Donald Thompson: because a suspect himself when he was found to match a rape victims

Description of her rapist, in reality she was watching Thompson on TV just prior to being raped, She confused her memory

-Explicit memory = episodic memory

Perspectives on memory

Record keeping vs. constructionist (superior) accounts of memory

-Principle of memory: to preserve the past, it is designed to retain records of previous

Experiences, has lead to –> Record keeping approach: this theory claims memory acts as a kind of storage bin in which records of experience are placed Plike books in a library) record keeping is a family of theories that have in common the following principles:

  • Each experience adds a new record of the experience to the storage bin Pnumber of records expand over time)
  • Remembering involves searching though a network of memory locations for some particular record Psearch for a particular book in library, organized in ways of efficiency like library subject matter, once found the memory is read or re-experienced)
  • Forgetting is primarily due to search failure caused by the interfering effect of the presence of lots of memory records

Some versions of record keeping theory claim that memory record is never really lost and that all past experiences are potentially recoverable

  • Alternative to record keeping approach is constructionalist account of memory: human memory is not designed primarily to preserve the past but to anticipate the future, it is characterized by these principles:

No record by record account of past events is maintained in storage system

  • Each new experience causes changes in various cognitive systems that perceive, interpret, respond emotionally and act on the environment, no record-by-record account of these experiences that gave rise to those are stored anywhere Pmemory reflect how the cognitive systems have adapted to the environment) – the cognitive systems are also sensitive to unexpected exceptions to the regularities ordinarily observed
  • Recollection of the past involves a reconstruction of past experience based on information in the current environment and on the way the cognitive processing is currently accomplished, remembering is a process more akin to fanaticizing or planning for the future than searching for and reading/re-experiencing the past memory records
  • Forgetting is not due the presence of other memory records but to the continuous adaptive changes made to various cognitive systems in response to events
  • No contemporary theory of memory entirely embodies the recording keeping theory
  • This chapter explains why record keeping does not work

Historical support for record keeping

-Historically it has been record keeping metaphors that have dominated thinking about memory – Plato used in wax table analogy

  • Christian theologian and John Locke claimed there is no innate ideas both characterized memory as a storehouse containing records of the past

-Memory metaphors: library, storehouse, key store cards, tape records, file systems

-Memory research began with publications of Hermann Ebbinghau’s Uber das Gadachtnis  in this study he presented him self with a lists of arbitrary words or syllables and counted the number of trials it took to remember, by doing this he established several important principles of memory:

  • One principle known as Ebbinghaus forgetting curve: is that forgetting mostly takes place within the first few hours and days of learning, after a few days the rate at which the      information is lost from memory is very slow and gradual
  • He showed that as the numbers of syllables on the list increased the number of trials to learn increase exponentially
  • He also studied meaningful words and found that they took fewer trials to learn -1/10; meaningful information is easier to memorize

His primary concern was to demonstrate that human memory is an orderly and measurable phenomenon that can be described with the same precision as biological phenomena

Free recall test: write down all the words on the list

Cue recall test: what word was paired with duck on the list Recognition tests: did the word duck appear on the list

-Another development that encouraged the use of record keeping theories of memory was the invention of the digital computer

  • Computers store each piece of information by placing records of that information into separate locations; the memory system in a computer is distinct from the central processing unit PCPU) that actually carries out the manipulations of information. Computers retrieve info by scanning through the set of locations until information is found or by going to the address of memory location and accessing what is stored there Pcomputer is a good analogy of memory)

Historical support for constructionalist theories of memory

Freud held a constructionist approach, wrote about how people falsify their memories

Bertlett was one of the first to establish a research program investigating the experimental implications of constructionism famous study “war of the ghosts” participant had to recall story with as much detail as possible at different time intervals. This story seemed off to people raised in western cultures, Bartlett found that his subjects’ recollection of the story were incomplete and often distorted, they had trouble remembering the unusual names, they invented plausible transitions and they altered the facts about the ghost or could not remember anything about the ghost –Bartlett argue that they used their western culture knowledge and the nature of the stories to imaginatively reconstruct the story – when relevant cultural information is missing, subjects’ memories were transformed to make their recollection consistent with their culture knowledge and values

*Remembering is a form of reconstruction in which various sources of knowledge are used to infer past experiences

–Neisser claimed in his book that memory is like problem solving, a matter of taking existing knowledge and memories of previous reconstructions to create a plausible rendition of some particular past event Preconstructing a dinosaurs skeleton) he believed “executive routines” guide the process of gathering and interpreting evidence upon which the reconstruction of the past is based Pexecutive routines were strategies acquired thorough experience)

-Neurophysiology not storage bin in the brain instead memory reflects changes in neurons involved in perception, experiences result in altering streghths of connection between neurons the brain is constantly tuning itself

  • The brain has no neural tissue dedicated only to storing a record of each experience

Retaining experiences in memory

Record keeping: a record of each memory is put into a storage bin

Constructionalist approach: is the various cognitive systems are changed by experience by no record by record account of the experiences are stored anywhere, the cognitive system is designed to extract the unchanging elements or patterns from experience and to note deviations from enduring patterns

A constructionist account of retention – Remember what you ate last Thursday?

  • The longer the retention interval, the poorer the memory for specific food items consumed
  • People tend to under estimate in their memory how much food they have eaten

-Constructionist theory then, predicts that people will not be able to remember very well the constantly changing details of events, such as a particular entrée for a given dinner or color of shirt. But it should be easy for people to remember the invariants or enduring pattern of events such as always drinking a beverage with dinner, always wearing the same shirt

  • Accuracy for any events is likely to decline, as more records are stored
  • The advantage of constructionalist theory is that it postulates that the creation of memories and the extraction of patterns from experience are accomplished by the same mechanism

Evidence for the constructionist account of retention

*There is empirical evidence that memory preserves patterns but not details of experience -Memory for patterns, remember the gist but not the detail

Accurate memory

The record keeping of memory claims that accurate memory occurs when a person successfully locates a memory record

Constructionist theory implies that there are three circumstances in which memory is likely to be accurate:

1.Constructionist theory predicts that repetitious events, like always having ice team with dinner should be remembered because they promote the creation of strong connections among elements – information that is repeated is more likely to be remembered Precord keeping believes this too because you would have increase number of records for that one event)

2.Constructionist theory predicts that recent events, such as what one ate for breakfast this morning, should be well remembered, because the strength of the connections among elements representing recent events would no yet be weakened by subsequent events Precent easier to remember, push down stack)

3.Constructionist theory predicts that unusual or distinctive events should be well remembered because they promote the creation of a connections among elements that would not likely be reconfigured by future events, unusual events like nauseated from lamb chops Pdistinctive events are better remembered) The Von Restorff effect: something that is different stands out and is easier to remember, subjects were more likely to recognize the faces they rated as distinctive than the faces they rated as common, another example an animal name in a list of countries, bizarre imagery really does improve memory, but if subjects are required to make bizarre images for all the words on the list then the individual differences are not distinctive, the superiority of the bizarre image technique is greater if the memory test is done days after studying the list

Memory for a remarkable event is called flashbulb memory: it is vivid because the event is distinctive and because people talk about and think about the event much more frequently than about other more mundane experiences

Brain stimulation and accurate memory

Dr. Penfield brain surgeon who removed parts of the brain Pcortical tissue) to prevent the spread of brain seizures in epileptic patients -> by doing this he figured out that the cortex must keep a record of all past experience and that forgetting must be to retrieval failure

Recognition and accurate memory

  • Research on recognition memory, memory is like record keeping
  • Example of recognition task if the picture were dissimilar they were easier to recognize
  • How good our memory seems to be for any given event depends on the way we’re being tested – Performance is usually better on recognition then recall

Autobiographical memory

A theory used to sometime support that nearly all experience is retrievable comes from individuals who have for years kept records of details of important autobiographical experiences and later tired to recall some of those details

Wagenaar remember the same events for years they were all distinct, he had no foils: events that could plausibly have happened to him but didn’t

-Research on autobiographical memory does not prove that we have accurate and detailed memory for nearly all of our experiences, it suggests that we can remember some of the details of our most distinctive experiences

Photographic memory

Photographic is meant to be a metaphor for extraordinary memory for all kinds of information – Example of S.V had a rare ability known as synesthesia: the ability to conjure up vivid images of light, color, taste and touch associated with almost any sound, S.V would retrieve words from memory by taking a mental walk noticing images associated with the landmarks, this mnemonic technique Pis a strategy for memorizing) is called method of loci: helps make information more distinctive

  • Eidetic imagers have an extraordinary ability to remember visual details of pictures, example the all time known eidetic imager was Elizabeth who was able to superimpose a first pattern onto a second patterns and thus accurately identify a 3D image

-Example of Rajan who was amazing at remembering numbers, used a rather vaguely described mnemonic system whereby numbers are associate with numerical locations in a series – these people are good at using mnemonic memorizing strategies

  • There is no such thing as a Hollywood “photographic memory”

The Assimilation principle

Making information distinctive or associating information with distinctive images and ideas can promote better memory of that information -> learning strategies

-Learning strategy is based on the principle that memory for an event will be improved to the extent that the event can be assimilated into something that already exists in memory – This principle is called the assimilation principle

  • The passage becomes more memorable if it reminds the person or relevant knowledge
  • People remember information better if it is in their area of expertise

The assimilation principle levels of processing

Levels of processing: when people think about the meaning of information, they remember more of it than when they think about the physical properties vs. when they merely try to rote Prepetition) memorize information, elaborating on the meaning is a more effective learning strategy than is rote memorizing

Example study: subjects who studied a list of words by elaborating each word into complete sentences later recalled more of the words than subjects who only rote memorized the words

  • Elaboration makes information more distinctive
  • Levels of processing research has been used to challenge the duplex model of short term memory, thinking deeply vs. passively -> this all comes down to how memory is tested Psemantic task- deep and rhyming task shallow) semantic better in recognition task, on rhyming task better for shallow testing -> transfer appropriate processing

Individual differences in memory

Record keeping theories say: that there is an all purpose memory system for storing every kind of experience, the reason some people have better memories than others is that some people have more efficient mechanism for storing and retrieving records

Constructionist theories say: there is no all-purpose memory system; instead there is a by-product of changes to the various components of cognition that underlie perception. People vary with the respect to how much they know about various domains of knowledge, some people have more expertise in the domain of knowledge sampled by the test of memory, how much knowledge they already posses about the domain BUT not always true, knowledge does not guarantee better memory for new info in that domain, the person has to know how to use the knowledge for learning and remembering * Human memory is to anticipate the future

Recollecting the past

Record keeping claims that recollecting the pats means searching through a storehouse of records of past evens until the target record is retrieved, reading memory is like re-experiencing the past event

Constructionist theory claims that recollecting the past is essentially a process of reconstructing the past from information in the current environment and from connections serving various cognitive systems, recollection is an active process akin to fantasizing or speculating about the future, where by recreate or infer their past rather than experience it

  • People learn reconstruction strategies that enable them to deduce past events
  • Reconstructing/remembering car accident by re driving through intersection

Reconstructing the past

  • An important implication of reconstruction is that when people try to recollect a past event, what they remember will depend on what they currently know or believe, errors in recollecting events will reflect knowledge and beliefs ie. Bob and marry engaged bob did not want children- depending on the end, if the children part was as important of not

Eyewitness memory and reconstruction

-Eyewitnesses tend to distort their memories of crimes and accidents based on information they received after the crime -> photo bias: example with photos and line up: subjects tend to be bias towards identifying as the perpetrator any suspect whose photo they had recently seen, just go from memory not very accurate, I.e. Accident questions, witnesses use information implied by the question to reconstruct the details of the accident

Source memory: is good when it is easy for subjects to discriminate between the experience of seeing the film and reading the text BUT poor if the misleading suggestions contained in the text are repeated several times rather then presented in the text only once

Hypnosis and memory

  • Recollect crimes and accidents
  • Hypnosis promotes such accurate recall of the past that nearly all events must be stored in memory, but they actually don’t remember detail any more accurately than do nonhypnotized people, must watch out for misleading implications in the questions “what the license plate number/ never show license plate”- hypnotized more likely to fall for the question

-HYPNOSIS DOES NOT REALLY WORK

The influence of beliefs on memory

  • One idea people have about personality is that beliefs remain stable over time
  • PMS affect on mood is wrong, for example the idea of reconstruction suggests that women may use this belief about mood and menstruation to remember inaccurately that their mood had been worse during a previous menstruation phase then during an instrumental phase of the cycle
  • Diary records prove that women’s moods aren’t worse during menstrual, yet women recall that their mood was worse on menstrual days
  • the more the women believed in the correlation the more negative they claim their mood to be

Confidence and accuracy

  • Record keeping theories of human memory think recollection of the past is first retrieval
  • Then resorts to reconstruction vs. the constructionist theory claims instead that people use a reconstructionist strategy every time they reflect o the past
  • Record keeping theories claims people should know the difference if they are reading a record for the past or reconstructing it Pmore confidence if reading memory) people’s confidence in accuracy of their memory for a past event should be reliably greater when the event is

remembered accurately then when an event is remembered inaccurately

  • Constructionalist claim all recollection is reconstructed, confidence and accuracy may sometimes be related, particularly when people have developed learning and reconstruction strategies for which they have been provided feedback as to how well those strategies work, people have t use their knowledge to asses how well a strategy worked in the past
  • Correlations between confidence and accuracy is typically quite low but correlation between confidence and accuracy is reliably higher in situations where people have had such practice
  • Record keeping theory of memory: would predict that any variable that decreases memory accuracy should also decrease confidence in the accuracy of the memory, contrary to constructionalist theory: accuracy was decreased but confidence increased, Pwhite house vs. green house example with experimenter, if fed wrong information they will take it confidently even if wrong)- people became confident of inaccurate recollections when those recollections are reconstructed from misleading information supplied to them by an experimenter

The overlap principle also know as encoding specificity

-Memory for an event is more accurate when the environment at the time of recollection resembles the environment of the original experienced event

Overlap principal: people for the past event improves to the extent that the elements of the recollection overlap with elements of past event Penvironment meaning cognitive and emotional state)

  • Experiments: suggest that eyewitness memory improves if the context surrounding an event is reinstated; memory for an event is more accurate if retrieval takes place in the same physical environment Pi.e. remember scuba diving example)- all about physical environment or mood, Pi.e. feel elated of depressed will more likely and quickly recall past events experienced in the same mood, recall was better when the mood at the time of the recall matched the mood experienced when the prompt words were first presented

Problem solving and other overlap principles

  • People fail to remember facts that would help them solve a problem
  • Example of child rearing attention to child when crying develops an independent or dependent* child?-Trying to solve problems is unlikely to engage the portion of the cognitive system used to memorize facts, so the memorized facts play no role in the attempt to arrive at a solution

–Transfer appropriate processing are a manifestation of the overlap principle, if the cognitive process taking place in the testing environment resembles that taking place in the original learning environment, then what is learned will likely transfer on to the test Pthe minister marries many women riddle)

Recognition versus recall

  • Another part of the overlap theory is that people can recognize better then they can recall a past event

Forgetting

If we don’t pay attention we are more likely to forget information

Inference

Another important reason for forgetting, is that one’s memory for any given event from one’s past is undermined by the occurrence of other events

Proactive inference: when memory for an event is undermined by events that precede it, Pexample students, read passage before critical one messed them up, recalled less about the critical passage) Retroactive inference: when memory for an event is undermined by events that follow it Pexample of participants remembering non sense syllables if they stayed awake had a harder time remembering/interference, more interfering events versus sleeping participants)

Fan affect: the more facts that “fan off” a concept, the longer it takes to verify whether any given fact about the concept was previously memorized, the more facts associated with a character or with location the longer it takes to decide if the fact is true or false

  • the more information a person must memorize, the more likely the person will be unable to remember orwill be slower at remembering any given piece if information

–Explaining interference record keeping: people search memory records by first finding in memory a target element, such as a character’s profession-> people then scan through the set of facts associated with the target element until the desired fact is found or until the search is exhausted -> the more associations to be searched, or the longer or more effort it takes to find the desired fact, the more likely the fact will not be found. It is as if facts stored in memory compete with the target information for the attention of the search process

  • As we go through life the number of associations in our memory continually increase, it follows then that over time we should becomes increasingly inefficient at finding information stored in our memory, becoming an expert would be very difficult, THIS IS A PROBLEM/paradox/cannot explain because adult’s memory skill remains stable over time and that experts get better and not worse at remembering information in their area of expertise -> this demonstrates that explanations must have ecological validity that is theories of memory should explain how memory works in the actual environment in which we use our memory

-Explaining inference constructionist theory: the constructionist theory is able to explain both the decline in memory performance exhibited in the memorization experiments and the lack of decline in memory observed in ordinary day-to-day situations or in experts, example of memorizing lists of words, cognitive elements used to understand and recollect the first list would be configured when the second list was studied thereby undermining memory for the details of the first list.

-Memorization would be poor and slower if a person memorized several related lists than if a person has to memorize unrelated lists, stability in an adult’s memory skill occurs because the elements used to understand experiences do not expand in number as a result of having many experiences, only the connection among elements change with experience

  • Inference is expected when there is no effective learning strategy for extracting the patterns that integrate increasingly larger bodies of info –when facts were related to a common theme, the fan effect was greatly reduced,

-When the facts were related by a theme, subjects took about as long to verify facts about characters when there were 6 related facts to memorize about that character as when there was only one fact to memorize -The constructionist explanation is that when the facts are related by a theme, that theme can be used to reconstruct where the fact fits the theme and so must be true or does not fit the theme and so must be false -Constructionist theory implies that interferences depends on what kind of information subjects are asked to remember

  • Constructionist explanation is that the similarity judgment allows subjects to compare a fact to the pattern or theme extracted from the memorized facts

Bower, increase the amount of information can improve memory for patterns but undermine memory for details, example: bower found that subjects who studied the related passages recalled fewer detail Pe.g father was a servant) but more general patterns of the passage Pe.g. the passage mentioned the fathers occupation) than did subjects who studied unrelated passages