Transcript Emotional factors in memory

Emotional factors in memory
• Emotional input may affect memory in at least
two ways:
• Repression (motivated forgetting)
• Flashbulb memories
• What is involved?
• Evidence for
• Evidence against
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• The status of both these concepts is disputed.
For each process:
conscious
unconscious
• Freudian idea that
forgetting happens
for a reason
• Thoughts &
memories that are
painful are forced
out of
consciousness
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Repression
Repression
• Extreme trauma
• E.g. child abuse, military combat
• Everyday forgetting
• There are no mental accidents –
whatever you forget, you have ‘chosen’
to forget it
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• E.g. dental appointments, tax return
Repression
• Experimental evidence
• Support the idea that repression of
emotionally negative material occurs
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• Levinger & Clark (1961) found PPs had poorer
recall of emotionally negative words (e.g. ‘fight’,
‘fear’)
• Klein (1972) found PPs had poorer recall for a
wordlist when they had been insulted by the
experimenter during learning
Repression
• Replications of Levinger & Clark have
found recall for negative words higher after
a delay
• Klein’s PPs might have been distracted
during learning or demotivated during
recall
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• Exp’tal findings have problems:
Repression
• Event-specific amnesia e.g. criminals
unable to recall committing crimes
• Post-traumatic amnesia e.g. disrupted
recall of combat veterans
• Recovered memories e.g. of sexual abuse
in childhood
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• Case study evidence:
Repression
• Cannot eliminate deliberately feigned
amnesia, influence of alcohol, drugs
(criminal cases)
• In other cases, still difficult to distinguish
unwillingness from inability to remember
• In many trauma cases, the problem is
flashbacks, not forgetting
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• Lots of clinical support, but:
Repression
• Often impossible to validate claims due to
lack of corroboration
• Possibility of iatrogenic false memories
(see Loftus)
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• Recovered memory evidence has many
problems:
Repression
• Best evidence come from occasional
compelling cases
• Experimental and much clinical evidence is
weak
• Probably does happen, but not often;
Freud’s suggestion that most forgetting is
repression is not sustainable
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• Evaluation