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Chapter 8: Everyday Memory
Chapter Outline
Autobiographical Memory: What Has Happened in My Life The Multidimensional Nature of Autobiographical Memories Memories over the Lifespan Memory for “Exceptional” Events Memory and Emotion Flashbulb Memories Method: Repeated Recall The Constructive Nature of Memory Bartlett’s “War of the Ghosts” Experiment Source Monitoring and Source-Monitoring Errors The “Becoming Famous Overnight” Experiment: Source Monitoring and Familiarity Remembering Who Said What: Source Monitoring and Gender Stereotypes Method: Testing for Source Monitoring How Real-World Knowledge Affects Memory Making Inferences Demonstration: Reading Sentences Scripts and Schemas False Recall and Recognition Demonstration: Memory for a List Taking Stock: The Pluses and Minuses of Construction Memory Can Be Modified or Created by Suggestion The Misinformation Effect Method: Presenting Misleading Postevent Information MPI as Replacing the Original Memory MPI as Causing Interference MPI as Causing Source Monitoring Errors Creating False Memories for Early Events in People’s Lives Why Do People Make Errors in Eyewitness Testimony? Errors of Eyewitness Identification The Crime Scene and Afterward Errors Associated with Attention Errors Due to Familiarity Errors Due to Suggestion The Effect of Postevent Questioning What Is Being Done? Something to Consider: Memories of Childhood Abuse
CogLabs: Remember/Know; False Memory; Forgot It All Along
Web Links
Flashbulb Memories and Emotions The Kennedy assassination and how people reported having "flashbulb memories.” http://www.brainchannels.com/Memory/emotion/emotion.html
Flashbulb Memories A Far Side©^ cartoon illustrating the principle of flashbulb memories. Flashbulb memories typically are remarkably vivid and seemingly permanent. http://cbest.web.wesleyan.edu/pia2_spring2000_004.htm
Flashbulb Memories September 11 renewed interest in the phenomenon of flashbulb memories. http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~kihlstrm/flashbulb.htm
F.C. Bartlett's War of the Ghosts
Read the original version of the narrative used by Bartlett as well as some free recall attempts that students made of the narrative. http://pages.slc.edu/~ebj/minds/bartlett_data.html
The Misinformation Effect and the Creation of Memories A paper by Elizabeth Loftus and her colleagues. http://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/Articles/hoff.htm
Advertising's Misinformation Effect A description of Elizabeth Loftus's views on the misinformation effect. She also makes suggestions for social policy. http://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/Articles/braun.htm
False and Repressed Memory Connections A description of Elizabeth Loftus’s views on false and repressed memories http://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/Articles/sciam.htm
Cognitive Interview Techniques An interview with Ron Fisher, one of the early developers of the cognitive interviewing technique described in this chapter. http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/gov/ntsb_cognitive_interview.pdf
Demonstrations
- Demonstrate the occurrence of false memories. The demonstration can easily be designed from the “memory for a list” demo that appears in Chapter 8. Students usually find this simple demo fascinating because a common first impression of false memories is of a complicated process that happens to "other people" or only to gullible people. Discuss how certain types of false memories are natural for the design of the system.
- Demonstrate the constructive nature of memory. This is the idea that what people report as memories are "constructed" by the person based on what actually happened plus additional influences such as other knowledge, experiences, and expectations. Select a passage from a recent newspaper article regarding an issue that has been covered in the news over a period of time (the last few months). (It would be best to choose one of the initial articles about this ongoing story. The idea is to increase the likelihood that students will report information about the story that is not reported in the one article you’ve selected. This would likely happen if you can allow for additional information presented in later stories.) After reading the article to the class, ask them to recall it as accurately as possible. (It works well to present the article during one class and have them perform the recall on the next class day.) After recall, present a written version of the passage and have students compare the actual story to their memory accounts of it. Analyze the accounts in terms of creations, omissions, and inaccuracies.
- Revisit the propaganda effect from Chapter 6 to discuss and elaborate on the idea of source- monitoring errors. Discuss how the memory cue of familiarity can lead to source misattributions. Have students develop examples where source misattributions are likely to occur. An example you might present to direct their thinking could be a pharmaceutical ad including a male in a white lab coat, his testimonial account that supports the efficacy of the product, and small print stating “not an actual doctor.”
Your friend just got a new sports car for his birthday and said you could test drive it. All excited, you jump into the driver’s seat and notice that it is a standard. It has been a long time since you drove one. If you find yourself talking through the steps necessary to drive the standard as your father once told you, what kind of memory are you displaying and why? Answer: Since you are replaying a scene in your head of when your father walked you through driving a standard, you are “remembering.” If you jumped in and just started to drive without these recollections, you would be “knowing.”
During your psychology final exam, you find you aren’t really thinking very hard and get through the multiple choice questions very quickly. You are the first one finished and although this worries you, you decide to leave to study for another final you have that afternoon. When you get your grade back for that test, you see that you received a 90%. What kind of recognition memory helped you through the test that quickly? Answer: It seems that you did not have to work to remember specific theories or class lectures; you seemed to “know” the answers. When this happens, performance tends to occur rapidly, with some errors. If you had checked your answers over and tried to recall the lectures or the parts of the textbook where the answers were, you would have been “remembering.”
While you were at the mall, you see someone you recognize, although you can’t place her. As she gets closer, you hear her talking to a friend about playing in a band and you realize that she works at a music store near your house. How did knowing change to remembering? Answer: When the mention of the band triggered a music store, it turned a memory from just knowing without knowing why, to remembering and knowing why.
Advanced Questions You go into your favorite restaurant and before you sit down, the waiter brings you an iced tea, your usual. How could you test what kind of recognition memory the waiter was using when he brought you the tea? Answer: By simply asking the waiter how he remembered that you always drink iced tea, you can assess how he remembered it. If the waiter gave you a specific personal story, then he “remembered” it; if he said he couldn’t remember exactly why he knew but that he thought it was your usual, then he just “knew.”
Exams are over, and you and your roommates decide to rent a movie to unwind. They pick out a movie that you are positive you haven’t seen. As you start to watch the movie, something happens and suddenly you get excited: you know what this movie is all about. What has just happened to you? Answer: There was a scene in the movie that triggered a memory for you. Initially you did not remember the movie because you couldn’t recall watching it. The trigger acted on your recognition memory and you now “know” the plot of the movie. If you could remember where you were and specifics about the movie, then “remembering” would be triggered.
Your roommate always sings in the shower and in the car on the way to school. In the shower, he just sings songs from memory (no radio playing), but in the car, he sings along with the radio, even with those he is not too familiar with. Although he knows the words, he rarely knows what the words mean. Sometimes he makes more errors when he is familiar with the song. In terms of his memory, what could be happening? Answer: When singing along with songs, even those he is not familiar with, he may “know” what the words are but does not comprehend what they are, what they mean, or where he learned them. He has an automatic memory or he knows which words rhyme, but he hasn’t processed the words at a deeper level or for comprehension, which would reflect a poorer ability at remembering a song. He may even make more errors to a song that he comprehends because he may be processing the meanings as he is singing, which spreads his resources out.
Discussion Questions Discuss any possible effects that level of concreteness or abstractness may play in your ability to “remember” or “know” a concept. Talk about why this makes sense and use examples to support your answer. Answer: In their answers, students should be able to tell the difference and give some examples of what a concrete and an abstract concept is. Concrete ideas, like nouns, can readily produce a mental image, whereas abstract ideas are harder if not impossible to mentally represent directly (they can perhaps be represented indirectly, like heart for love). Students should discuss the idea that concrete items may be more easily remembered because of the increased visualization for words (they can picture themselves sitting on a chair). It may take longer to think up scenarios for abstract ideas or terms.
One area of interest to memory researchers is the ability to manipulate memories through priming or leading. Discuss how this lab could contribute to the manipulation of “remembering” and “knowing” a memory. One of the references provided includes a study of manipulations of autobiographical memories. Answer: Students may include discussions about the creation of false memories by a therapist, where suggestions can get incorporated into a person’s memory system. Leading witnesses toward a certain line of thinking and memory recollection could also be introduced. After viewing a car accident, when people talk about the incident, their memories can get mixed up as to what they saw or what they think they saw.
Part III Group or Online Projects Have students think about and discuss the results of this lab and what they mean in terms of our memory accuracy and overall ability to remember events, people, and places. Ask them to think about how this knowledge could be used to improve their study habits or test-taking abilities.
Break the class into groups and have each one think about specific examples of when people "remember" something as opposed to when they "know" something in different
CogLab Instructor’s Material:
False Memories
Introduction An important issue in metamemory is realizing that we do make mistakes and we have limitations. These falsehoods are not necessarily intentional but may occur because of manipulations by external sources. Examples of false memories can be found in people undergoing therapy who incorporate suggestions from clinicians that may not be correct. Research shows that errors in memory recall tend to be for related ideas and not just random mistakes. Again, this suggests that there is something special about memory storage and retrieval.
Part I Student Projects and Critical Thinking Exercises The False Memory CogLab suggests that we may store memories as meaningful items, like a semantic network, rather than individual items. Introduce the idea of semantic networks and have students design one. Ask a student to say the first word that comes to her mind and have everyone design this network. Give students a set time to design one. Ask some students to read some of their networks and nodes. Discuss association strengths and ask which nodes have the strongest activation for them. Ask students if the strongest association is more personal to them. When this task is over, have them think about how this may be related to false memories.
As a metacognitive task, have students think about the stories they tell people that are a reflection of their memory. For example, you tell your roommate about your day and about the hard test or boring lecture you had. When they are thinking about memories, have students reflect on the accuracy of their recall. Is what they are telling their roommate a concise memory, or did they go over the general meaning of their day? Ask students to change their style the following day on the same person, telling them every detail they can remember about their day. Report how the other person reacts to these memories. Have them reflect on why we generally tell overall stories, instead of going into details.
There is a misperception that hypnosis can help a person release repressed memories. Have your students research hypnosis and its reliability for memory recall. They can look through literature as well as popular media. Ask them to find out who can legally use hypnosis and what it has been reliably used to do. They can write an APA literature review paper or a critical analysis.
Part II Possible Test Questions
Basic or Introductory Questions For the three types of words—present in list, distractors, and special distracters—which group is expected to have the best recall rate, either correctly or incorrectly? Which of the three should have the lowest recall rate? Answer: The words that were present in the list should have the highest recall rate and the distractors should be recalled incorrectly the least amount of time. The special distractors will be in the middle.
What are special distractors? Answer: They are special because they are related to words that were on the original list.
Why are special distractors picked more often as being on the original list than regular distractors? What does this suggest about memory storage? Answer: The special distractors are picked more often because they are semantically related to words that were on the original list, suggesting that we store the meaning of a word and not the word itself.
You work at a popular retail store and a customer brings something back for a refund. The customer has a long story about why she wants to return the piece of clothing. When you look at the receipt, you see that she bought this a long time ago, so you point out to her that refunds have to be done within 14 days of purchase. The woman starts in with another story about how the salesclerk told her she could return it anytime and no one would give her trouble. She even picks out a salesclerk who sold it to her. You don’t tell her that she picked out a girl who was hired last week, and you do the refund for her before she gets irate. How can you tell if she was lying or just having a false memory about the incident? Answer: You couldn’t objectively tell if she was lying or not, since memory recall is a subjective experience. Even lie detection tests are not perfect at detecting liars from truth tellers.
Research/Cognition-Based Questions What were the levels of your independent variable in the False Memory CogLab? What test would you run on your levels to see if there were significant differences in the number of times you chose that word? Answer: The three levels were words in the list, special distractors, and regular distractors. Since you have one dependent variable and one independent variable with three levels, you could run a one-way ANOVA on the mean percentage of time you chose that type of word.
What was the null hypothesis for the False Memory CogLab? What was the alternate hypothesis? What direction should the alternate hypothesis be? (Hint: Which group would you expect to have the greater percentage of recalled words?) Answer: The null hypothesis was that there would be no mean differences in percentage recalled for the three levels. The alternate hypothesis was that there would be differences between the mean percentages recalled for the three levels. It is hypothesized that the correct words in the list would have the greatest recall, followed by the special distractors and the regular distractors.
be implanted into someone’s memory. Ask them if they think they have ever had a false memory incorporated into their own memory systems. While they are investigating the stories, have them think about the psychological effect of false memories on the person as well as the other people in their lives. As an online assignment, have students contribute their findings as an online discussion. If they find a good website, have them send the link or attach news stories about the events.
Part IV
Multiple Choice Questions Which statement is true about memory? There is a strong relation between how confident we are about a memory and the memory’s accuracy. Memory is like a tape recording. Memory is like a video recording. None of the above (d)
In the false memory experiment, which items should be selected most often? Correct items from the sequence Incorrect special distractors Incorrect non-special distractors Correct special distractors (a)
In the false memory experiment, which items should be selected LEAST often? Correct items from the sequence Incorrect special distractors Incorrect non-special distractors Correct special distractors (c)
CogLab Instructor’s Material:
Forgot It All Along
Introduction An interesting memory phenomenon examined here is the idea that we sometimes experience a real event, then we forget that event for a period of time and then suddenly we remember it again under certain circumstances (triggers). In the real world, this can be seen in people who have "recovered" memories of abuse but didn’t talk about it with others before the time of recovery.
Part I Student Projects and Critical Thinking Exercises As a critical thinking exercise, have students think about potential factors that may influence one's ability to remember events from the past. Things like motivation, age, environment, or mood may be presented. You can direct them to think of examples from their own lives first and then think of the situational or internal factors that influenced their poor recall.
Have students think about how the encoding specificity principle, a contextual factor in memory recall, can be compared to the “forgot it all along" memory phenomenon. Have them be specific in their answers. You can have them write an APA-formatted paper outlining their comparisons. When they think about this question, ask them to think of other influences on poor memory recall.
Some of the researchers of repressed memories believe that some memories are "discovered" and not "recovered." Have students think about what the difference might be between these two ideas and then have them explore the latest research on repressed memories to test the idea that some memories may not be recovered but discovered.
Part II Possible Test Questions Basic or Introductory Questions
In Phase II of the lab, you had to fill in the missing two letters of the target word, or ____________ memory. Then in Phase III, you had to respond with either yes or no for each word shown as to whether you remembered the target word from Phase II, which is _________ memory. Of the two specific types of memory, which is usually easier to do (greater accuracy)? Answer: Recall; recognition. Of the two types of memory, recognition is usually easier.
Think back to Phase II and the amount of time it took to fill in the missing letters of the target word and then to Phase III to the amount of time it took to say yes or no for each
Answer: The one key thing between these two concepts is that context is very important in determining the response of the body (whether memory or the autonomic system). In one context, where the body (or mind) has learned to deal with the negative effects of incoming stimuli (memories or drugs), there is a balance or equilibrium and we are able to cope. If we change the environment even slightly, the body’s coping mechanisms are not able to work quickly enough, so a trigger brings forth a rush of potentially bad memories, causing a break down, or the sympathetic system gets aroused beyond its capacities and a heart attack could occur.
- When people get into serious accidents that involve traumatic head injuries, they can have problems remembering what happened to them before the accident. How might this be comparable to the repressed memories from bad childhood experiences? Answer: The brain may have an evolved mechanism for protecting itself from extremely negative experiences. There may also be a physiological connection, where long-term memory storage is impeded at the hippocampus because of intense emotional or physical trauma.
Discussion Questions
- We depend on our memories for a number of reasons in our society. Discuss some of the problems that affect our memories. Start with the major problems mentioned in this lab and then think about other memory labs or information that you have learned from class. Be specific in your answers. Answer: This lab showed that sometimes we remember information but then forget it shortly afterwards and context is important. You may also discuss the idea of repressed memories that may help protect us psychologically or that we can be misled by incoming information so that we form new memories for events that never happened to us. We lose details from memories over time and “fill in” specifics when we need to. Memories decay, get interfered with, or follow a pattern (serial position curve). We also have a number of different memory stores, implicit and explicit, semantic and episodic, and procedural and declarative.
Part III Group or Online Projects Discuss the idea that forgetting is an important part of human memory. Why might it be "adaptive" for humans to forget some memories? Think about some of the past research on forgetting and researchers who were interested in the information that we tended to forget.
Have students discuss how the results of this lab could be important to a clinical psychologist. What key things should be kept in mind when people remember certain events that they are positive happened in their lives?
As a group project, have students design a way to test the concept of “false memory syndrome."
If they are not sure what false memory syndrome is, this would be the first step of the project. Encourage creativity.
