Module 33: Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Memory Improvement

False accusations can stem from well-meaning therapy to help people...

"dig back" and find out whether they were abused as a child. This can often prompt source amnesia and misinformation/imagination effects.

Issues related to adult recollection of child abuse

1. when people don't believe abuse survivors who tell their secret 2. when innocent people are falsely accused

We often construct memories as we encode them, and every time we relay a memory, we replace the original with a slightly modified version....

this is called *reconsolidation*

4. Use mnemonic devices

use peg-words, rhymes, acronyms, etc.

Misinformation effect

when misleading information has corrupted one's memory of an event. This can be caused by use of different words, hearing suggestions of how an event happened, or imagining the event.

Motivated Forgetting

We often edit or forget parts or all of particular memories to fit our assumptions, expectations, and motivations.

Sigmund Freud proposed that we ______ painful or unacceptable memories to protect our self concept

repress. However, in reality we often succeed in forgetting unwanted neutral information, but it is actually harder to forget emotional events, however unwanted they are.

Storage Decay

stored memories decline, some faster than others. The course of forgetting is initially rapid, then levels off with time (Ebbinghaus' forgetting curve)

7. Test your own knowledge, both to rehearse it and to find out what you don't yet know.

Don't be overconfident in what you know, but overlearn the material so you can later recall all of it effectively. Take advantage of the testing effect!

Eyewitness studies show that testimonies, especially those of children, can be very inaccurate. The main psychologist involved in these studies was...

Elizabeth Loftus.

5. Minimalize interference

study before sleep. Do not study in back-to-back study sessions, especially with conflicting subjects such as languages.

Déjà vu

that eerie sense that "I've experienced this before." Cues from the current situation may subconsciously trigger retrieval of an earlier experience. However, this can often be a obviously false effect, leading some people to believe in reincarnation (they think they must have experienced it in a past life) or precognition (they think they saw the event before it happened)

Retroactive interference

the disruptive effect of new learning on the recall of old information. Information learned in the hour before sleep is protected from retroactive interference, making it a good time to study (but not when you're tired)

Proactive interference

the disruptive effect of prior learning on the learning and recall of new information.

Retrieval failure

the inability to recall long-term memories because of inadequate or missing retrieval cues

Encoding failure

the inability to recall specific information because of insufficient encoding of the information for storage in long-term memory. Attention level when learning and age are two major culprits of encoding failure.

memory construction errors

Memory is not precise. We infer our past from stored information plus what we later imagined, expected, saw, and heard. We don't just retrieve memories, we reweave them. Information acquired after an event alters memory of the event.

3. Forgetting happens.

People can forget abuse, especially when they were very young and they did not understand the meaning of their experience.

Ways to improve memory

1. Rehearse repeatedly. Use distributed practice. Exercised memories are strengthened.

Those committed to protecting abused children and those committed to protecting wrongly accused adults have agreed on the following:

1. Sexual abuse does happen. And it happens more often then we once supposed. The problem is there is not one key symptom that lets us spot victims of sexual abuse.

7. Memories,whether real or false, can be emotionally upsettting

Both the accuser and the accused may suffer, when what was born of mere suggestion becomes a stinging "memory." People in unremembered accidents may be haunted by false memories they constructed based on accounts, newspapers, and photos.

2. Make the material meaningful

Build a network of retrieval cues. Organize information, put it into your own words, apply concepts, use self-reference effect, and relate concepts to each other.

In summary, information bits are lost and forgotten in every step of the memory process.

By the time memories go from sensory memory to working/short term memory, are encoded to long-term storage, and are retrieved, most all of the memories have been forgotten or at least altered.

4. Recovered memories are commonplace.

Cued by a remark or experience, we all recover memories of long-forgotten events. The question is whether certain therapies can be relied upon to retrieve these forgotten events

Other than brain damage causing amnesia, reasons we forget include...

Encoding failure, storage decay, retrieval failure, interference, and motivated forgetting

So, does repression of memories occur?

For now, all we can say is that the most common response to trauma is not banishment of the experience into the unconscious, but rather these experiences remaining as a vivid memory.

Old and new learning do not always compete with each other.

Previously learned information often facilitates learning of new information, which is called *positive transfer*.

Interference

Retrieval error caused by existence of other (usually similar) information. Includes proactive and retroactive interference.

2. Injustice happens.

Some innocent people have been falsely convicted of abuse. Some guilty people have evaded responsibility for their actions

6. Sleep More

The brain reorganizes and consolidates information in long-term memory during sleep.

5. Memories of things happening before age 3 are unreliable.

This is because of infantile amnesia. The older the child and the more severe the abuse, the more likely it is to be remembered.

6. Memories "recovered" under hypnosis or the influence of drugs are especially unreliable

Under these influences, people will incorporate all kinds of suggestions and misinformation into their memories.

Anterograde Amnesia

an inability to form new memories, though still able to recall the past before the memory loss occurred. This is caused by damage to the hippocampus.

Retrograde Amnesia

an inability to retrieve information from one's past before the memory loss occurred, though still able to form new memories.

Source Amnesia (aka source misattribution)

attributing to the wrong source an event we have experienced, heard about, read about, or imagined. (ex/ a songwriter thinks he can up with an idea, when in fact he is unintentionally plagiarizing another songwriter) Source amnesia is at the heart of many false memories.

People with anterograde amnesia can remember certain things, however, such as newly-formed implicit memories like classical conditioning, and new procedural skills...

but they do these things with no awareness of having learned them.

Imagination effect (a misinformation effect, aka imagination inflation)

imagining nonexistent actions and events can create false memories of these events. Digitally altered photos can even create this effect. People will even create and elaborate upon false memories with enough prompting, without even realizing they are doing so.

Repression (motivated forgetting)

in psychoanalytic theory by Freud, the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories. This is a very debated topic still today.

Because of misinformation effects and source amnesia happening outside our awareness...

it is nearly impossible to discern true and false memories. False memories can be very persistent, eyewitness accounts can be unreliable...especially those of children, we tend to believe what we want to believe, and maturation makes liars out of us all.

3. Activate retrieval cues

mentally recreate the situation and mood in which your original learning occurred