied by the sentence

Loftus

presented participants with slides depicting a car accident, they immediately get twenty questions. Group one was asked if a car passed at a stop sign, and another was asked if it was passed at a yield sign. This forces a choice. Those who were asked about a stop sign and saw a stop sign most likely got the answer right, but those who saw a stop sign and got asked about a yield sign did not know the correct answer because of the misinformation effect

Cognitive Hypothesis

proposes that a period of rapid change that's followed by a period of stability can cause stronger encoding of memories. This has much more to do with the pattern than the actual events of the period of rapid change, because it suggests that if it's not followed by that period of stability than enhancement of those memories won't occur

Why do people make errors?

the link between perception and attention, often times big events happen quickly and we're unable of knowing what we should be looking for; weapons focus; less than ideal conditions;familiarity; suggestion

source monitoring

the process of determining the origins of our memories, knowledge, and beliefs

DRM Paradigm

used to create false memories

DRM paradigm

used to create false memories; think about the demo in class when most of us remembered cold, though it was not on the list; pragmatic inferences, we remember seeing something on a list because it was connected to the other words in such a way that falsified memory

Why was Cahill and McGaugh's study the best for testing memory enhancement and emotion?

Because there is only one set of material and the only thing that is being manipulated is emotion itself

Reminiscence Bump

Enhanced memory for adolescence and young adulthood for people over 40.

Jacoby et al.

In this study, there were two groups of participants. Each group was given a list of names that they were to say out loud (phase 1.) At this point, one group remained and another was sent away for 24 hours. The group that remained directly after was given another list of names and their task was to recognize if any names from the given list were famous (out loud.) Group two did the same thing, only 24 hours later. (Phase 2.) There were actually three types of names presented in phase two. famous names, non famous new names, and non famous old names, or names they had seen in the first presentation of names from phase one. The results suggested that those who were retested 24 hours after the first phase had more trouble identifying a familiar name (old non famous) and an actual famous name than those who were tested directly after phase one. Why? because the source of our memory fades

Episodic Memory

Memories with personal experience

Self Image Hypothesis

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

Is autobiographical memory distributed equally throughout life?

No it's not, often times a certain age range is over represented in comparison to other age ranges

Does emotion always help memory?

No, in fact, sometimes it can actually harm memory

Schemas

One's knowledge about some aspect of the environment; representation of norm; can influence new incoming information causing bias about whatever that new information is