9 - Recognition Memory

Question 1

What are the two limitations that restrict memory ability?

Answer 1

• Sensory limitations: prevent all the details of a scene or an event from being registered in memory.
• Attentional bottleneck: attentional capacity limits amount of info that is perceived.

Question 2

How does attention impact memory? (hint: 2 e.g.s:

distraction & distinctive features).

Answer 2

1. Distraction impairs encoding;
   
   • pts were given memory/recall task and req. to recall at intervals 5 - 10 - 15 etc.
   • Distract b/w recall trials.
   • Amount of interference increases the longer you have to wait to recall
   • Distraction interferes w/ memory.
2. Distinctive features attract attentive (and better recall).
   
   • Faces dissimilar to prototypical faces easier to remember.
   • Attractive & unattractive faces are recalled better than moderate faced.

Question 4

What is Weapon Focus & how did Loftus et al. (1987) show this effect in their gun-money paradigm?

Answer 4

Weapon focus refers to the concentration of some witness’s attention on a weapon–the barrel of a gun or the blade of a knife–during a crime, leaving less attention available for viewing other items.

• STUDY: slide of people moving through the order line of a Taco Time restaurant - pts is “cashier”
• Two conditions:
  
  • control: person B (second inline) hands cashier money - cashier returns changes.
  • exp: person B pull gun - cashier hands over money.
  • All slides otherwise the same.
• Line-up to pick out person B
• RESULTS:
  
  • Control 38% hit rate.
  • Weapon 11% rate: weapon effect.

Question 5

What is a schema and how does it influence attention and learning?

Answer 5

• A concept or set of ideas or framework for representing aspects of the world.
• Influence how you interpret new in & what y_ou pay attention to when learning_
  
  • determine what you lean & how you represent that knowledge.
• Can be beneficial - improves comprehension & recall for passages
• Can lead to distortions in memory -
  
  • inconsistent info (to schema) is often misinterpreted or distorted to fit.
  • schema are hard to change

Question 6

What recall changes over time did Barlett’s Native American Folk Tale reveal? What does this reveal about the relationship between the “gist” & details of memory?

Answer 6

• The changes are indicative of what is stored in memory.
• Expectations or “the Gist” of the story influences how the details change from retelling to retelling.
• The initials details of the story are eventually lost or distorted.

Suggests memory is comprised of specific details & a theory or expectation how those details fit together.

If not recalled, the details gradually fade until only the gist of what occured remains.

Question 7

What is the method of loci and how does underly differences in memory recall between western groups & oral traditions groups?

Answer 7

• Method of loci: visualisations, danced, & stories are used to encode things you want to recall.
• Western groups recalling the native folk story see distortions in the narrative o/time - details fade, gist remains.
• Oral traditions, the knowledge is protected by being passed on only in special situations with guarded ritual - protects narative degradation.

Question 8

How did Loftus & Palmer (1974) manipulate peoples’ memory by suggesting specific expectations in the traffic accident paradigm?

Answer 8

• Pts viewed slides of a traffic accident.
• Then asked; “make an estimate of how fast the car was going when it ___ into the other car
  
  • hit, smashed, collided, bumped, contact.
• Results: “smashed” estimated faster speed / “contacted” slowest.
• THEN - pts asked did you see any broken glass?
  
  • “smashed” 2x+ more likely than “hit” to report broken glass.

Takeaway:

Asking a specific question about the speed of the cars using a leading question, influences the estimate of the speed and inferences based on memory for particular events.

Question 9

In Charman & Wells (2007) ‘Police Line-Up’ experiment, how did the instruction “..the culprit’s appearance may have changed” change participants accuracy in identifying the target (when targer was present) & rejecting the line-up (when target was absent)?

Answer 9

• participants under the instruction conditions increase their false alarms for both target-present and target-absent trials.
• The instructions influence the participants expectations, which influences the participants decisions about what they remember.
  
  • false alarm is when the participant incorrectly chooses someone other than the target

Question 10

What is the continued influence effect and how did Johnson & Seifert’s (1994) Warehouse fire experiment offer evidence for it?

Answer 10

• Pts presented with a list of messages which were received at different times.
• control condition was just given the following standard information: the empty closet.
• immediate discounting condition: cans of oil pants & gas cylinders in the closet - immediately retracted.
• delayed discounting condition: retraction made several minutes later.
• The implication the is being set up is that whoever owned the warehouse is guilty of some negligence and is partly responsible for the fire.
• Fact Qs & inference Qs:
  
  • e.g. where was the fire located?
  • e.g. why did the fire spread? What reasons might an insurance claim be rejected?
  • Do you remember any corrections?
• Results:
  
  • Misinfo results in more references to negligence - delayed & immediate.
    
    • no diff b/w recall conditions.
  • Everyone remembers retraction - but ppl still used misinfo…

Question 11

How did Lewandowski et al. (2011) show that belief of misinformation increases with repetition?

Answer 11

• When misinformation is presented once, it continues to be believed even if retracted more than once.
• The belief in the misinformation is greater when the misinformation is repeated. And still doesn’t diminish to baseline levels even if retracted multiple times.

Question 12

How do causal alternatives effect misinformation belief?

Answer 12

• If causal alternaitve is plausible & explains all observed features of an event, it can correct misinformation beleif - must be causal.

Question 13

What is the familiarity backfire effect, how it is related to fluency, and what evidence has been offered for it?

Answer 13

Familiarity backfire effect is where repeated exposure to misinformation (via correction) leads to someone believing the misinformation more.

Fluency & Familiarity:

• By making something more fluent, it is processed more easily - increasing recall. Fluency is a cue to belief.
• e.g. When presented in an easy to read font, less thought is given to the question = belief.

Evidence: Skurnik et al. (2005)

Information that is initially presented as true is believed to be true even after correction. This belief increases with repetition (i.e., familiarity increases belief in false information)

Question 14

What is the overkill backfire effect?

Answer 14

Providing too many counter arguments leads to backfire effects.

Question 15

What is the Worldview Backfire Effect and how did Schaffner & Luks (2018) show this with the inauguration photo experiment?

Answer 15

Counter-arguments can cause ppl with strong views to strength their incorrect beliefs.

Study:

• Used the inauguration photo and asked - which photo has more people.
• Trump voters far greater % chose wrong photo.
• Expressive responding (middle-finger):
  
  • high-education Trump supporters were just as likely to provide the wrong answer in the condition where the answer was in plain view as they were when the answer was not as obvious

Question 17

How did Zipf’s law help to locate the HMAS Sydney?

Answer 17

• Researchers noticed that the accounts of where the Sydney sunk differed in a similar statistical fashion to the fading memory recall from the War of Ghosts experiment - a function of Zipf’s law;
  
  • A negatively deaccelerating relationship where the first rank postion is twice as likely as the 2nd, and the 2nd twice as likely as the 3rd … etc.
• i.e. The data conform to Zipf’s law to the extent that the plot is linear in Log-Log

coordinates.