PSYC 5140

Cognitive Psychology

Lecture 8:
Everyday Memory and
Memory Errors

2020
Instructor: Urs Maurer
 Perception of Memory

• In a nationwide pole:
– 63% agreed with: “Human memory works like a video camera,
accurately recording the events we see and hear so we can review and
interpret them later”

– 48% agreed with: “Once you have experienced an event and formed a
memory of it, that memory does not change” (Simons & Chabris,
2011)

• Everything that happens is not necessarily recording accurately

• What is recorded is subject to change
 Autobiographical Memory (AM)

• Memory for specific experiences from our life, which can

include both episodic and semantic components

• Mental time travel

– Images of the cake at a childhood birthday party (episodic)
– Knowledge about when the party occurred (semantic)

• Multidimensional
– Spatial, emotional, and sensory components

• We remember some events better than others

 Autobiographical Memory

• AM is multidimensional: consist of spatial, emotional, and sensory

components

• Greenberg and Rubin (2003)

– Patients who cannot recognize objects also experience loss of
autobiographical memory
• Patients experiencing loss of visual memory, but without blindness

– Visual experience plays a role in forming and retrieving AM

• Visual stimuli not available to serve as retrieval cues
• But even memories not based on visual experience are lost
 Autobiographical Memory
• Cabeza and coworkers (2004)
– Comparing brain activation caused by
autobiographical memory and laboratory
memory

– 12 Duke students took 40 pictures of specific

campus locations (1st phase)

– Participants viewed both (2nd phase)

• Photographs they took (own-photos)
• Photographs taken by someone else (lab-
photos)

– After a few days (3rd phase)

• S saw the pictures they has seen before,
along with some other pictures
• Task: own-photo, lab-photo, new photo?
 Autobiographical Memory

• Both types of photos activated similar brain structures

– Medial temporal lobe (MTL) (episodic)
– Parietal cortex (processing of scenes)
 Autobiographical Memory

• Both types of photos activated similar brain structures

– Medial temporal lobe (MTL) (episodic)
– Parietal cortex (processing of scenes)

• Own-photos activated more of the

– Medial prefrontal cortex (self-referential, information about self)
– Hippocampus (recollection)

Medial prefrontal
 Autobiographical Memory

• Both types of photos activated similar brain structures

– Medial temporal lobe (MTL) (episodic)
– Parietal cortex (processing of scenes)

• Own-photos activated more of the

– Prefrontal cortex (self-referential, information about self)
– Hippocampus (recollection)

• Demonstrates the richness of autobiographical memories

• Other studies have also found AMs can elicit emotions

– More activation in the amygdala
 Memory Over the Lifespan

• What events are remembered well?

– Significant events in a person’s life
• First date with someone you end up having a long-term relationship with
– Highly emotional events
• Birth of child
– Transition points
• Juniors and seniors were asked to recall the most influential event from their
freshman year
• Reported events happened during September of freshman year
 Reminiscence Bump

• Participants over the age of 40 asked to

recall events in their lives

• Memory is high for recent events and for

events that occurred in adolescence and
early adulthood (between 10 and 30 years
of age)

• Reminiscence bump: enhanced memory for

adolescence and young adulthood found in
people over 40
 Reminiscence Bump

• Why do reminiscence bumps occur?

– Why are adolescence and young adulthood special times for encoding
memories?

• Self-image hypothesis
– Memory is enhanced for events that occur as a person’s self-image or
life identity is being formed
– People assume identities during adolescence and young adulthood
• Many transitions occur between ages 10 and 30
– Experiment: S with average age of 54, created “I am” statements that
defined them as a person
• “I am a psychologist”
– Average age given to the origin of the statements: 25
 Reminiscence Bump

• Cognitive hypothesis
– Encoding is better during periods of rapid change that are followed by
stability
– Adolescence and young adulthood: going away to school, getting
married, starting a career  rapid changes followed by stability
– Evidence from those who emigrated to the US after young adulthood
indicates reminiscence bump is shifted
 Reminiscence Bump

• Cultural life-script hypothesis

– Each person has
• A personal life story: events occurred in a person’s life
• A cultural life script: culturally expected events that occur at a particular
time in the life span

– Personal events are easier to recall when they fit the cultural life script
• List when important events in a typical person’s life usually occur (e.g. college at 22)
• Large number of these events are within the period of reminiscence bump
 Reminiscence Bump

• Hypotheses about the reminiscence bump:

 Memory for Emotional Stimuli

• Emotions and memory are intertwined: Emotional events remembered

more easily and vividly
– Some empirical support: e.g., emotionally arousing words were better
recalled than neutral words (LaBar & Phelps, 1998)

• Brain activity in amygdala

– fMRI experiments: amygdala has higher activity when recalling emotional
words
– Patient with damage to amygdala: non-enhanced memory for emotional
part of stimuli compared to non-brain-damaged participants
 Memory for Emotional Stimuli

• Emotion improves memory consolidation

– Animal research
• Stimulants administered shortly after training can enhance memory for
the task
• Hormones such as the stimulant cortisol are released during and after
emotionally arousing stimuli

– Human research
• S were shown neutral and emotionally arousing pictures
• Stress group: immersed their arms in ice water (causes release of
cortisol)
• No-stress group: immersed their arms in warm water (doesn’t release
cortisol)
• A week later they were asked to describe the pictures
 Memory for Emotional Stimuli

Significant No significant
difference between difference between
E and N for the E and N for the No-
Stress group Stress group

Significant
difference in E
between Stress and
No-Stress groups
 Memory for Emotional Stimuli

• Emotions can also impair memory: can cause a focus of attention on

important objects, and draw attention away from other objects

• Weapons focus: tendency to attend to a weapon during a crime

– Presence of a gun results in a decrease in memory for other details of the crime scene
 Flashbulb Memories

• Memory for circumstances surrounding shocking, highly charged

important events
– 9/11/01
– Kennedy assassination
– Challenger explosion

• Where you were, and what you were doing

• Highly emotional, vivid, and very detailed

– These memories are special
 Flashbulb Memories

• Brown and Kulik (1977): the day of President Kennedy’s

assassination, “for an instant, the entire nation and perhaps
much of the world stopped still to have its picture taken.”
 term flashbulb memories

• They argued that there is something special about the

mechanisms responsible for flashbulb memories
– Not only they occur under highly emotional circumstances
– They are remembered for long periods of time
– Are specially vivid and detailed
– “Now print” mechanism
 Flashbulb Memories

• Flashbulbs are not “photograph” memories, as they can change with the
passage of time
• Brown and Kulik’s procedure is flawed:
– Their S weren’t asked what they remembered until year after the events had
occurred
– No way to verify whether the memories were accurate

• Repeated recall
– Technique of comparing later memories to memories collected immediately
– Initial description: baseline
– Later reports compared to baseline
 Flashbulb Memories

• The “Now Print” idea does not seem to hold.

• People’s memories about flashbulb events change over time.

• Results suggest that these memories can be inaccurate or

lacking in detail

• Even though participants report that they are very confident

and that the memories seem very vivid
 Flashbulb Memories

• I was in my religion class and some people walked

in and started talking about it. I didn’t know any
details except that it had exploded and the
schoolteacher’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 about it,
and I got all the details from it.

2 ½ years
later

• 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 both totally shocked. I was really upset,
and I went upstairs to talk to a friend of mine, and
then I called my parents.
 Flashbulb Memories

• Many flashbulb memory researchers have expressed doubt that

flashbulbs are much different from regular memories.
• With both: S remember fewer details and make more errors over time
• However, people’s
People think flashbulb
belief memoriesmemories
that flashbulb are stronger andaccurate
were more stays
high over thisaccurate;
time however, in reality there is no difference in
accuracy between flashbulb and regular memories

Talarico & Rubin (2003)

about 9/11 flashbulb
memory
 Flashbulb Memories

• Special nature of flashbulb memories may be in part due to the

emotional nature of them

• Emotions have been associated with enhanced memory, but also to

decrease in memory in some situations

• Emotions enhance the subjective sense of remembering

– the vividness of the memory
– Confidence that it is accurate
– The sense of reliving an event
– At the same time, causing a decrease in memory for the details
 Flashbulb Memories

• Two other factors that potentially affect memory for flashbulb events
are: rehearsal and media coverage

• Narrative rehearsal hypothesis: flashbulb memories not because of a

special mechanism, but because they get rehearsed after they occur
– Repeated viewing/hearing of event
• TV, newspaper, radio, talking with others
• Could introduce errors in own memory
 The Constructive Nature of Memory

• Constructive nature of memory: what people report as memories are

constructed based on:
– What actually happened
– Person’s knowledge, experiences, and expectations

• The mind constructs memories based on a number of sources of

information
 The Constructive Nature of Memory

• Bartlett’s “war of the ghosts” experiment

– Had participants attempt to remember a story from a different culture
– Repeated reproduction:
remember the story at
longer and longer intervals

• Results
– Over time, reproduction became
shorter, contained omissions and inaccuracies
– Changed to make the story more consistent with their own culture
• Incorporated what they knew about from similar stories in their own culture
 Source Monitoring
• Source monitoring: process of determining origins of our
memories, knowledge, or beliefs

• Source monitoring error: misidentifying source of memory

– Also called “source misattributions”

• Cryptoamnesia:
– Unconscious plagiarism of another’s
work due to a lack of recognition of
its original source https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYiEesMbe2I

• Source monitoring errors are important because the

mechanisms responsible for them are also involved in
creating memories in general
 Source Monitoring

• Jacoby et al. (1989): “Becoming famous overnight”

– All S read a number of made-up non-famous names
– Another list was presented to them containing the original names, new non-
famous names and famous names
– Just before test, they were reminded that the original list contained no famous
person
– Two groups:
• Immediate test group: got the second list immediately after
• Delayed test group: got the test 24 hours later
 Source Monitoring

– Results: S in delayed test group identified some non-famous names as famous

• Explanation: some non-famous names were familiar, and the participants

misattributed the source of the familiarity
– Failed to identify the source as the list that had been read the previous
day
 Making Inferences

• When in doubt about what we remember, we often (unconsciously) make

use of what we know about the world

• Memory can be influenced by inferences that people make based on their

experiences and knowledge

• Pragmatic inferences: based on knowledge gained through experience

– Occurs when reading a sentence leads a person to expect something
that is not explicitly stated or implied by the sentence
– Memory often includes information that is implied by or is consistent
with the to-be-remembered information but was not explicitly stated
 Schemas and Scripts

• Schema: knowledge about some aspect of the environment

– e.g., Post office, ball game, classroom
– Are developed though our experiences in different situations
– Brewer & Treyens (1981):
• cover story: wait in an office so that
the other S can finish up
• 30 seconds later, taken to another
location, and asked to recall the
objects in the office
• 30% indicated there were books,
even though there were no books
in the office
 Schemas and Scripts

• Script: conception of sequence of actions that usually

occurs during a particular experience
– Going to a restaurant; playing tennis

• Study by Bower et al. (1979):

– S read a series of passages about some familiar
activities
– Then asked to recall
– Recall included most of the original passages,
plus additional material that wasn’t in the original
story but was part of the script for the activity
 Schemas and Scripts

• Schemas and scripts influence memory

– Memory can include information not actually experienced but
inferred because it is expected and consistent with the schema

– Office waiting room: books not present but mentioned in memory

task

– The constructive nature of memory can lead to errors or “false

memories”
 Construction of Memories

• Advantages
– Allows us to “fill in the blanks”
– Cognition is creative
• Understand language
• Solve problems
• Make decisions
• Disadvantages
– Sometimes we make errors
– Sometimes we misattribute the source of information
– Was it actually presented, or did we infer it
 Power of Suggestion

• Misinformation effect: misleading information presented after a

person witnesses an event can change how that person describes the
event later
– Misleading postevent information (MPI)

• Presenting MPI:
– Present the stimuli to be remembered
– The MPI is presented to one group, and not to a control group
– Even when S are told that post-event information may be
incorrect, presenting this information can still affect their memory
 Power of Suggestion

• Loftus and coworkers (1975)

– See slides of traffic accident with
stop sign
– Introduce MPI: yield sign
• Control group: “Did another car pass the red car while it was
stopped at the stop sign?”
• MPI group: “Did another car pass the red car while it was
stopped at the yield sign?”

– MPI Participants remember what they heard (yield sign) not what
they saw (stop sign)
 Power of Suggestion

• Loftus and Palmer (1974)

– Hear “smashed” or “hit” in description of car accident
– Those hearing “smashed” said the cars were going much faster
(41 mph) than those who heard “hit” (34 mph)

32% of MPI S reported seeing

broken glass, compared to 14% in
the “hit” group
 Power of Suggestion

• How can MPI’s be explained?

• Retroactive interference
– More recent learning interferes with memory for something in the
past
– Exposure to MPI could interfere with remembering what
happened when you originally viewed a stimulus

• Source monitoring error

– Failure to distinguish the source of the information
– MPI is misattributed to the original source
 Power of Suggestion

• Lindsey (1990)
– Heard a story from female narrator; two groups:
• Difficult condition: heard a misleading narrative shortly after, female narrator
• Easy condition: heard the same misleading narrative two days later, male
narrator
– Told to ignore changes in misleading story before taking test
– Same voice for both stories created source monitoring errors
– Changing voice (male to female) did not create as many errors
 False Memories

• Hyman and coworkers (1995)

– Participants’ parents gave descriptions of childhood experiences
– Participant had conversation about experiences with
experimenter; experimenter added new events
– When discussing it later, participant “remembered” the new
events as actually happening
– Hearing about the event, and then waiting caused the event to
emerge as false memory
 False Memories

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PB2OegI6wvI

• The fact that early childhood experiences can be created by suggestion

has had serious implications
 Errors in Eyewitness Testimony

• Testimony by an eyewitness to a crime about what he or she saw during

the crime
• One of the most convincing types of evidence to a jury
– Assume the eyewitness could clearly see what happened
– Assume that people see and remember accurately
• But, like other memory, eyewitness testimony can be inaccurate
– Mistaken identity
– Constructive nature of memory
 Errors in Eyewitness Testimony

• Wells & Bradfield (1998)

– Participants view security videotape with gunman in view for 8
seconds
– Everyone identified someone as the gunman from photographs
afterwards
– The actual gunman’s picture was not presented

• Kneller et al. (2001)

– 61% of S picked someone from a photo spread
– Even though the perpetrator’s picture wasn’t included
 Errors in Eyewitness Testimony

• Errors due to attention and arousal

– Attention can be narrowed by specific stimuli
– Weapons focus
– Stanny and Johnson (2000)
 Errors in Eyewitness Testimony

• Errors due to familiarity

– Source monitoring
– Ross et al. 1994:
 Errors in Eyewitness Testimony

• Errors due to suggestion

– Suggestive questioning
• Misinformation effect
– Confirming feedback
• Post-identification feedback
effect

• Problem for criminal justice system

– Jurors influenced by confidence
– Post identification feedback can
increase witnesses’ confidence

Wells & Bradfield (1998)

 What Is Being Done?

• Inform witness perpetrator might not be in lineup

• Use “fillers” in lineup similar to suspect
• Use a “blind” lineup administrator
• Get an immediate confidence rating

• Improve interviewing techniques

– Cognitive interview
– Help witness recreate the situation preset at the crime scene, by
having them place themselves back in the scene
– Decreases the likelihood of any suggestive input by the person
conducting the interview
 Music-Enhanced Autobiographical Memories

• Memories elicited by hearing music,

– often accompanied by feelings of nostalgia
– often experienced as being involuntary

• Power of sensory experience to elicit autobiographical memories

• Proust-effect (famous in literature by Marcel Proust)

– eating a small lemon cookie (“Madeleine”)
– Taste and olfaction unlocked memories he hadn’t thought of for years

• Music can activate memories of Alzheimer’s Disease patient

– Documentary «Alive Inside»: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FWn4JB2YLU
 Some Questions to Consider

• What kinds of events from their lives are people most likely to remember?

• Is there something special about memory for extraordinary events like the
9/11 terrorist attacks?

• What properties of the memory system make it both highly functional and
also prone to error?

• Why is eyewitness testimony often cited as the cause of wrongful

convictions?