A TRUE STORY
In my mind I’ve returned to that scene many times, and each time the memory gains weight and
substance. I can see the cool pine trees, smell their fresh tarry breath, feel the lake’s algae-green water on my
skin, taste Uncle Joe’s iced tea with fresh-squeezed lemon. But the death itself was always vague and
unfocused. I never saw my mother’s body, and I could not imagine her dead. The last memory I have of my
mother was her tiptoed visit the evening before her death, the quick hug, the whispered, “I love you.”
It was some thirty years later that Elizabeth began to remember the details surrounding her mother’s death.
While at her Uncle Joe’s ninetieth birthday party, Elizabeth learned from a relative that she had been the one to
discover her mother’s body in Uncle Joe’s swimming pool. With the realization, memories that had eluded
Elizabeth for decades began to come back.
The memories began to drift back, slow and unpredictable, like the crisp piney smoke from the
evening campfires. I could see myself, a thin, dark-haired girl, looking into the flickering blue-and-white pool.
My mother dressed in her nightgown, is floating face down. “Mom? Mom?” I ask the question several times,
my voice rising in terror. I start screaming. I remember the police cars, their lights flashing, and the stretcher
with the clean, white blanket tucked in around the edges of the body. The memory had been there all along,
but I just couldn’t reach it.
As the memory crystallized, it suddenly made sense to Elizabeth why she had always felt haunted
by her vague memories of the circumstances surrounding her mother’s death. And it also seemed to partly
explain why she had always been so fascinated by the topic of memory.
However, several days later, Elizabeth learned that the relative had been wrong—it was not Elizabeth
who discovered her mother’s body, but her Aunt Pearl. Other relative confirmed that Aunt Pearl had been the
one who found Elizabeth’s mother in the swimming pool. Yet Elizabeth’s memory had seemed so real.
The Elizabeth in this true story is none other the Elizabeth Loftus, a psychologist who is nationally recognized as
the leading expert on the distortions that can occur in the memories of eyewitnesses. Even though Loftus is an
expert on memory distortions and false memories, she wasn’t immune to the phenomenon herself. Loftus
experienced firsthand just how convincing a false memory can be. In retrospect, Loftus can see how she
actively created information in her own mind that corresponded to the inaccurate information that she had been
the one to discover her mother’s body. As Loftus writes, “That elaborate but completely fabricated memory
confronted me with its detail and precision, its utter lack of ambiguity.” (Loftus & Ketcham, 1994).
Chapter 9
Memory
The Phenomenon of Memory

Memory:
the persistence of learning over time
through the storage and retrieval of
information
Clive Wearing, the man with no
memory
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmkiMlvLKto&feature=mr_meh&list=PL1DA172C40AC3B362&playnext=0
3-3’s of Memory
1. Three Kinds/Types of Memory
2. Three Processes of Memory
3. Three Stages of Memory
Three Kinds/Types of Memory
Episodic Memory:
A memory of a specific event
Flashbulb Memory: A vivid,
detailed memory of a
surprising, emotional event
These animals all have
flashbulb memories of
when Bambi’s mother
was shot
Episodic Memory
Jill Price has perfect episodic memory.
Would this be a blessing or a curse?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoxsMMV538U
Three Kinds/Types of Memory
Generic/Semantic Memory:
General Knowledge that we have
but don’t remember when we
acquired it.
Three Kinds/Types of Memory
Procedural Memory
Consists of the skills or procedures we have
learned.
Often a procedural memory consists of a
complicated sequence of movements that
cannot be described adequately in words.
Once a procedural memory is formed it usually
stays with you a long time– perhaps a lifetime.
Many activities require all types of
memory.
Example: Playing the game of tennis
Generic/Semantic Memory: Knowing
the rules of the game, knowing how many
sets it takes to win.
Episodic Memory: Knowing who served
last.
Procedural Memory: Knowing how to lob
or volley the ball
Now you try it.
Generic/Semantic Memory:
Episodic Memory:
Procedural Memory:
PEG is kind!
This is a memory cue for the three
kinds/types of memory.
P=Procedural
E=Episodic
G=Generic/Semantic
Kind=Kinds of Memory
Information Processing
Encoding:
The
processing of information into the memory
system, for example by extracting meaning.
Example:
If you were trying to memorize the
definition of a key term that appears on a text
page you would visually encode the patterns of
the lines and dots on the page as meaningful
words that can be retained by your memory
Information Processing
Storage:
The
maintenance of encoded
information over time.
(Keeping it in your memory)
Information Processing
Retrieval:
The
process of getting information out
of memory.
A library is an analogy of the
three processes of memory
Encoding: Acquiring the books
Storage: Cataloging the books and
keeping them on the shelf
Retrieval: Making it available to the user
A computer is another analogy
Encoding:
Storage:
Retrieval:
Now you try it. Come up with your
own analogy. Be creative!
Encoding:
Storage:
Retrieval:
What is a good memory cue to
help remember the Three
Processes of Memory?
Three Stages of Memory
Sensory Memory:
Consists
of the immediate, initial
recording of information that enters
through our senses.
After a few seconds
or less, the
information fades
Solve the following problem
without writing anything
down.
765
x 4
Three Stages of Memory
Short-Term/Working Memory:
Holds a few items (7 plus or minus 2)
briefly (about 20 seconds) before the
information is either stored or forgotten.
The items need not be discrete
elements, it could be for chunks
Three Stages of Memory
Short-Term/Working Memory:
Although information is encoded both
visually and acoustically into STM
acoustic encoding seems to dominate
Evidence?
Also, information encoded acoustically
tends to last longer than information
that is encoded visually
Figure 9.11 Short-term memory decay
Myers: Psychology, Eighth Edition
Copyright © 2007 by Worth Publishers
Three Stages of Memory
Long-Term Memory:


This memory system is presumed to be
without limit, both in capacity to store
information and in duration of that which is
stored.
In order to get information into long-term
memory you must rehearse the information.
REHEARSED
STIMULUS
SENSORY
REGISTERS
Memory system
that holds
incoming
information long
Enough to be
processed further
SHORT-TERM/
WORKING
MEMORY
REHEARSED
Holds 7+/- 2
PROCESSED
items/ chunks for
approximately
18-20 seconds
ENCODED
RETRIEVED
FORGOTTEN
FORGOTTEN
Acquiring New Memories
3 Stages of Memory
(Atkinson-Shiffrin Theory)
LONG-TERM
MEMORY
Capacity and
Duration seem to be
limitless
Sally Sings Loudly on Stage
Sensory Memory
 Short-term/working Memory
 Long Term Memory

Are Stages of Memory
How We Encode

Automatic Processing:
Unconscious process of encoding
certain information without effort.
Some forms of processing, such as
learning to read or drive, require attention
and effort when we first perform them,
but with practice become automatic.
How We Encode
We automatically process information about:

Space:
Where in your notes you wrote a particular definition

Time:
What you did before you studied for psychology

Frequency:
How many times a teacher says a particular word
How We Encode

Effortful Processing:
Encoding that requires attention and
conscious effort
Generally, encoding into long-term
memory is the result of effortful
processing involving semantic
encoding
Effortful Processing

Rehearsal:
The conscious repetition of information,
either to maintain it in consciousness or to
encode it for storage
Rehearsal

Ebbinghaus: Studied
memory and forgetting,
using himself as a subject
and nonsense syllables
as the material
Rehearsal

Ebbinghaus studied the “method of
savings” by computing the
difference the number of repetitions
needed to learn a list of items initially
and the number of repetitions needed
to relearn it after some time has
elapsed
Rehearsal

Maintenance Rehearsal:
Involves merely repeating an item
over and over. This is good for
remembering information for short
periods of time. (i.e. The phone
number for the pizza place)
Rehearsal

Elaborative Rehearsal:
Involves thinking about how new information
is related to material already stored in
memory. Examples include self-referencing
and visual imagery
Elaborative rehearsal is more effective than
maintenance rehearsal because the material
is processed in more depth than when one
uses maintenance rehearsal
Spacing Effect


Massed practice:
When practice sessions are run together
Distributed Practice:
Practice sessions are separated by rest
periods
*Distributed practice is more effective than
massed practice
“The mind is slow in unlearning what
it has been long in learning”
Serial Position


Serial Position Effect: Our tendency to
remember best the first and last items in a
list
Primacy and Recency Effect:


Primacy Effect
 The tendency to recall the initial items in a
series of items better than the middle items.
Recency Effect
 The tendency to recall the last item in a
series of items better than the middle items.
How Can you use your knowledge
of the primacy and recency effect
to maximize the effort you put into
your studying?
Ways to Encode Information

Visual Encoding:
the mental representation of information
as pictures
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8YXZTlwTAU
Ways to Encode Information

Acoustic Encoding:
The mental representation of
information as a
sequence of sounds
Ways to Encode Information

Semantic Encoding:
The mental representation of an
experience by its general meaning
Ways to Encode Information

Transfer-Appropriate Process:
 This model suggests that our memory is
better when the encoding process
matches up with what we are trying to
retrieve

For instance, if we encode material
semantically then our memory is better if
we try to retrieve it semantically rather
than acoustically
Recognizing Factors in Memory Encoding
Check your understanding of various factors at work in memory encoding by identifying
each of the vignettes below as an example of one of the following:
(A) semantic encoding
(C) visual imagery
(B) elaboration
(D) attention
_____1.As Zach reads the next chapter in his psychology textbook for the first
time, he stops whenever he comes across a word he doesn’t
understand and looks it up in a dictionary. In addition, at the end of
each paragraph he stops and quizzes himself to determine whether he
understands what he’s just read.
_____2.On the bus riding home from work, Zeon relaxes by reading books
about baseball. He’s really interested in learning the intricacies of
baseball strategy. It’s a more challenging subject than he thought, so
he really has to concentrate on shutting out the noise and other
distractions that go along with riding a bus during rush hour.
_____3. Zelda has discovered that many of the foreign-sounding vocabulary
terms in her anatomy and physiology course are similar to common
English words. Furthermore, she has realized that if she forms mental
pictures of the objects these English words remind her of, she is
often better able to remember the meaning of the vocabulary terms.
_____4. While Dr. Riley is lecturing on theories of motivation, Zoe is thinking
of examples in her own life of each of the concepts Dr. Riley is
introducing.
Ways to Encode Information

Levels of Processing Model:
 This
model tells us that the most
important determinant of memory is
how extensively information is
encoded or processed when it is first
received
Visual Encoding

Imagery:
 Mental
pictures (being able to picture
a word will be a powerful aid to
process it)
Visual Encoding

Mnemonic Devices:


Catchwords, jingles, acronyms, or phrases to
help you recall a particular fact
Examples: ROY G. BIV (to remember the
visual spectrum and descending wavelengths)

Encoding, Storage, Retrieval (LEG)

(Which device is better? Why?)
Other Examples of Mnemonic
Devices?



HOMES (for remembering the Great
Lakes)
Righty Tighty, Lefty Loosey
My Very Elegant Mother Just Served Us
NOTHING!!! (for remembering the planets
and their distance from the sun)
Disadvantages of Mnemonic
Devices?


They may be too time consuming to
develop.
If you rely solely on the mnemonic device
you may make errors.
Visual Encoding

Mnemonic Devices
 Method
of Loci (Latin for physical place)
A mnemonic strategy in which the
items to be remembered are converted
into mental images and associated with
specific positions or locations.
Visual Encoding

Mnemonic Devices

Peg-Word System: A Mnemonic
strategy used to remember lists, in
which each item is associated in
imagination with a number-word
rhyming pair.
Visual Encoding

Example of Peg-Word System
1 = bun
2 = shoe
3 = tree
4 = door
5 = hive
6 = sticks
7 = heaven
8 = gate
9 = vine
10 = hen
Imagine the list of items you want to
remember are items you need to buy at
the grocery store such as: milk, eggs,
bread, butter… You would visualize the first
item (milk) with a bun (imagine a soggy
bun in a bowl of milk). Then visualize the
second item (eggs) with shoe (imagine a
giant shoe stepping on a carton of eggs).
Next you may imagine slices of bread
hanging on a tree
Organizing Information for
Encoding

Chunking


The process by which the mind sorts
information into small, easily digestible units
(chunks) that can be retained in short term
memory.
Chunking occurs so naturally that we often
take it for granted
(414) 604-3200
Sensory Memory

Iconic Memory
(visual sensory memory)
 The perceptual experience of briefly
retaining an image of a visual stimulus
beyond the cessation of the stimulus
It usually lasts less than
one second
G
H
R
W
B
N
M
K
S
Sensory Memory

Echoic Memory:
(auditory sensory memory)

The persistence of auditory stimulation in the
nervous system for a brief period after the
end of the stimulus. It lasts about 3-4
seconds
Working/Short-Term Memory

The stage of memory that can hold 7
plus or minus 2 items for 18-20
seconds
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuvF113uty4
Long-Term Memory

The stage of memory that can hold
an unlimited amount of information
for an unlimited amount of time
“He can remember when Hannibal
crossed the Alps. But when it comes to
my birthday- forget it!”
Storing Memories in the Brain

Karl Lashley found that memories are
not localized in one specific region of
the brain, but, instead are distributed
throughout large areas of brain tissue
Synaptic Changes

Acetylcholine:




Plays a prominent role in memory
A shortage has been linked with Alzheimer’s
Disease
Drugs that reduce the amount of acetylcholine
in the brain impair memory
Drugs or dietary supplements that increase
the amount of acetylcholine in the brain can
improve memory
Synaptic Changes
As the sequence of neurons that represents
a particular memory fires repeatedly, the
synapses between these neurons become
more efficient, a process known as longterm potentiation. Learning and memory
stimulate the neurons to release chemicals
(primarily serotonin) at the synapses,
making it easier for the neurons to fire again
in the future.
Synaptic Changes
The tracks formed in your brain are almost
like a trail balazed
through deep snow
from a cabin to the
woodpile. With each
repeated trip, the trail
becomes easier to follow.
Synaptic Changes

Long-term potentiation (LTP):




An increase in a synapse’s firing potential after
brief, rapid stimulation.
Long-term potentiation is believed to be a
neural basis for learning and memory
Drugs that block LTP interfere with learning
After LTP occurs, passing an electric current
through the brain won’t disrupt old memory,
but will disrupt recent memories that have not
had time to consolidate into long-term memory
Long-Term Potentiation
Stress-Hormones and Memory

The naturally stimulating hormones that humans
and animals produce when excited or stressed
make more glucose energy available to fuel brain
activity, signaling the brain that something
important has happened. The amygdala, an
emotion-processing structures in the brain’s
limbic system, arouses brain areas that process
emotion. The emotion-triggered hormonal
changes boost learning and retention.
Emotionless events mean weaker memories.
Storing Implicit and Explicit
Memories

Amnesia

Retrograde Amnesia:
loss of memory for
events and experiences
that occurred before the
onset of the amnesia
Storing Implicit and Explicit
Memories

Amnesia

Anterograde Amnesia: loss of memory
for events that occurred after the onset of
amnesia
Storing Implicit and Explicit
Memories

Implicit Memory (nondeclarative memory):
 Retention independent of conscious
recollection. It is incidental, unintentional
remembering, the unintentional influence
of prior experience

Implicit memory is largely unaffected by
amnesia, age, the administration of
certain drugs (such as alcohol), the length
of the retention interval
Storing Implicit and Explicit
Memories

Explicit Memory (declarative memory):
The process in which people intentionally
try to remember something and are
consciously aware of doing so
 Explicit memory is affected by amnesia,
age, drugs, the length of retention interval,
etc
 Explicit memory can be best assessed with
recall or recognition measure of retention

Storing Implicit and Explicit
Memories

By the time you reach adulthood, you
may have no explicit memories of the
interaction you had in early childhood
with friends from different ethnic
groups. Research suggests, however,
that your implicit memories of such
experiences could have an unconscious
effect on your attitudes toward and
judgments about members of those
groups
Storing Implicit and Explicit
Memories

Hippocampus: a neural center that is
located in the limbic system and helps
process explicit memories for storage.
Even though your ability to form explicit
memories is compromised due to damage
to the hippocampus, your ability to form
implicit memories is still intact.
Storing Implicit and Explicit
Memories

A woman with organic amnesia was unable to
recognize the physician. Each day he needed
to reintroduce himself. One day, after reaching
for his hand, she yanked hers back because the
physician had pricked her with a tack he had in
his palm. The next day he reintroduced himself
and stretched out his hand to shake hers. She
refused to shake his hand but couldn’t explain
why. She had implicit memory of the painful
pinprick despite damage to her hippocampus
Storing Implicit and Explicit
Memories

Cerebellum: this part of the brain plays
a key role in forming and storing the
implicit memories created by classical
conditioning. Damage to this structure
makes it impossible to develop
conditioned responses
RECOGNIZING VARIOUS TYPES OF MEMORY
Check your understanding of the various types of memory discussed in this chapter by
matching the definitions below with the following: (A) Episodic Memory,
(B) Explicit Memory, (C) Implicit Memory, (D) Long-Term Memory, (E) Procedural
Memory, (F) Semantic Memory, (G) Sensory Memory, or (H) Short-Term Memory.
_____1. An unlimited capacity store that can hold information over lengthy periods of
time.
_____2. The preservation of information in its original sensory form for a brief time,
usually only a fraction of a second.
_____3. Type of memory apparent when retention is exhibited on a task that does
not require intentional remembering.
_____4. Chronological, or temporally dated, recollections of personal experiences.
_____5. The repository of memories for actions, skills, and operations.
_____6. General knowledge that is not tied to the time when the information was
learned.
_____7. A limited-capacity store that can maintain unrehearsed information for about
18 seconds.
Retrieval: Getting Information Out
Recall:
The learner has to reconstruct the entire
stored material
Usually yields a lower amount than
recognition
Examples:
Retrieval: Getting Information Out
Recognition:
Identifying objects or events that have
been encountered before
It is the easiest of the memory tasks
Examples:
Retrieval: Getting Information Out
Relearning (Method of Savings):
A procedure for studying memory or retention in
which the effort required to learn the material a
second time is compared with the effort needed
on the initial learning experience.
If it takes less time and effort to learn the
material a second time, then there must be
material that was retained in the memory system
Examples:
Retrieval Cues

Priming:

the activation, often unconsciously, of
.
particular associations
in memory
A technique called priming can
demonstrate implicit memory.
A person who sees the word
yellow will be slightly faster to
recognize the word banana as a word.
This happens because the words
yellow and banana are closely
associated in memory.
Researchers sometimes envision a network of word meanings
or semantic network somewhat like the diagram. The distance
between words indicates the frequency with which the words are
associated in everyday life. Because of these associations,
activating one node of the network (showing the person one
word) warms up or primes nearby words, speeding retrieval.
This effect lasts about 30 minutes after exposure to the priming
word.
Context Effects

Context Effects

Retrieval is sometimes aided by returning to the
original context in which we experienced an event
or encoded a thought. It can flood our memories
with retrieval cues that lead to the target memory.
Sometimes, being in a context similar to one
we’ve been in before may trick us into
unconsciously retrieving the target memory. The
result is a feeling that we are reliving something
that we have experienced before—a phenomenon
known as “déjà vu”
Context Effects

déjà vu:
 the eerie sense that
“I’ve experienced this
before” Cues from the
current situation may
subconsciously trigger
retrieval of an earlier
experience.
Mood and Memories

State-Dependent Memory
When a person’s internal state can aid
or impede retrieval memory
 State dependent effect are very weak
and limited to free-recall tasks
 Example: College students remember
more positive incidents from their
diaries or from their earlier life when
they are in a positive mood at the time
of recall

Forgetting

Three sins of forgetting:
1. Absent-mindedness
2. Transience
“I said you forgot to
feed the dog again”
3. Blocking
Forgetting

Absent-mindedness:

If you want to remember vital information you
have to keep your mind and your attention
focused. (Example, our mind is focused
elsewhere as we lay down the car keys). So
in class you should sit in the front of the
room, ask questions, participate in the
discussions, and look directly at the teacher.
If you don’t focus and properly encode the
memory, you can’t retrieve it later.
Forgetting

Transience

“Use it or lose it” Not all memories are
permanent. Stored memories decay over
time (in 5 years time you may not remember
your Spanish)
Forgetting

Blocking

Blocking occurs when
something has been
well encoded and retained in memory
but cannot be retrieved (We are trying
to remember a particular actor in a
movie and it is on the tip of our tongue
but we cannot retrieve it)
Forgetting

Three sins of distortion
1.
2.
3.
Misattribution
Suggestibility
Bias
Forgetting

Misattribution
Incorrectly identifying the time, place or
person responsible for memory
 Example: Putting words in someone’s
mouth, remembering a movie scene as
an actual happening

"Most people, probably, are in doubt about certain matters
ascribed to their past. They may have seen them, may have said
them, done them, or they may only have dreamed or imagined they did so."
--William James
Forgetting

Suggestibility


The sin of incorporating information
suggested by someone else into our memory.
This can easily happen because of misleading
questions, comments, or direct suggestions—
particularly at the time of retrieval.
A witness can falsely remember a suspect’s
face after being questioned in a leading
manner, and a therapist’s comment about
“possible signs of sexual assault” may later
become a client’s false memory
Child psychologist Jean Piaget, in his Plays, Dreams, and Imitation in
childhood, related a personal story about the malleability of memory:
...one of my first memories would date, if it were true, from my second
year. I can still see, most clearly, the following scene, in which I
believed until I was about fifteen. I was sitting in my pram, which my
nurse was pushing in the Champs Elysees, when a men tried to kidnap
me. I was held in by the strap fastened around me while my nurse
bravely tried to stand between me and the thief. She received various
scratches, and I can still see vaguely those on her face. Then a crowd
gathered, a policeman with a short cloak and a white baton came up,
and the man took to his heels. I can still see the whole scene, and can
even place it near the tube station. When I was about fifteen, my
parents received a letter from my former nurse saying that she had
been converted to the Salvation Army. She wanted to confess her past
faults, and in particular to return the watch she had been given as a
reward on occasion. She had made up the whole story, faking the
scratches. I, therefore, must have heard, as a child, the account of this
story, which my parents believed, and projected into the past in the
form of a visual memory.
Forgetting

Bias

Bias occurs when current knowledge and
beliefs distort our memory of the past.
Most people believe that their beliefs and
attitudes have not changed much over
time, yet during a divorce, couples tend to
only remember the bad parts of their
marriage. In contrast, couples celebrating
their 50th wedding anniversary seem to
remember “always being in love”
Forgetting

One sin of intrusion
 Persistence
 Traumatic
and extremely emotional
events can cause memories to persist
even when we would like to forget
Encoding Failure
One explanation for forgetting is that
we fail to encode the information for
entry into our memory system.
Without effortful processing, much of
what we sense we never notice or
process
 In the circle, draw the front side of a
penny.

Draw a picture of a penny
Storage Decay

According to Ebbinghaus the greatest
amount of forgetting (60%) occurs in the
first nine hours (with the most happening
in the first hour) after learning and then
the rate of forgetting slows down
considerably.
Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve
Storage Decay

Barrick extended Ebbinhaus’ findings. He examined
the forgetting curve for Spanish vocabulary learned
in school. Compare with those just completing a
H.S. of college Spanish course, people who had
been out of school for 3 years had forgotten much
of what they had learned. However, after roughly 3
years, their forgetting leveled off; what people
remembered then, they still remember in 25 and
more years later, even if they had not used their
Spanish at all
Retrieval Failure

Interference: The interference
theory proposed that people forget
information because of competition
from other material. Interference does
not push items out of long-term
memory, it just interferes with the
retrieval of those items.
Interference

Proactive Interference
(forward-acting interference) the
disruptive effect of prior learning on the
recall of new information

Retroactive Interference
(backward-acting interference) the
disruptive effect of new learning on the
recall of old information
Figure 9.23 Proactive and retroactive interference
Myers: Psychology, Eighth Edition
Copyright © 2007 by Worth Publishers
PORN
Proactive Interference
Old over new
Retroactive Interference
New over old
Motivated Forgetting

Repression


Motivated forgetting. In Freud’s psychoanalytic
theory, the basic defense mechanism that
banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing
thoughts, feelings and memories
More and more memory researchers are thinking
that repression barely, if ever, occurs. Their
skepticism is because research shows that
emotions and associated stress hormones
strengthen memories
Motivated Forgetting

Memory Construction


Memories are not stored as exact copies, and
they certainly are not retrieved as such.
Rather we construct our memories, using
both stored and new information. In many
experiments around the world, people have
witnessed an event, received or not received
misleading information about it, and then
taken a memory test. Results show that
people often misremember
Elizabeth Loftus experiment
Misinformation Effect

Misinformation Effect
 Incorporating
misleading information
into one’s memory of an event

As people recount an experience, they fill
in their memory gaps with plausible
guesses. Other vivid retellings may also
implant false memories. Even repeatedly
imagining and rehearsing nonexistent
events can create false memories
Misinformation Effect

Example: Loftus’ study where subjects who
were asked how fast the cars were going
when they “smashed” into one another gave
high speed estimates and a week later
remembered seeing more glass at the scene
then those who were asked how fast the
cars were going when they “hit”
Source Amnesia

Source Amnesia (source misattribution)
 Attributing
to the wrong source an
event we have experienced, heard
about, read about, or imagined.
Source amnesia is at the
heart of many false memories
Discerning True and False
Memories


Unreal memories feel like real memories.
Neither the sincerity nor the longevity of a
memory signifies that it is real. The most
confident and consistent eyewitnesses are
often not the most accurate
Memories of imagined experiences are
usually limited to the gist of the supposed
event—the meanings and feelings we
associated with it. True memories contain
more details than imagined ones.
Children’s Eyewitness Recall

A supporting argument for the reliability of these
reports is that even very young children can
accurately recall events if a neutral person talks to
them in words they can understand, asks nonleading
questions, and uses the cognitive interview
technique. A challenging argument is that
preschoolers are more suggestible than other
children or adults, and they can be induced, through
suggestive questioning to report false events.
Repressed or Constructed
Memories of Abuse

Innocent people have been falsely convicted of abuse
that never happened, and true abusers have used the
controversy over recovered memories to avoid
punishment. Forgetting of isolated past events, both
negative and positive, is an ordinary part of life. Cued
by a remark or an experience, we may later recover a
memory. Controversy, however, focuses on whether the
unconscious mind forcibly represses painful experiences
and whether they can be retrieved by a therapist-aided
technique. Memories “recovered” under hypnosis or
drugs are especially unreliable as are memories of things
happening before age 3. Traumatic experiences are
usually vividly remembered, not banished into an active
but inaccessible unconscious.
Improving Memory








Overlearn
Use elaborative rehearsal
Rehearse actively
Use mnemonic devices
Capitalize on context effect and mood
congruence
Study the material as close to when you learn it
as possible
Be able to not only recognize the information
but also recall it
Remember the primacy and recency effect