AP Psychology Module 33

Source amnesia

Attributing to the wrong source of an event we have experienced, heard about, read about, or imagined. (Also called Source Misattribution.) Source amnesia, along with the misinformation effect, is at the heart of many false memories.

Henry molaison

For fifty five years after having brain surgery to stop severe seizures molaison was unable to form new conscious memories

Harry bahrick

Found a similar forgetting curve for Spanish vocabulary learned in school Compared with those just completing a high school or college Spanish course people three years out of school had forgotten much of what they had learned

Normal forgetting

Happens because we have never encoded information

Hermann ebbinghaus and durability of stored memories

He learned a list of nonsense syllables and measured how much he retained when relearning each list from twenty minutes to twenty days later The course of forgetting is initially rapid and then levels off with time

Children are susceptible to the misinformation effect but except

If questioned in neutral words they understand they can accurately recall events and people involved in them

Henry rowdier and Kathleen McDermott

In experiment they presented a list of words to memorize and they will remember a no presented similar word more than the actual words themselves

Repression

In psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories.

Misinformation

Incorporating misleading information into one's memory of an event. People have formed false memories by incorporating misleading details or after repeatedly imagining and rehearsing something that never happened

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

Sexual abuse happens Injustice happens Forgetting happens Recovered memories are commonplace Memories of things happening before age three are unreliable Memories recovered under hypnosis or the influence of drugs are especially unreliable Memories whether real or false can be emotionally upsetting

Memory research findings suggest the following strategies for improving memory

Study repeatedly Make material meaningful Activate retrieval cues Use mnemonic devices Minimize interference Sleep more Test yourself to be sure you can retrieve as well as recognize material

Retroactive interference

The disruptive effect of new learning in the recall of old information.

Proactive interference

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

Déjà vu

The eerie sense that "I've experienced this before." Cues from the current situation may unconsciously trigger retrieval of an earlier experience.

Stephen cici and Maggie Bruce studies

They show that children's memories can be molded

Reconsolidation

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

The debate between memory researchers and some well meaning therapists focuses on

Whether most memories of early childhood abuse are repressed and can be recovered during therapy using "memory work" techniques using leading questions or hypnosis

Anterograde amnesia

An inability to form new memories.

Retrograde amnesia

An inability to retrieve information from one's past.

Oliver sacks

A neurologist who had a patient named Jimmie who had anterograde amnesia resulting from brain damage Jimmie had no memories beyond his injury in 1945

Positive transfer

Old and learning do not always compete with each other. Previously learned information often facilitates our learning of new information

Imagination inflation

Repeatedly nonexistent actions and events can create false memories