Cognitive Psychology Ch.8

Flashbulb memories are not___________

"photograph" memories, as they can change with the passage of time

Roberto Cabeza and coworkers (2004)

-Brain-scanning study that illustrates a difference between autobiographical memory and laboratory memory. -measured the brain activation caused by two sets of stimulus photographs—one set that the participant took and another set that was taken by someone else -Thus, the pictures of a particular location that people took themselves elicited memories presumably associated with taking the picture and, therefore, activated a more extensive network of brain areas than pictures of the same location that were taken by someone else.

Cultural life-script hypothesis for Reminiscence bump

-Dorthe Berntsen and David Rubin (2004) -distinguishes between a person's life story, which is all of the events that have occurred in a person's life, and expected events that occur at a particular time in the life span. -important events in a typical person's life usually occur, some of the more common responses were falling in love (16 years), college (22 years), marriage (27 years), and having children (28 years). Interestingly, a large number of the most commonly mentioned events occur during the period associated with the reminiscence bump. - Youth Bias is related to this hypothesis

Youth Bias

-Jonathan Koppel and Dorthe Berntsen (2014) -the tendency for the most notable public events in a person's life to be perceived to occur when the person is young -They reached this conclusion by asking people to imagine a typical infant of their own culture and gender, and by posing the following question: "...throughout this person's life many important public events will take place, both nationally and internationally, such as wars, the deaths of public figures, and sporting events. How old do you think this person is most likely to be when the event that they consider to be the most important public event of their lifetime takes place?" -They reached this conclusion by asking people to imagine a typical infant of their own culture and gender, and by posing the following question: "...throughout this person's life many important public events will take place, both nationally and internationally, such as wars, the deaths of public figures, and sporting events. How old do you think this person is most likely to be when the event that they consider to be the most important public event of their lifetime takes place?" -most of the responses indicated that the person would perceive most important public events to occur before they were 30 -Similar answers for young and old participants

Regarding Cabeza and coworkers (2004) both types of photos activated similar brain structures. What were they?

-Medial temporal lobe (MTL) (episodic) Parietal cortex (processing of scenes)

Regarding Cabeza and coworkers (2004) A-photos (personal photos) activated more of the....

-Prefrontal cortex (information about self) -Hippocampus (recollection)

Self-image hypothesis for reminiscence bump

-Rathbone et al., 2008 -This idea is based on the results of an experiment in which participants with an average age of 54 created "I am" statements, such as "I am a mother" or "I am a psychologist," that they felt defined them as a person. -The average age of origin for the I statements was 25 Years old

Cognitive hypothesis for reminiscence bump

-Robert Schrauf and David Rubin (1998) -proposes that periods of rapid change that are followed by stability cause stronger encoding of memories. -Adolescence and young adulthood fit this description because the rapid changes, such as going away to school, getting married, and starting a career, that occur during these periods are followed by the relative stability of adult life -One way this hypothesis has been tested is by finding people who have experienced rapid changes in their lives that occurred at a time later than adolescence or young adulthood. -To test this idea, Robert Schrauf and David Rubin (1998) determined the recollections of people who had emigrated to the United States either in their 20s or in their mid-30s. Figure 8.4, which shows the memory curves for two groups of immigrants, indicates that the reminiscence bump occurs at the normal age for people who emigrated at age 20 to 24 but is shifted to later for those who emigrated at age 34 or 35, just as the cognitive hypothesis would predict. -the normal reminiscence bump is missing for the people who emigrated later.

What events are remembered well?

-Significant events in a person's life -Highly emotional events -Transition points

Spatial

3D nature of memories

This type of memory is multidimensional and involves mental time travel. It is _______________.

Autobiographical Memory (AM)

•Results suggest that these memories can be inaccurate or lacking in detail •Even though participants report that they are very confident and that the memories seem very vivid What kind of memories are these?

Flashbulb memories

Rimmele and coworkers (2011)

Memories for negative emotional pictures were stronger, and associated with greater confidence

Autobiographical Memory (AM)

Memory for specific experiences from our life, which can include both episodic and semantic components.

Greenberg and Rubin 2003

The importance of individual components of memory is illustrated by the finding that patients who have lost their ability to recognize or visualize objects, because of damage to the visual area of their cortex, can experience a loss of autobiographical memory. *even memories not based on visual information are lost in these patients. Apparently, visual experience plays an important role in autobiographical memory

What does it mean to say that memories are multidimensional?

There are different components and dimensions to memory such as visual, auditory, tactile etc. Each dimension playing its own, often important, role in the memory.

In blind patients what type of memory takes over the important role of visual memory?

auditory experience

•Hypotheses about the reminiscence bump are?

cultural life script, cognitive, and self-image

Patient B.P

had suffered damage to his amygdala. When participants without brain damage viewed a slide show about a boy and his mother in which the boy is injured halfway through the story, these participants had enhanced memory for the emotional part of the story (when the boy is injured). B.P.'s memory was the same as that of the non-brain-damaged participants for the first part of the story, but it was not enhanced for the emotional part (Cahill et al., 1995). It appears, therefore, that emotions may trigger mechanisms in the amygdala that help us remember events associated with the emotions.

Misinformation Effect

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

Autobiographical Memory includes _______________, _________________, and ________________ components.

spatial, emotional, sensory.

Kevin LaBar and Elizabeth Phelps (1998)

tested participants' ability to recall arousing words (for example, profanity and sexually explicit words) and neutral words (such as street and store), and observed better memory for the arousing words) -brain scans using fMRI as people were remembering revealed that amygdala activity was higher for the emotional words (also see Cahill et al., 1996; Hamann et al., 1999). * Memory and emotion

Florin Dolcos and coworkers (2005)

tested participants' ability to recognize emotional and neutral pictures after a 1-year delay and observed better memory for the emotional pictures

Emotion and Memory

•Emotional events remembered more easily and vividly •Emotion improves memory, becomes greater with time (may enhance consolidation) •Brain activity in amygdala

reminiscence Bump

•Participants over the age of 40 asked to recall events in their lives •Memory is high for recent events and for events that occurred in adolescence and early adulthood (between 10 and 30 years of age)