Constructive Memory
What sort of sources of information do memories get reconstructed with?
- General knowledge
- Past experiences
- Cultural thinking, schemas
- Emotional states
- Current thoughts
- Expectations
What is source monitoring?
The process of determining the origins of our memories, knowledge, and beliefs.
What is involved in the Pre-Induction portion of inducing false autiobiographical memories?
Query parents about childhood experiences to identify real ones and false ones.
What factors contribute to faulty eyewitness testimonies and why does this matter?
Mistaken eyewitness evidence can lead to wrongful conviction.
- Poor vision/ viewing conditions
- Emotion (stress, fear, etc.)
- Short viewing time / rapidity of events
- Selective attention (e.g., central details, weapon focus)
- Lack of understanding what is happening
Describe common line-up practices.
Witness presented with 6-8 photos of people.
One photo is of the suspect, the others are fillers who are known to be innocent (but of course the suspect could be innocent too!)
If the witness identifies the suspect, the investigation or prosecution of that person is likely to continue
What is Repeated Production?
A method for measuring memory in which a person is asked to reproduce a stimulus on repeated occasions at longer and longer intervals.
What is source misattribution?
When you confidently attribute the source of
information or the contents of a memory to one
source that is totally wrong.
Describe the Induction Procedure of inducing false autobiographical memories.
1.Three interview sessions, spaced apart across weeks. In interviews, create source monitoring difficulties.
2. Repeated retrieval attempts
3. Conflate discussion of real and false memories
4. Guided imagery (if it were to have happened, what would it have looked like?)
5. Use visual tools (true pictures from that age and/or photoshopped pictures)
What is the Misinformation Effect? Give examples.
Misleading information presented after a person witnesses an event can change how the person remembers and describes that event later:
Adding incorrect details to a true event
Remembering an event that didn’t happen
Interfering with retrieval of correct details
How is the target being absent vs present a critical issue for lineups? How does this effect false/correct identification?
A “suspect” is usually in the line-up, but that does not mean the actual perpetrator (“target”) is present.
Warning eyewitnesses that the perpetrator may not be present greatly increases accuracy.
Reduces false identification by over 40%
Reduces correct identifications aby about 2%
What was the result/take away of the "War of the Ghosts" repeated production experiment?
Retellings included lots of inaccuracies that tended to reflect the person’s own culture.
Memory is constructed from different sources.
How did familiarity cause source misattribution in the "Famous Overnight" experiment?
Participants misattribute the feeling of familiarity from the previous list with feeling of familiarity of knowing a famous person’s name.
What sort of mundane false autobiographical memories were researchers able to induce?
- Lost in a shopping mall (25%)
- Spilled a punch bowl at a wedding (25%)
- Attacked by a vicious animal (26%)
- Caught your parents during intercourse (21%)
- Had tea with Prince Charles (35%)
What are the three causes of the misinformation effect? Name and describe them.
Retroactive Interference: recent learning interferes with previous information.
Source Monitoring Errors: mix up the source of the memory, think it was from the actual event.
Reconsolidation: after recalling memory, it must be reconsolidated and can be reconsolidated with new information.
Describe the benefits and drawbacks of simultaneous vs sequential lineups.
Simultaneous: witness often select the person who looks most like the perpetrator, relative to others
- Problem - one person is always going to look more like the perpetrator, relative to the others.
Sequential: witness make absolute judgments about each person in a lineup, one at a time.
- Reduce mistaken IDs by 50%
- Also significantly reduce correct IDs
Why is the constructive nature of memory a good thing?
- Storing everything is not economical (saves resources)
- Reconstruction allows you to update your memories and “fill in the gaps”
What was the DRM Paradigm and how did critical lures make people think they remembered words that were never said?
Participants were given a long list of themed words to study then asked to write down all of the words they remembered.
Critical lure: words that are associated with the listed words, but are never actually said.
People said they “remembered” (episodic) just as many critical lures and words they actually studied.
What sort of traumatic false autobiographical memories were researchers able to induce?
- As a child, witnessed a person being demonically possessed
- Almost drowned as a child
What are some sources of misinformation in gathering eyewitness testimonies?
- Mugshots/lineups
- Feedback: “Good, you identified the suspect”
- Fellow witnesses/Bystanders
- Lawyer/police
- Other questions or suggestions
- Media coverage
- Victims/witnesses themselves
How does feedback to witnesses create critical errors in lineups and how is this remidied?
Administrator does not actually know who committed the crime, but can know which person is the suspect!
Administrators can bias the line-up procedure.
Best fix: a “double-line” lineup in which the administrator does not know who is the suspect
Events are not _____ in the identical manner in which they were ______.
recalled; encoded
What is the Illusory Truth Effect and how does fluency effect it?
Enhanced probability of evaluating a statement as true upon repeated presentations.
Fluency the ease with with a statement can be processed (remembered, understood, etc.). Repetition increases fluency, which people use to judge truth.
What trend in psychology led to the research on inducing false autobiographical memories?
Mental health psychologists were convinced they helped people uncover repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse, which led to people being arrested. Cognitive psychologists in turn wanted to provide evidence that even traumatic memories can be falsely constructed by using specific methods.
Describe the Cognitive Interview method of interviewing eyewitnesses and victims. How helpful is it in gathering accurate statements?
1. Mentally reinstate crime scene
2. Report everything, no matter how trivial
3. Recall in different orders
4. Recall using different viewpoints
Best practices: create rapport, let witness lead, avoid leading questions, discourage guessing.
Improves recall of information by ~25-50% without a cost to accuracy.
What are the features of a fair lineup?
- Similar lineup fillers (fillers should match verbal description of perpetrator)
- 5 fillers per suspect
- Warn/instruct target may be absent
- Administrator should be blind (not know who the suspect is) and provide no feedback to witness
- Record confidence on initial identification (confidence often increases over time, but memory accuracy does not)