Transcript Autobiographical memory

Remembering Complex Events
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Remembering Complex Events
• In this chapter we consider some of the
errors that can arise when people try to
remember episodes that are related to
other things they know and have
experienced
• Memory errors may occur due to failure at
any of the three stages.
– Encoding
– Storage
– Retrieval
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Memory Errors
• An example of a memory error
– El Al airplane lost power to two engines
– Crashed into side of building in Amsterdam
– 193 Dutch participants interviewed 10 months
later
– Asked if they saw a film of the crash on TV
(but really no cameras had recorded the
crash)
– More than half of the participants (107)
reported seeing the crash on TV
Memory Errors (Brewer & Treyens, 1981)
• Participants told to wait in
office
• Then told the experiment
was a memory test of
what they could recall
• Participants often report
seeing books or other
typical items in an office
when there were no
books in the room
Memory Errors
• Nancy arrived at the cocktail party. She looked around the room
to see who was there. She went to talk with her professor. She
felt she had to talk to him but was a little nervous about just what
to say. A group of people started to play charades. Nancy went
over and had some refreshments. The hors d’oeuvres were
good but she was not interested in talking to the rest of the
people at the party. After a while she decided she had had
enough and left the party.
Memory Errors
Nancy woke up feeling sick again, and she
wondered if she really were pregnant. How
would she tell the professor she had been
seeing? And the money was another problem.
Memory Errors
Better memory, more intrusions
Worse memory, fewer intrusions
Memory Errors
• Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM)
procedure.
– Read the list “bed, rest, awake, tired, dream,
wake, snooze…”
– Participants recall “sleep” even though it was
not on the list
• Illustrates intrusion errors
Memory Errors
Very good memory
Intrusions
Memory Errors
Highway Schema
Palm tree breaks schema
Memory Errors
• Schemata can help us when remembering
an event
– What was the first thing that happened
• The last time you went to a restaurant
• The last time you went to your favorite restaurant
• The last time you went to a restaurant on vacation
Memory Errors
• However, schemata can also cause us to
make errors when remembering an event
– For example, you might remember seeing
magazines in a dentist’s office even if there
were none
– Brewer & Treyens, 1981
– Memories are regularized
– Makes world seem more regular and normal
Memory Errors
• A classic demonstration of the effects of
schemata on memory was provided by
Frederick Bartlett (1932)
– The War of the Ghosts
Memory Errors
•
One night two young men from Egulac went down to the river to hunt seals, and while they
were there it became foggy and calm. Then they heard war cries, and they thought;
“Maybe this is a war party.” They escaped to the shore and hid behind a log. Now canoes
came up, and they heard the noise of paddles and saw one canoe coming to them. There
were five men in the canoe, and they said: “What do you think? We wish to take you along.
We are going up the river to make war on the people.” One of the young men said: “I have
no arrows.” “Arrows are in the canoe,” they said. “I will not go along. I might be killed. My
relatives do not know where I have gone. But you,” he said, turning to the other, “may go
with them.” So one of the young men went, but the other returned home. And the warriors
went on up the river to a town on the other side of Kalama. The people came down to the
water and they began to fight, and many were killed. But presently the young man heard
one of the warriors say: “Quick, let us go home; that Indian has been hit.” Now he thought,
“Oh, they are ghosts.” He did not feel sick, but they said he had been shot. So the canoes
went back to Egulac, and the young man went ashore to his house and made a fire. And he
told everybody and said: “Behold I accompanied the ghosts, and we went to fight. Many of
our fellows were killed, and many of those who attacked us were killed. They said I was hit,
and I did not feel sick.” He told it all, and then he became quiet. When the sun rose, he fell
down. Something black came out of his mouth. His face became contorted. The people
jumped up and cried. He was dead. (Bartlett, 1932, p. 65)
Memory Errors
– Native American stories presented to British
participants
– The gist of the stories was recalled but details
were altered
– Shows how memory is malleable and
reconstructed
Memory Errors
• Another line of research has investigated the
• misinformation effect
Time
Event
Misleading information
Misleading
information
becomes part of
event
Memory Errors
• Loftus and Palmer, 1974
– View a series of slides depicting a car
accident
How fast were the cars going when they _____ each other?
One week later: Do you remember seeing broken glass?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ_OEHuA2uw
• Plausible memories easier than
implausible
– Implausible still possible
• Bugs Bunny
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZlPzSeUDDw
• Imagination Inflation
– Lost in shopping mall
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=il0u2s_WGXA
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Memory Errors
• Misinformation Effect
• All sorts of memory errors can be implanted
–
–
–
–
–
Having been hospitalized overnight for a high fever.
Having spilt a bowl of punch at a wedding.
Having been lost in a shopping mall.
Having taken a hot-air balloon ride.
Having been attacked by a vicious animal.
• Entire events can be implanted into memory
– Imagery can be very compelling
Memory Errors
• Other studies have
shown that false
autobiographical
memories can be
implanted, such as
participants believing
they had become ill
eating egg salad as
children
http://chedd-angier.com/frontiers/season14.html
• Pragmatic implications
– Change eating habits
– Accuse abuse that never occurred
– Confess to crimes never committed
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Memory Errors
• Memory confidence
– People believe it indicates accuracy, but
– There is little relationship between our
confidence in our memories and their
accuracy
Activity 4
• http://www.youramazingbrain.org/testyour
self/eyewitness.htm
Eyewitness Test
• Are you ready?
• How reliable/accurate will you be??
A man went into the shop up
the road. How was he dressed?
• Dark clothes
• Light clothes
• Jeans
• I'm not sure
A woman parked her car in the street shortly before the
crime took place, did you notice her car? Was it one of
these?
What color hair did the woman
have?
•Blonde hair
•Dark hair
•Red hair
•I'm not sure
Here are some mug shots. Can you pick the
first man you saw run out of the shop?
• Response speed
– Accurate  faster
• These links are weak
• No reliable indicator of accuracy of
memory
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Avoiding Memory Errors
• Forgetting
• Why memories may weaken with time
– Decay—memories may fade or erode
– Interference—newer learning may disrupt
older memories
– Retrieval failure—the memory is intact but
cannot be accessed
Avoiding Memory Errors
• Hypnosis
– Does not help people recover lost memories
– Hypnosis makes people more open to suggestion and
misinformation effects
– Memories are not recovered, they are created
Avoiding Memory Errors
Rather than regressing, the adult draws what
he or she thinks a 6-year-old would draw
Avoiding Memory Errors
• Cognitive interview
• Instead, the method of recovering “lost”
memories that is the most grounded in
research is to provide a diverse set of
retrieval cues
– Context reinstatement
– Visualization
Cognitive Interview
• Interviewer tries to mentally reinstate the environmental and
personal context at the time of crime
• Report incident from different perspective, maybe a different
witness
• Report every single detail
• Recount incident in a different narrative order
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Avoiding Memory Errors
• Summary of memory errors
– People can confidently remember things that never
happened
– Memories become embedded in schematic
knowledge
– Schemata provide organization and retrieval paths
– Forgetting may be a consequence of how our general
knowledge is formed: Specific episodes merge in
memory to form schemata
Avoiding Memory Errors
• Other studies have demonstrated cases in
which memories were surprisingly
accurate
• What factors determine whether a memory
will be accurate or subject to errors?
Autobiographical Memory
• Autobiographical memory refers to
memory of episodes and events in a
person’s own life
– hyperthymesia = “superior autobiographical
memory"
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuFDhJPKOc
Autobiographical Memory
• The self-reference effect—better memory for
information relevant to oneself
• The self-schema is a set of beliefs and
memories about oneself
– People recall their past attitudes, the past status
of their romantic relationships, and their health in
a fashion that emphasizes consistency and
thereby makes the past look more like the present
than it really was.
Autobiographical Memory
• Our autobiographical memories are
also biased to emphasize consistency
and positive traits
– Bahrick, Hall, & Berger (1996)
• Recall high school grades
• 89% of A’s correctly remembered
• 29% of D’s correctly recalled
Autobiographical Memory
• Emotion and memory
– At a biological level, emotional events trigger a
response in the amygdala that promotes
consolidation
Autobiographical Memory
• Flashbulb memories –
memories of extraordinary
clarity, typically for highly
emotional events
• Are they accurate?
Autobiographical Memory
• Some flashbulb memories contain largescale errors
– A group of college students were interviewed
one day after the 1986 space shuttle
Challenger explosion (Neisser & Harsch,
1992)
– Five years later, confidence was high but
there were may inaccuracies in their reports
Autobiographical Memory
• Other flashbulb memories are well
remembered
– Consequentiality—whether it matters to a
person’s life
• Increases rehearsal and thus memory
• Neisser et al., 1991
– Quake of ‘89
Autobiographical Memory
• Traumatic memories
– Physiological arousal increases consolidation
– PTSD
– Can be lost
• Head injuries, extreme stress, sleep deprivation,
age, drugs/alcohol, and—controversially—
“repression”
Autobiographical Memory
• Repression
– Traumatic memories, can be “lost” and then
“recovered”
– Lost memories could be lost voluntarily or due
to ordinary retrieval failure
– However, memories may be due to
misinformation, especially if there are leading
questions
Autobiographical Memory
Most memorable period of life = high school through early college
Autobiographical Memory
• Certain principles of autobiographical memory
reflect more general memory principles
– The importance of rehearsal
– The formation of generalized schemata from
individual memory episodes
– The potential for intrusion errors and susceptibility to
misinformation
• Other principles of autobiographical memory
may be distinct
– The role of emotion in shaping autobiographical
memory may be less applicable to other kinds of
memory