Transcript Weird Memory7

Weird Memory Effects
Kimberley Clow
[email protected]
http://instruct.uwo.ca/psychology/130/
Outline
• Reproductive Memory
• Schemas
– Scripts
•
•
•
•
Technical vs. Content Memory
False Memories
Repressed / Recovered Memories
Flashbulb Memories
Context Effects on Comprehension
• Earlier words prime proper interpretation of
later words.
– A common example of semantic priming.
• Primed
– The kids’ first arithmetic lesson taught them to
count
– The vampire was disguised as a handsome count.
• Ambiguous Target
– We had trouble keeping track of the count
Memory is NOT Exact!
• Reproductive Memory
– A highly accurate, verbatim recording of an event
• Reconstructive Memory
– Remembering by combining elements of
experience with existing knowledge
• In “The Princess Bride”, does Inigo tell Vizzini
– You say that so often, I do not think it means
what you think it means
– You keep using that word, I do not think it means
what you think it means
The Seven Sins of Memory
Bartlett’s War of the Ghosts
• English students told a Native Indian story
• Memory for the story tested across time
– Omissions and normalization
• Results indicated that memory is
reconstructive
– Leveling
• making story simpler
– Sharpening
• overemphasizing certain details
– Assimilating
• changing details to fit what we think
Scripts
• What is your
Restaurant script?
– What happens first?
– And then?
– And then?
Recognition
• Which of the following sentences
was/were shown earlier?
– The
– The
– The
– The
ants were on the table
ants ate the jelly on the table
old car pulled the trailer
car climbed the steep hill
Technical vs. Content Accuracy
• Technical Accuracy
– Recalling or recognizing exactly what was
experienced
– Generally quite poor
• Content Accuracy
– Recalling or recognizing the meaning or
content of what was experienced
– Generally quite accurate
Recall
Car Accident
Loftus & Colleagues
• Estimate how fast the
cars were going
– When they “hit” each
other
– When they “smashed”
each other
• Did you see the
broken glass?
Why Does This Happen?
• Possible Explanations
– Memory Impairment
– The Response Bias
Explanation
– Source Misattribution
– Misinformation Acceptance
Lost in the Mall
• Can you produce false
memories through
suggestion?
– Asked to write about 4
memories
• 3 real
• 1 false (lost in mall)
– When told one was incorrect,
picked one of the real
memories
Lost Again
• Replicated on a group of people
– What memories did people remember?
• 7 out of 24 remembered the false event
– How are the events remembered?
• True memories described more
• True memories rated more clear
• False memories’ clarity increased over time
– Can they choose the false memory?
• 19 out of 24 figured out which was false
• Process of elimination?
One Person’s False Memory...
• “I vaguely, vague, I mean this is very vague, remember the lady
helping me and Tim and my mom doing something else, but I
don't remember crying. I mean I can remember a hundred
times crying..... I just remember bits and pieces of it. I
remember being with the lady. I remember going shopping. I
don't think I, I don't remember the sunglasses part.“
• "Well, it can't be Slasher, 'cause I know that he ran up in
the...the chimney and I know that that cat got smashed and I
know that we got robbed so it had to be that mall one.”
• "..I totally remember walking around in those dressing rooms
and my mom not being in the section she said she'd be in. You
know what I mean?"
Individual Differences
• Some people are more susceptible to
misinformation than others
– 7 out of 24 participants
• People high at risk for misinformation
acceptance have
– Poor general memory
– High scores on imagery vividness
– High empathy scores
Recovered Memories of Abuse
• A person remembers today, that 20
years ago, someone sexually abused
them
• Traumatic memory was repressed and is
now recovered
– often under hypnosis in therapy
• Validity of recovered memories?
• Empirical evidence for Freudian
repression?
Model of Recovered Memories?
Questions
• Is there evidence for repressed
memories?
– Much evidence that emotional events are
remembered better, not forgotten
• Post-traumatic stress disorder
– Are these memories real or false?
• If there is repression, how does it differ
from normal forgetting?
Evidence for Suppression?
• Learned 40 unrelated
word pairs
– ordeal-roach
• Respond Condition
– Think of the word paired
with ORDEAL…
• Suppression Condition
– Do NOT think of word
paired with MEASURE…
• Memory for target words
decreased with the
number of suppressions
Evidence?
• Most cases are unclear
– Susan Nason murder
• Eileen Fanklin: “I remember my father did it.”
• George Franklin denies it and no evidence links
him
• Research reports 4 cases with
reasonably good evidence that
– A memory for abuse was recovered
– The remembered event actually happened
– The event was previously forgotten
Recovered Memories
• Recovery Experiences
– Sudden
– Startling
– Emotional
– Initiated by related retrieval cues
• encoding specificity?
• Forgetting
– May have been over-estimated
– Prior remembering not as emotional
Counter Example
• Adults recall of horrific abuse at hands of
Satanists
– Murder, torture, sexual abuse, eating babies
• FBI could find no evidence
– Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)?
– Repressed memory?
• Therapists used highly suggestive techniques
– drugs, hypnosis, suggest that there might be nonremembered abuse
• Therapy led to false memories?
Physically Possible?
• A possible physiological explanation of
repression
– Stress  release of glucocorticoids (steroid
hormones)
– Glucocorticoids  kill hippocampal neurons
– Hippocampus brain area related to memory
• Hippocampus reduced in abused vs. nonabused women
– Same for post-traumatic stress disorder
– BUT no direct evidence links glucocorticoids to
repression of traumatic memories.
To Sum Up
• Repressed Memories
– More questions, than answers
– Child abuse and sexual assault are big problems
that are very traumatic
• Some evidence that memories of such abuse can be
forgotten and then recovered
– Memories can also be inaccurate or manufactured
• Especially when under hypnosis or otherwise being given
suggestions or directed questions
– Can’t tell if a memory is true or false without
independent corroboration
Consequences of Memory Effects
• Think of how all of this might affect the
courts, and specifically eye witness testimony
– Schema effects, false memories, repressed
memories, recovered memories
• Memory is suggestible:
– people’s memory can be altered and influenced by
the knowledge they have when they encounter
the information, and by the information they
encounter afterwards
• Is there anything we can do to minimize
these effects?
Cognitive Interview
• Encourage eyewitness to produce her own
memory cues and minimize direct questions
• Get her to mentally recreate the context of
the crime
– environmental and internal (e.g., mood state) info
• She should report everything she can
remember
– even if info is fragmented
• Alter how the info is reported
– List details in various orders
– List details from various perspectives
Flashbulb Memories
Princess Diana
• Flashbulb memories are
–
–
–
–
Vivid
Detailed
Long-lasting
Memories we will “never
forget”
– Personally meaningful
• Personal Examples
– Your first date
– The death of someone close
to you
Six ‘Canonical’ Categories
• Write an account of a flashbulb memory
– Place
• where were you?
– Ongoing event
• what were you doing?
– Informant
• who told you / how did you find out?
– Affect in others
– Own affect
– Aftermath
Accuracy of Flashbulb Memories
• Neisser & Harsch (1992)
– Ask people to remember what
they were doing when they
first heard about the
Challenger shuttle explosion
– Asked them again 2½ years
later
– Measured the similarity of
both memory reports
• Same memory reported very
differently over time
January, 1986
• “I was in my religion class and some
people walked in and started talking
about the [explosion]. I didn’t know any
details except that it had exploded and
the school teacher’s students had all
been watching, which I thought was so
sad. Then after class I went to my room
and watched the TV program talking
about it and I got all the details from
that.”
September, 1988
• “When I first heard about the explosion
I was sitting in my freshman dorm room
with my roommate and we were
watching TV. It came on a news flash
and were we both totally shocked. I
was really upset and went upstairs to
talk to a friend of mine and then I
called my parents.”