Review

• What are the three stages in the memory process?

– Define the functions, capacity, and duration of each?
• What is the key aspect between sensory input and STM?
• Name and describe two types of sensory memory.
• An early sign of dementia is disability in which stage of memory?
• What is chunking?
• Difference between automatic and effortful processing?
• What are the two types of LTM?
• What are episodic and semantic information?
 Memory part II
Memory reconstruction
False memories
Forgetting
 Memory Distortion
• Memory can be distorted as people try to fit new info into
existing schemas

• Giving misleading information after an event causes

subjects to unknowingly distort their memories to
incorporate the new misleading information
 Eyewitness Testimony
• Scripts—type of schema
– Mental organization of events in time
– Example of a classroom script: Come into class, sit
down, talk to friends, bell rings, instructor begins to
speak, take notes, bell rings again, leave class, etc.
 Eyewitness Testimony
• Recall: not an exact replica of original events
• Recall: a construction built and rebuilt from various sources
– i.e. different perspectives, news of event, etc.
• Often fit memories into existing beliefs or schemas
• Schema—mental representation of an object, scene, or event
– Example: schema of a countryside may include green grass, hills, farms, a barn,
cows, etc.
• Effect of leading questions
 Eyewitness Testimony
• Persuasiveness
– Most persuasive form of evidence
• Eyewitnesses believed ~80% of the time (Loftus, 1983)

Type of Evidence % guilty votes

Eyewitness testimony 78
Fingerprints 70
Polygraph 53
Handwriting 34

• Juries cannot tell the difference between an accurate and an

inaccurate witness
• Accurate witness believed 68% of time
• Inaccurate witness believed 70% of time
 Eyewitness Testimony
• Persuasiveness
– Juries cannot tell the difference between an accurate and an inaccurate
witness

• Wells et al. (1998)

• Studied 40 people who were convicted but later cleared by DNA
• In 90% (36) of the cases, there was false eyewitness identification
• Rattner (1988)
• Studied 205 wrongfully convicted defendants
• 52% were due to inaccurate eyewitness testimony
• Brandon and Davies (1973)
• Described 70 cases of people wrongfully convicted due to inaccurate
eyewitness testimony
 Eyewitness Testimony
• Persuasiveness
– Experimental studies
• Buckhout (1975)
• Simulated crime on a TV newscast
• 2,145 callers
• 14.7% were accurate
• Buckhout (1974)
• Staged assault on professor in front of 141 students
• 7 weeks later, students shown line-up of six photographs
• 40% identified attacker
• 36% identified bystander
• 23% identified person not there
 Eyewitness Testimony
What do witnesses report?
Fashsing, Ask, & Granhag (2004)

Attribute % Reporting % Accurate

Gender 99.6 100
Height 91.2 44
Clothing (upper body) 90.8 58
Clothing (head) 89.6 56
Build 84.4 57
Weapon 76.4 71
Clothing (pants) 73.6 53
Age 62.4 38
Type of speech 46.8 84
 Eyewitness Testimony
• Schema Driven Errors
– Witnesses to crimes filter information during acquisition
& recall
• Their schematic understanding may influence how info is both
stored & retrieved
• Distortions may occur without the witness realizing, based on
things like:
– Past experiences
– Assumptions about what usually happens
– Stereotypes & beliefs about crime & criminals
» How would race play into this? (race study)
 Eyewitness Testimony
• Experimental Evidence: Interference paradigms
– Information presented after an event can lead to distortions
– Post-event information can be incorporated into the original
memory
– Misinformation effects
• Repeated questioning about an event can enhance recall of certain details
and induce forgetting of others (also increases confidence in memory of the
event) i.e. multiple questioning in the court room about the same event
• Repeated exposure to misinformation strengthens memory about the
misinformation
• Are even found when participants are warned that misleading information
might be presented
 Eyewitness Testimony
• Effect of leading questions on recall
– Leading questions introduce new information
– Leading info may activate wrong schemas in witness‘ mind
– Consequently, witness may recall events incorrectly
• Most affected by leading Qs when:
• Witness believes questioner knows more than them
• Witness does not realize they may be misled
• Leading information is peripheral, not central
• Leading information is not blatantly incorrect
 Loftus Experiment
Accident

• Subjects shown video of an

accident between two cars

• Some subjects asked: How fast Leading question:

were the cars going when they “About how fast were the cars going
when they ________into each other?”
smashed into each other? Memory construction

• Others asked: How fast were the

cars going when the hit each other?
 Loftus Results
Word Used Average
in Question Speed Estimate

smashed 41 m.p.h.
collided 39 m.p.h.
bumped 38 m.p.h.
hit 34 m.p.h.
contacted 32 m.p.h.
 The Forgetting Curve

Hermann Ebbinghaus
first began to study
forgetting using
nonsense syllables

Nonsense syllables
are three-letter
combinations that
look like words but
are meaningless
(ROH, KUF)
 Forgetting Theories
• Encoding failure
• Interference
theories
• Motivated
forgetting
• Decay
 Forgetting as encoding failure

• Info never encoded into LTM

Short-term X
Encoding Long-term
memory memory

Encoding failure
leads to forgetting
 Interference Theories
• “Memories interfering with memories”
• Forgetting NOT caused by mere passage
of time
• Caused by one memory competing with
or replacing another memory
• Two types of interference
Two Types of Interference

Types of Interference

Retroactive Proactive
Interference Interference
 Retroactive Interference
• When a NEW memory interferes with
remembering OLD information
• Example: When new phone number
interferes with ability to remember
old phone number
 Retroactive Interference
• Example: Learning a new language
interferes with ability to remember
old language
Study French Study Spanish
French 101

-
Mid-term
papier papel

F
exam
livre plume libro pluma
école escuela

retroactive interference
 Proactive Interference
• Opposite of retroactive
interference
• When an OLD memory interferes
with remembering NEW
information
• Example: Memories of where
you parked your car on campus
or at the mall the past week
interferes with ability find car
today
 Motivated Forgetting
Undesired memory is held back form awareness
– Suppression—conscious forgetting
– Repression—unconscious forgetting (Freudian)
 Decay Theories
• Memories fade away 100
100%
90

or decay gradually if Average

percentage
80
70
unused of
information
60
50
• Time plays critical retained
40
30
role 20
10
• Ability to retrieve 0

20 1 8 24 2 6 31
info declines with mins hr hrs hrs daysdaysdays
time after original Interval between original
learning of nonsense syllables
encoding and memory test
 Decay Theories
• Biology-based theory
• When new memory formed, it creates a
memory trace
– a change in brain structure or chemistry
• If unused, normal brain metabolic
processes erode memory trace
• Theory not widely favored today
 Amnesia
• Amnesia—severe memory loss
• Retrograde amnesia—inability to remember past episodic
information; common after head injury; need for
consolidation
• Anterograde amnesia—inability to form new memories;
related to hippocampus damage
 Clive Wearing
• Suffers from both retrograde and anterograde amnesia
• He frequently believes that he has only recently awoken
from a comatose state
• Contracted a form of herpesviral encephalitis – attacked the
central nervous system
– Damaged his hippocampus which is vital to transferring
memories from STM to LTM
• Memory only lasts 7 to 30 seconds
 Clive Wearing
• Born in 1938, cannot recall his life before 1985
• Knows he has kids from first marriage but can’t recall their
names
• Still loves his second wife but every time he sees her, he
believes it has been years since he has seen her last
– Even if she steps out of the room for a minute
• Remembers names of food but cannot link it with taste
 Clive Wearing
• Example of his diary entry:

8:31 AM: Now I am really, completely awake.

9:06 AM: Now I am perfectly, overwhelmingly awake.
9:34 AM: Now I am superlatively, actually awake.

• Can remember new practices and few facts via procedural

memory i.e. doing or watching something repetitively
 Recovered Memories
• A person remembers a traumatic event from many years
ago
• The memory was “repressed”, but is now recovered in
therapy
– Intentional forgetting of painful or traumatic experiences
– Little empirical evidence for this type of forgetting (could have
the opposite effect)
 Recovered Memories
• In 1986, Nadean Cool, a nurse’s aid in Wisconsin, sought
therapy from a psychiatrist to help her cope with her reaction
to a traumatic event experienced by her daughter
• Psychiatrist used hypnosis and other suggestive techniques to
uncover buried memories of abuse that Cool herself had
experienced
 Recovered Memories
• Cool became convinced that she had repressed
memories of
– having been in a satanic cult
– eating babies
– being raped
– having sex with animals
– being forced to watch murder of her 8-year-old friend
• Cool came to believe that she had more than 120 alter
personalities: children, adults, angels, duck
 Recovered Memories
• Cool eventually came to believe that false memories had
been implanted
• Cool sued psychiatrist for malpractice
• in March, 1997, after 5 weeks of trial, her case was
settled for $2.4 million
 Recovered Memories
• Increasing numbers of people believe that they were
sexually abused as children, but repressed the memory
until it was later recovered, often with help of therapist
– 1990’s: A big spike in cases of people in therapy recovering memories of childhood
sexual abuse
– “Courage to Heal”: General premise that we were all abused as children, we need
help to remember
• Even if there is no evidence and we have no recollection of being abused

– Therapies included…
• Hypnosis (uses imagery, suggestive questioning, & repetition)
• Guided Imagery (for now, just imagine that you were abused by your father)
• Drug Therapies (sodium amytal, mostly)
 Recovered memories
• Could some of the recovered memories be false?
• If it is possible to create false memories, then some
recovered memories might be false
• Stakes are high
– must find justice and safety for victims of abuse; must prevent
perpetrators from harming others
– must protect individuals from false charges that can destroy their
lives
 Recovered memories
• Recovered Memory
– all memories recovered in therapy should be taken
seriously
– False memories are rare
– If raise doubts, betray children and support pedophiles
• Pseudomemory
– Memories recovered in therapy should be viewed with
skepticism
– False memories can be manufactured by
naïve/unscrupulous therapists
– Many false accusations
 Recovered memories
• Loftus’s “shopping mall” studies
– asked subjects to try to remember childhood events that had been
told to researchers by their parents, older siblings, or other close
family members
– 3 events were real; 1 event (getting lost in a shopping mall at age
5) was false
– 29% “remembered” false event
 Recovered memories
• Hyman and colleagues (reported in Loftus, 1997)
– asked college students to recall childhood experiences
told to the researchers by their parents
– each subject given one false event (either an overnight
hospitalization for a high fever and ear infection or a
birthday party with pizza and a clown)
– during first interview, no one “remembered” false event
– during second interview, 20% “remembered” false event
 Recovered memories
• Brief Summary
– Both extreme positions of “children always lie” and “children never
lie” are wrong
– Most children do recollect accurately most of what they have seen
or observed
– Some children will say something happened when it did not
– Like adults, children can be influenced to report an event in a
certain way, depending on the frequency of suggestions and the
insistence of the person making them