storage failures

Question 1

what did Loftus & Loftus (1980) find about whether psychologists and non-psychologists believed we forgot anything?

Answer 1

psychologists
- yes - 84%
- no - 14%

non-psychologists
- yes - 69%
- no - 23%

Question 2

what is psychoanalysis?

Answer 2

during analysis, patients may recover memories for traumatic or unpleasant events which seemed to have been lost

Question 3

what are the issues with psychoanalysis?

Answer 3

false memories

repression

does this only apply to specific events

Question 4

what can happen to people under hypnosis?

Answer 4

under hypnosis, people may be age regressed to recall lost details of their lives, or details from crime scenes

Question 5

what are the issues with hypnosis?

Answer 5

suggestibility

does hypnosis add anything to interviewing?

Question 6

what was Wilder Penfield’s work in the 1940s on epileptics?

Answer 6

direct stimulation of temporal lobes often results in patients spontaneously reporting memory-like events

Question 7

what were the issues with Penfield’s work?

Answer 7

Penfield examined 1132 patients (520 temporal lobe patients) and only got experiential reports from 40 of them

of these 40, many only reported vague sounds

only 12 patients reported things that could be identified as being past experiences (less that 3% of the studied)

the events may be closer to dreams than memories

Question 8

what are the mechanisms for forgetting in encoding?

Answer 8

failure to encode

Question 9

what are the mechanisms for forgetting in storage?

Answer 9

decay

interference (including trace destruction)

repression (or other active inhibition)

Question 10

what are the mechanisms for forgetting in retrieval?

Answer 10

retrieval failure

Question 11

what is the Brown/Peterson paradigm?

Answer 11

encode a consonant trigram (TLW) then count down in 3s from a number

then asked to recall trigram

performance depends on delay

Question 12

what is the evidence surrounding whether the Brown/Peterson paradigm is caused by decay or interference?

Answer 12

Keppel & Underwood (1962) say partly caused by proactive interference rather than delay

demonstrated most likely by release of PI phenomenon (Wickes, 1970) which showed a change in category brings performance close to the levels of trial 1 again

Question 13

what is proactive interference?

Answer 13

old learning causes forgetting of new material

Question 14

what is retroactive interference?

Answer 14

new learning causes forgetting of new material

Question 15

what was Loftus & Palmer’s (1974) experiment?

Answer 15

participants watched a film of a car accident and then were asked “about how fast were the cars going when they [smashed into/hit] each other?”

first group gave higher estimates than the second group

one week later, they were asked if they saw any broken glass in the video and the smashed group were more likely to report seeing broken glass

Question 16

what is the misinformation effect?

Answer 16

Loftus (1979) interprets her results as showing that the original memory itself has been distorted by misleading post-event information

extremely important for work on eye-witness testimony and on recovered memories because it implies false components of memories can be added by an experimenter/interrogator/therapist

Question 17

what is trace destruction?

Answer 17

Loftus & Loftus (1980) argue that eye-witness testimony results demonstrate that the memory trace can be irrevocably altered by subsequent information

Question 18

what was Loftus, Miller & Burns (1978) experiment?

Answer 18

195 students watched a series of 30 slides depicting a car accident with one critical slide containing either a yield or stop sign

participants then answered a 20 item questionnaire including the question “did another car pass the red Datsun while it was stopped at the [stop/yield] sign?”

after 20 minute filler task, participants are tested on a series of 15 slide pairs including the critical one

where question was consistent, performance was 71% but where question was inconsistent, performance was 51%

effect was increased y delay (2 weeks vs 20 minutes) but reduced by forewarning or blatancy and unaffected by incentives

misinformation effect never seems to work on all participants in the misled group - some form of response bias for participants where no initial memory encoded so therefore no destruction of original memory required

Question 19

what was McCloskey & Zaragoza’s (1985) experiment?

Answer 19

what if 60/100 participants never actually encode the sign

hypothetical results

1 – control – 70%
not encoded
- control - 60
- performance - 50%
- correct - (30)
encoded
- control - 40
- performance - 100%
- correct - (40)

2 – misled – 55%
not encoded
- misled - 60
- performance - 25%
- correct (15)
encoded
- misled - 40
- performance - 100%
- correct - (50)

3 – add bias – 45%
not encoded
- misled - 60
- performance - 25%
- correct - (15)
encoded
- misled - 40
- performance - 75%
- correct - (30)

memory trace has not been altered

Question 20

what was McCloskey & Zaragoza’s (1985) experiment with modified test procedure?

Answer 20

if believe misinformation comes about because of degradation of memory then it doesn’t matter what you compare, misinformation should have overwritten original memory

traditional test
- misled - 37%
- control - 72%

modified test
- misled - 72%
- control - 75%

there is not need for trace destruction, though there may still be some interference in practice

Question 21

what was Nelson’s (1978) study?

Answer 21

standard paired associative learning with 24 participants and 20 pairs (480 items) to learn each (48-PARTY, 26-BOOK)

four week delay then testing by recall, recognition and relearning

at (cued) recall, 232 items forgotten - of these, 120 not recognised - but when these 120 “ forgotten” ones are relearned, easier to learn old associates than new ones

performance
- new associate - 12/60 - 20%
- old associate - 30/60 - 50%

forgotten memories still influence behaviour - potential neural signatures for “forgotten” memories

Question 22

who was “S”?

Answer 22

reported in Luria’s (1968) book translated as “the mind of a mnemonist”

appeared to have almost unlimited memory for numbers and equations - equation memorised after a few minutes, perfect surprise recall 15 years later, number grids of almost unlimited size memorised given about 3-4 seconds per item

had no specific training - relied of imagery, synaesthesia and some strategies like “method of loci”

extremely unusual in demonstrating incredible memory for almost all types of material

Question 23

what were the problems with S’s infinite memory?

Answer 23

had remarkably poor memory of faces

lists provided by Vygotsky included bird names - could recall list but didn’t know they were all birds until read off the list again

inability to forget eventually created problems

paradox of the expert

Question 24

what is the paradox of the expert?

Answer 24

why doesn’t it become harder to learn new things as more items are already in memory?

surely capacity limits, or proactive interference would create problems for experts

only applies to meaningful material

Question 25

what may normal forgetting be associated with?

Answer 25

progressive loss of availability for individual memories due to interference