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Reliability of Long term memory (Accuracy of personal memory (Evidence on…

- - - - The results showed that compared to an immediate test, a test administered after 1 week showed considerable forgetting (Bartlett’s result). However, tests administered close together in time produced the exact opposite, namely hypermnesia. In general, repeated tests are very beneficial for memory accuracy, whatever the inter-test delay. Whether or not the materials could
        be linked by a story was irrelevant.
- - - - Bahrick et al. found that there was steady forgetting on the free recall test, but virtually none on the recognition or matching tests, until 30 or so years had elapsed (by which time ageing may have played a role). Of course, exposure to class mates involves repeated “learning trials” and hugely distributed practice, but neither of these factors can be critical because studies of single-event memories can be equally accurate.
    - - At the end of the 6 yr period, Wagenaar tested himself on each day. The recording of who, what and where developed three cues to help him remember the memories. He then tested himself on these memories, using these retrieval cues. He found that over time, memory did slowly decline, however using the retrieval cues allowed nearly all memories to be recalled. For the events that were not recalled despite the use of all three cues, Wagenaar contacted the other people involved in the incident, who were then able to provide him with more cues which resulted in memory recollection. Thus with sufficient cues, accurate memories tend to be recalled.
  - - - The data revealed an amazing amount of misremembering. In fact, only 3/44 participants remembered accurately what they were doing. Most were mistaken in some respect, and 11/44 participants were entirely wrong and gave reports that
        were complete inventions.
  - - - Because flashbulb events make for a good story, people tend to add spurious details, particularly as a result of social interaction. Thirdly, the familiarity of the event or materials can lead to lesser or greater degrees of schema-based reconstruction. Can we test these ideas?
- - - - This enhanced memory of arousing incidents is believed to be an adaptive behaviour, ensuring we remember dangerous and life-threatening information (Roozendaal, McEwen & Chattarji, 2009).
      - Cahill and McGaugh (1995) demonstrate this phenomenon in a study in which participants are presented with one of two stories. They are the same length and equally as complex, yet one story includes more emotive language and events; there is a car accident and the person involved is rushed to hospital. Results showed that memories regarding the particularly emotional details of the accident are more reliably recalled. On the other hand, the story eliciting low arousal does not result in enhanced memory.
      - The mechanism behind this reliable recollection is believed to lie in the stress response. McGaugh and Roozendaal (2002) investigated how hormones released in the face of a stressful situation affect memory. They found that the release of glucocorticoids is associated with information of a highly emotive nature being more accurately remembered. This is believed to be due to their action of the amygdala. This suggests that enhanced memory consolidation occurs when information is emotionally arousing due to the amygdala facilitating memory consolidation in the hippocampus. These long-lasting memories are then more easily recalled.
- - - - Gabbert et al. found that the opportunity to construct a shared version of events led to significant levels of distortion in the final recalls. Over 70% of participants who had been in a pair recalled a detail provided by their co-witness, that they themselves had not observed. More strikingly, when asked to report whether the girl was guilty, when they had seen no evidence of that, over half the participants in pairs judged that she was. Participants who had seen the video in isolation, by contrast, recalled accurately. Thus memory can be distorted to include details seen by another witness but not by the individual him/herself (and vice versa).
        
        The social relationship between the two people who share information about the event can also have an influence on accuracy of recollection. Incorporation of information from another person is more likely to occur if the other person is a friend or partner (Hope, Ost, Gabbert, Healey, & Lenton, 2008).
      - Since many of our lifetime experiences are within a social context, this may be a particularly important factor to consider. Furthermore, it has practical legal complications. This research suggests that co-witnesses of a crime may influence each others recollection of the event if they are able to discuss the event. This could have serious implications on whether or not someone is arrested, or even sentenced.
- - - - Roediger and McDermott (1995) presented participants with lists of 12 words such as water, stream, lake which were all associates of a critical nonpresented word (river). When asked to immediately recall the words, 65% of list words were remembered, but 40% of the critical nonpresented words were falsely remembered. Participants were then given a recognition test including old words, critical nonpresented words, and unrelated lures, and gave confidence ratings for their responses.
        
        Again, participants falsely believed the critical nonpresented words had been on the study list, and moreover often reported high confidence in their decisions. Thus even in a simple immediate memory task, confident false memories are easy to elicit. The most likely explanation is that the critical lures were processed fluently because of their semantic relatedness to the study words, and this fluency was then unconsciously attributed to repetition.
    - - A number of studies have shown that imagining an event can lead to it falsely being recalled as having actually occurred. This is called source confusion. For example, in Weinstein and Shanks’s (2008) procedure, participants first studied and named coloured or black and white pictures. Next, they saw the names again and had to report whether the corresponding picture was in colour or black and white in the study phase. Critically, some of the object names in this phase were not shown in the first phase, but participants were told that if they couldn’t recall an item, they should imagine what it might have looked like. Finally, a recognition test was presented containing
        
        Weinstein and Shanks’s results show substantial evidence of false memory. In the test, participants often reported seeing a picture 20 min earlier which they did not in fact see. Weinstein and Shanks (2010) have also shown that even when offered the choice between responding ‘imagined’ versus ‘seen and imagined’, participants still recall the critical items as having been seen. This source confusion effect can extend to forced-choice recognition: when shown a seen picture and an imagined one and asked to select the previously seen one, participants often choose the imagined picture, even for highly individuated scenes.
    - - Hyman and Pentland (1996) have gone on from the basic imagination/source confusion effect to show imagination inflation, the finding that repeated imaginings can strengthen false memories still further. They asked the parents of college students to recall events that happened to their children prior to age 6 in each of 10 categories (e.g., going to hospital, getting lost, a holiday, etc.). The students were then interviewed on 3 consecutive occasions at intervals of 2 days. In each interview, they were asked to recollect each of the parent-provided memories and describe as much additional detail as possible.
        
        They were also asked to recollect a fictitious event, an occasion at age 5 at a wedding reception when they had accidentally spilled a punch bowl over the parents of the bride. This event was presented just like the true memories as having been reported by the parents. Based on the students' descriptions, each event was classified as either remembered (e.g., if the student acknowledged it as such or generated additional detail about the event) or not remembered.
        
        In the first interview, most true events were remembered and most fictitious events were not. However, the interesting aspect of the study concerns changes across the 3 interviews. In each interview, if an event was not recalled, participants in the imagery group were told to imagine what the event might have been like and to describe details of their image (e.g., what objects and people looked like). They were told that this imagery might increase the likelihood of recalling the event. Hyman and Pentland found that this imagery process considerably increased the likelihood of participants falsely recalling the fictitious event. This effect did not occur in a control group that did not receive the imagery task. Moreover, participants in the imagery group became nearly as confident that the false memories were veridical as the true ones. The results clearly imply that false memories can be implanted via suggestion and imagery.
      - Bernstein et al. (2005) have used suggestion to implant the false memory that individuals had an unpleasant childhood experience, namely falling ill after eating strawberry ice cream. After the false memory induction, some of these individuals avoided eating strawberry ice cream. Hence a false memory can have real effects on behaviour