Cognitive Psychology: Chapter 8

Kieran found that studying for his Spanish exam made it more difficult to remember some of the vocabulary words he had just studied for his French exam earlier in the day. This is an example of

retroactive interference.

Your text argues that the proper procedure for measuring the accuracy of flashbulb memories is

repeated recall.

Reducing Eyewitness Errors

1. Line-ups -Inform witness perpetrator might not be in the lineup 2. Use "fillers" in lineup who are similar to suspect 3. Use subsequent presentation- bringing out one person at a time (vs. simultaneous) 4.Use a "blind" lineup administrator 5. Get immediate confidence rating

Why does the misinformation effect occur

1. MPI cause retroactive interference -original memory has been replaced 2. MPI causes source monitoring errors could be both -original memory is still there

Do flashbulb memories use a special mechanism

1. Yes, based on "Now Print" mechanism 2. No, say most contemporary researchers

Repeated Reproduction

A method of measuring memory in which a person is asked to reproduced a stimulus on repeated occasions at longer and longer intervals after the original presentation of the material to be remembered

Cognitive Interview

A procedure used for interviewinf crime scene witnesses that involves letting witnesses talk with a minimum of inturuption. It also uses techniques that help witnesses recreate the situation present at the crime scene by having them place themselves back in the scene and recreate emotions they were feeling, where they were lookingm and how the scene may have appeared when viewed from different perspectives. 1. Let witness talk without interruption (no feedback) no MPI 2. Help them recreate the situation and emotions

Script

A schema of the action that occur during a particular experience (a sequence of actions that typically occur)

Creating false memories: Remembering words not presented in lists

Activation - monitoring hypothesis -During encoding, activate the list words and also semantically related words (i.e. the sleep schema) -During retrieval, have to do source monitoring - "Did the word really appear, or am I just thinking about it because its related to the other words"

Your text describes an experiment by Talarico and Rubin (2003) that measured people's memories of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Which of the following was the primary result of that research?

After 32 weeks, participants had a high level of confidence in their memories of the terrorist events, but lower belief in their memories of "everyday" events.

Which statement below is NOT true, based on the results of memory research?

Although eyewitness testimony is often faulty, people who have just viewed a videotape of a crime are quite accurate at picking the "perpetrator" from a lineup.

Cognitive Hypothesis

An explanation for the reminiscence bump, which states that memories are better for adolescence and early adulthood because encoding is better during periods of rapid change are followed by stability. -Encoding is better during periods of rapid change.

Post-identification Feedback Effect

An increase in confidence of memory recall due to confirming feedback after making an identification, as in a police lineup

Research Method for flashbulb memories: Repeated Recall

Baseline report compared to later report *you do get memory distortions - increase over time* -Challenger Explosion -O.J. Simpson verdict *Accuracy of flashbulb memory depends on personal significance of, and nearness to, the event

Eyewitness testimony

Convincing, especially if the eyewitness is confident -But there is no significant correlation = .29 between confidence and testimony accuracy -Important societal issue -Important people have been convicted **The innocence project -Picking Cotten: Ronald Cotton and Jennifer Thompson - Cannino Errors in ET: 1. The role of attention -weapons focus 2. The role of familiarity -source monitoring error

Cultural Life Script

Culturally shared expectations structure recall. -Life events that commonly occur in a particular culture.

Flashbulb Memories

Memory for circumstances surrounding hearing about shocking, highly charged events 1. Feel vivid and richly detailed 2. Feel highly accurate and resistant to forgetting -subjective experience

Flashbulb memories 9/11

Details of 9/11 memory declined steadily over time -Flashbulb memories and everyday memories declined basically at the same rate, however peoples beliefs/confidence in their flashbulb memories and everyday memories remain mostly the same over time -We look at most memories through our own eyes (field), and over time we shift to looking at them through an observers eye/perspective

Amygdala

Emotion -Almond shaped/size in the medial part of the temporal lobe -Next to the hippocampus

Memory Emotion

Emotion is linked to stress hormones

Which of the following is the most accurate statement regarding post-event information and the misinformation effect?

Even when participants are told that the post-event information is incorrect, the misinformation effect can still occur.

Becoming famous overnight study

How do people decide that someone is famous

Pragmatic Inference

Inference that occurs when reading or hearing a statement leads a person to expect something that is not explicitly stated or necessarily implied by the statement

Flashbulb memory is best represented by which of the following statements?

It is memory for the circumstances surrounding how a person heard about an emotional event that remains especially vivid but not necessarily accurate over time.

Schema

Knowledge about what is involved in a concept or experience -at encoding, you fill in details that are not presented -you make inferences (fill in the blanks "top down") -at retrieval, fill in details that are not remembered -can result in false memories (automatic process)

The retroactive interference hypothesis states that the misinformation effect occurs because

MPI obstructs or distorts memories formed during the original experiencing of an event.

Flashbulb Memory

Memory for the circumstances surrounding hearing about shocking, highly charged events. It has been claimed that such memories are particularly vivid and accurate. -Related to rehearsal hypothesis for another viewpoint.

Memory Reconstruction

Memory: what actually happened (bottom up) plus a person's knowledge, experiences, & expectations (top down) -no memories are perfect

Source Monitoring Error

Misidentifying the source of a memory

Source monitoring

Misidentifying the source of a memory (Did I see that on TV or did my friend tell me about that?)

The power of sugestion

Misinformation effect: misleading information presented after a person witnesses an event can change how that person describes the event later -Seminal work by Elizabeth Loftus -Loftus and Palmer (1974) - watch a film of a car crash experiment -smash into each other *41mph -crash into each other *34mph -Then a week later people who heard hit 14% thought they remembered broken glass and 32% who heard the word smash **There were no broken glass -Context Matching ***Look in notes for other examples of Loftus experiments -Kids and the elderly are more suggestible

Misinformation Effect

Misleading information presented after a person witnesses an event changes how the person describes that event later

Source Misattributions

Occurs when the source of a memory is misidentified

Self Image Hypothesis - Clare Rathbone

Period of assuming person's self-image -The idea that memory is enhanced for events that occur are a person's self-image or life identity is being formed. This is one of the explanations for the reminiscence bump.

Which of the following statements is true of the cognitive interview technique?

Police allow witnesses to talk with a minimum of interruption from the officer.

Repeated Recall

Recall that is tested immediately after an event and then rested at various times after the event

In the experiment in which participants sat in an office and then were asked to remember what they saw in the office, participants "remembered" some things, like books, that weren't actually there. This experiment illustrates the effect of _____ on memory.

Schema

Your friend has been sick for several days, so you go over to her home to make her some chicken soup. Searching for a spoon, you first reach in a top drawer beside the dishwasher. Then, you turn to the big cupboard beside the stove to search for a pan. In your search, you have relied on a kitchen

Schema

Eyewitness Testimony

Testimony by eyewitnesses to a crime about what they saw during commission of the crime.

Cultural Life Script Hypothesis

The idea that events in a person's life story become easier to recall when they fit the cultural life script for that person's culture. This has been cited to explain the reminiscence bump.

Narrative Rehearsal Hypothesis

The idea that we remember some life events better because we rehearse them. This idea was proposed by Neisser as an explanation for "flashbulb" memories.

Constructive Nature of Memory

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

Misleading Postevent Information (MPI)

The misleading information that causes the misinformation effect.

Source Monitoring

The process by which people determine the origins of memories, knowledge, or beliefs. Remembering that you heard about something from a particular person would be an example of source monitoring.

Retroactive Interference

When more recent learning interferes with memory for something that happened in the past

A script is a type of schema that also includes knowledge of

a sequence of actions.

Bartlett's experiment in which English participants were asked to recall the "War of the Ghosts" story that was taken from the French Indian culture illustrated the

constructive nature of memory.

In the "word list" false memory experiment where many people incorrectly remember hearing the word "sleep", false memory occurs because of _____ and then _____.

activation of list words and schema words ... source monitoring error Question 26 Correct 1.00 points out of 1.00 Not flaggedFlag question Question text

For most adults over age 40, the reminiscence bump describes enhanced memory for

adolescence and young adulthood.

The misinformation effect occurs when a person's memory for an event is modified by misleading information presented

after the event.

Your text's discussion of false memories leads to the conclusion that false memories

arise from the same constructive processes that produce true memories.

The conclusion to be drawn from the man named Shereshevskii whose abnormal brain functioning gave him virtually limitless word-for-word memory is that having memory like a video recorder

can seriously disrupt functioning in one's personal life.

Schrauf and Rubin's "two groups of immigrants" study found that the reminiscence bump coincided with periods of rapid change, occurring at a normal age for people emigrating early in life but shifting to 15 years later for those who emigrated later. These results support the

cognitive hypothesis.

The "telephone game" is often played by children. One child creates a story and whispers it to a second child, who does the same to a third child, and so on. When the last child recites the story to the group, his or her reproduction of the story is generally shorter than the original and contains many omissions and inaccuracies. This game shows how memory is a _____ process.

constructive

Arkes and Freedman's "baseball game" experiment asked participants to indicate whether the following sentence was present in a passage they had previously read about events in a game: "The batter was safe at first." Their findings showed inaccurate memories involved

creations from inferences based on baseball knowledge.

Unconscious plagiarism of the work of others is known as

cryptomnesia.

In the "War of the Ghosts" experiment, participants' reproductions contained inaccuracies based on

cultural expectations.

Jacoby's experiment, in which participants made judgments about whether they had previously seen the names of famous and non-famous people, found that inaccurate judgments of fame occurred based on

familiarity.

Much research has been dedicated to improving the reliability of eyewitness testimony. One finding reveals that when constructing a lineup,

increasing similarity between "fillers" and a suspect leads to an increased level of missed identification of some guilty suspects.

Experiments that argue against a special flashbulb memory mechanism find that as time increases since the occurrence of the flashbulb event, participants

make more errors in their recollections.

The observation that older adults often become nostalgic for the "good old days" reflects the self-image hypothesis, which states that

memory for life events is enhanced during the time we assume our life identities.

When presenting lineups to eyewitnesses, it has been found that a(n) _____ lineup is much more likely to result in an innocent person being falsely identified.

simultaneous

Stanny and Johnson's "weapons focus" experiment, investigating memory for crime scenes, found that

the presence of a weapon hinders memory for other parts of the event.

Autobiographical memory research shows that a person's brain is more extensively activated when viewing photos

they took themselves.

Asking people to recall the most influential events that happened during their college careers shows that ______ in people's lives appear to be particularly memorable.

transition points