Everyday Memory – And

Memory Errors

COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
Lecturer: Pn. Naqiah Puaad

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In this topic, we will discuss:

 Memory for Personal Events

 Autobiographical memories
 Flashbulb memories

 Causes of Memory Errors: Constructive memory

 Inferred memories
 False memories

 Practical consequences
 Eyewitness testimony errors
 Memory for traumatic events
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Memory for Personal Events

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Memory for Personal Experiences:
Autobiographical Memory
 Autobiographical memory
 = Episodic memory for dated events in our
lives

 Example: Your arrival at UNIMAS…

 How are these events remembered?

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Memory for Personal Experiences: Life
Span Memory
 Life Span Memory :
 Some events (about your own life) are
remembered better than others
 Examples: milestones, transition periods…
 People tend to have enhanced memory for
beginning of college year and end of college
year.
 The Reminiscence Bump phenomenon

(reminiscence – to recall/ remember the past)

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 Life Span Memory:
The Reminiscence Bump
Schrauf & Rubin (1998): Enhanced memory for (episodic and
semantic) facts of adolescence & young adulthood

Percentage of memories
from different ages,
recalled by a 55-year
old, showing the
reminiscence bump
(Rubin et al., 1998).

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•Memories of personal experiences which are shocking and
Comprises of emotionally charged events.
•Not only occurs under highly emotional circumstances that
Are remembered for long periods of time BUT that they are
Vivid and detailed memories 7
Memory for Personal Experiences:
Flashbulb Memories (FbM)
 Phenomenon: Shocking and emotionally
charged events tend to be remembered very
vividly (and more detailed than other events)
 Examples: Tsunami, Highland tower tragedy, the day
the Penang jetty collapsed

 Demonstration:
 What did you do on Aug 31 2001?
 What did you do on Dec 26 2005?
 What did you do on Sep 11 2001?
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FbM: Evidence for a Special Mechanism
Strong Emotions Can Enhance Memory
 Hamann et al. (1999):
 Use of PET scans to measure brain activity
 Emotionally charged images lead to higher
amygdala activation and were more likely to
be remembered

 Cahill et al. (1995):

 Case of patient B.P. who had amygdala
damage
 Resulted in no enhanced memory for
emotional events
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How is Memory Constructed?

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How is Memory Constructed?

 Constructive approach to memory:

 The mind constructs memories based on a
number of sources of information

Knowledge,
 Memory = Actual event +
experience &
expectations

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Evidence for Constructive Memory
 Possible memory ‘errors’:
 Omissions (when you omit or neglect)
 Changes
 constructions (fabrications)

 Making errors in constructing memory

(false memories) due to :
 Experience – eg. Inferred Memories, Schemas
and scripts
 Personal Bias
 Suggestions

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1. False Inferred Memories due to
Experience
 Knowledge about our particular culture and day-
to-day experience can lead to false memories
 Role of schema & scripts
 Sets up expectations about what usually happened

 Schema :
 knowledge of the typical components of an experience
 Eg. Schema for studying at university, working as a
waiter at KFC

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False Inferred Memories due to Experience

 Brewer & Treyens (1981)

study:
 False memories due to
“office schema”
 Result: Participants
reported seeing items that
were not in the real office
but fitted into the regular
schema of “office”
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False Inferred Memories due to Experience
 Script :
 Type of Schema
 Schema for sequence of action that describe a
highly familiar activity
 Eg. Script for going to the cinema, for dining at
a restaurant, for visiting the dentist

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False Inferred Memories due to Experience
 Example of a script
 If you go to a new restaurant, in a city you have
never visited, you use a script that you usually
use in restaurants:
 You expect on entry to be greeted by a host/hostess.
 Shown to a table that is available.
 Given a menu.
 Given some time to decide what you want to eat.
 Waitress comes to your table to take you order
 Tell waitress clearly what you want.
 Waitress repeats your order………………………….

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False Inferred Memories due to Experience
 Bower et al.’s (1979) study on script for
visiting a dentist
 Results: Participants added their own
knowledge on the script for visiting a dentist in
their memory recall test
 Reported remembering events they had not
been shown in the test but which were
consistent with the visiting a dentist script

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False Inferred Memories due to Experience

 Results from schema and scripts show:

 how knowledge can affect memory, and
also
 how semantic memory can influence
episodic memory

 People’s knowledge about the world has

caused errors in their episodic memory

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2.False Memories due to Personal Bias
 Memory can be affected, and sometimes
distorted, by common biases that are
related to personal and social factors such
as :
 how people perceive themselves and
 how they think about events in their lives

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False Memories due to Personal Bias

 Three types of false memories from our

personal bias:
 Egocentric bias
 Tendency to remember positive traits about oneself

 Consistency bias:
 Tendency to remember attitudes and behavior
consistent with past attitudes and behavior.

 Positive change bias :

 Tendency to perceive things as ‘getting better’
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3.False Memories due to Suggestion
 People are suggestible
 Question: How easily can memory be modified by
suggestion?
 Eg: Advertisements, Political propaganda

 Misinformation effect :
 memory modification by misleading post-event
information (MPI)

 MPI: Misleading information presented after a

person has witness an event can change how that
person describes that event later

 Study by Loftus et al
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False Memories due to Suggestion

•A) Loftus et al. (1978): Stop

vs. ‘yield’ sign …
•B) Loftus & Palmer (1974): cars
‘hit one another’ vs.
‘smashed’ into each other’
• Speed estimates:
•34 (hit) vs. 41
mph(smash)
• ‘Broken glass’:
•14(hit) vs. 32%
yes(smash)
Picture of traffic accident similar to one seen by the participants in the Loftus et
al. (1978) “misleading postevent information “ experiment. 22
Memory ≠ Video Recording
 Memory record is ‘imperfect’
– Errors of omission (incomplete, selective)
– Errors of commission (distortions,
modifications)

 Question: Why has our memory system

been ‘designed’ (evolved in) that way?

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Why it is better to forget or
have a Not so Perfect Memory?
 Luria (1975): case of “S”- ‘virtually limitless’
memory
– could not forget irrelevant details
– bad at inductive reasoning (‘filling in the blanks’)

 Anderson & Schooler (1991):

 We remember relevant and frequent
information
 to avoid system overload
 system design to selectively remember things that
are important and often occur

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Analogy: ‘Fast & frugal’ Memory

 Like our perceptual system (see Ch. 3) our

memory system is primarily designed to work
efficiently

 Tradeoff: Speed vs Accuracy

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Eyewitness Testimony

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Eyewitness Testimony
 Eyewitness testimony
 Testimony by an eyewitness to a crime about
what he or she saw during the crime

 People can make errors in giving

eyewitness testimony

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Errors in Eyewitness Testimony
 The Problem:
 Fact 1: 200 people/day are incriminated based
on eyewitness testimony
 Fact 2: Errors occur.
 Innocent people are convicted

 Reasons for this phenomena:

 Emotions
 Familiarity (& source misattribution)
 Suggestion (& consistency bias)

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Errors Due to Emotions
Stanny & Johnson (2000): The use of weapons…

Results of Stanny and Johnson’s (2000) weapons-focus experiment. Presence of a

weapon that was fired is associated with a decrease in memory about the perpetrator, the
victim, and the weapon. 29
Errors Due to Familiarity
Ross et al. (1994)’s study:

Note: Photospread included male teacher, but not actual

robber!
(a) Design of Ross et al.’s (1994) experiment on the effect of familiarity on eyewitness
testimony (continued on next slide).
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Errors Due to Familiarity
Results of Ross et al. (1994):

(b) Results of experiment when the actual robber was not in the photospread. In this
condition, the male teacher was erroneously identified as the robber 60 percent of the time.
(c) Results when the actual robber was in the photospread. In this condition, the male
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teacher was erroneously identified less than 20 percent of the time.
Errors Due to Suggestion
Wells & Bradfield
(1998)’s study:
‘Good, you identified
the suspect…’

Design and results Wells and

Bradfield’s (1998) “Good, you
identified the suspect” experiment.
Feedback from the experimenter
influenced the participants’
confidence in their identification
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Can Lost Memories be Recovered?
 Recovered Memories:
 Memories that occur when a situation caused the person
to relive the memory
 Past painful memories are repressed in a person’s
unconsciousness until it is brought up years later usually
through therapy

 But there are reported cases of false Recovered

Memories

 Difficult to determine which recovered memories

are true or false

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Summary
What you need to know:
 Autobiographical memories
 A form of episodic memory for dated events

 Life span memory

 Memory for significant events in our life
 The Reminiscence Bump – better memory for
events in adolescence & young adulthood But can be
shifted

 Flashbulb memories
 Memory for shocking and emotionally charged events
 There are evidence for and against a special memory
mechanism for flashbulb memories

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Summary
 Constructive memory
 Memory is constructed based on the actual
event and additional information surrounding
the actual event
 The constructive approach to memory also
allows for errors in remembering an event

 False constructive memories can be due to

a person’s:
 Experience – eg schema & script
 Personal bias
 Suggestions by others
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Summary

 It is better to have an imperfect memory where

we only remember relevant and frequent
information
 Case patient S

 Eyewitness testimony errors due to:

 Emotions
 Familiarity (& source misattribution)
 Suggestion

 Recovery of lost memories is possible but

sometimes you remember false lost memories

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Good Luck
&
God Bless U

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