PSY245 Study Guide - Final Guide: Reminiscence Bump, Temporal Lobe, Prefrontal Cortex
Chapter 8 – Everyday Memory and Memory Errors
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORY (AM): WHAT HAPPENED IN MY LIFE
• Memory for specific experiences from our life which can include both episodic and
semantic components
• E.g. images of the cake, people the party (episodic), when the party occurred, where
your family was living (semantic)
THE MULTIDIMENSIONAL NATURE OF AM
• Consist of spatial, emotional and sensory components
• Daniel Greenberg and David Rubin (2003) – patients who had lost their ability to
recognise objects or visualise objects because of damage to visual areas experienced a
loss of AM
• Visual stimuli were not available to serve as retrieval cues for memories
• Robert Cabeza (2004) – measured the brain activation caused by two sets of stimulus
photographs (one the subject took and one by someone else)
• Own-photos and lab-photos activated many of the same structures in the brain –
medial temporal lobe (MTL) as well as an area in the parietal cortex
• The own-photos caused more activation in the prefrontal cortex (processing
information about the self) and the hippocampus
• Elicited memories presumably associated with taking the picture
• Can elicit emotion à activate the amygdala
MEMORY OVER THE LIFESPAN
• Events that become significant parts of a person’s life tend to be remembered well
• Subjects over 40 are asked to remember events in their lives (55-year-old remembered
for all years between ages 5 and 55 à memory is better for recent events)
• Reminiscence Bump: enhanced memory for adolescence and young adulthood found
in people over 40
• Self-Image Hypothesis: memory is enhanced for events that occur as a person’s self-
image or life identity is being formed (proposed by Clare Rathbone)
• Subjects with an average age of 54 created ‘I am’ statements that defined them as
person (associated with the reminiscence bump)
• Cognitive Hypothesis: period of rapid change that are followed by stability cause
stronger encoding of memories (adolescence and young adulthood)
• Robert Schrauf and David Ruben (1998) – determined the recollections of people who
had emigrated to the US either in their 20s or mid 30s
• Reminiscence bump occurs at the normal age for people who emigrated at 20-24 but
is shifted to later for those who emigrated at age 34-35
• Late emigration à eliminates stable period
• Cultural Life Script Hypothesis: distinguishes between a person’s life story (all the
events) and a cultural life script (culturally expected events that occur)
• Dorthe Bernsten and David Ruben (2004) – asked people to list when important
events in a typical person’s life usually occur
• More common responses were falling in love (16 years), college (22 years), marriage
(27 years), having children (28 years)
• Events in a person’s life story become easier to recall when they fit the cultural life
script for that person’s culture
MEMORY FOR “EXCEPTIONAL” EVENTS
• Significant and important to the person and are associated with emotions
MEMORY AND EMOTION
• Kevin LaBar and Elizabeth Phelps (1998) – association between emotion and
enhanced memory
• Tested subjects’ ability to recall arousing words and neutral words and observed
better memory for the arousing words
• Florin Dolcos (2005) – subjects’ ability to recognise emotional and neutral pictures
after a 1-year delay and observed better memory for emotional pictures
• Amygdala activity was higher for the emotional words
• Patient B.P. who had suffered damage to his amygdala – not enhanced for the
emotional part of the story
• Emotion has also been linked to memory consolidation – stimulant cortisol is released
during and after emotionally arousing stimuli
• Stress hormones released after an emotional experience increase consolidation
• Larry Cahill (2003) – showed subjects neutral and emotionally arousing pictures and
then had subjects immerse their hands in cold water (cortisol release) or warm water
• Subjects who had been exposed to stress recalled more of the emotionally arousing
pictures than the neutral pictures (no differences in the no-stress group)
• Hormone activation after arousing emotional experience à enhances memory
consolidation à increased activity in the amygdala
• Emotions can impair memory – taking focus away from certain objects
• Weapons Focus: the tendency to focus attention on a weapon during the commission
of a crime – presence of a gun causes decreases in memory for other details
FLASHBULB MEMORIES
• Events experienced by a large number of people often ask people to remember where
they were and how they first learned of the event
BROWN AND KULIK PROPOSE THE TERM “FLASHBULB MEMORY”
• Proposed that memories for the circumstances surrounding learning about events such
as 9/11 are special
• Flashbulb Memory: refer to a person’s memory for the circumstances surrounding
shocking, highly charged events
• Refers to memory for the circumstances surrounding how a person heard about an
event not memory for the event itself
• Remembered for long periods of time and are especially vivid and detailed
• “Now Print” Mechanism: these memories are like a photograph that resists fading
“FLASHBULB MEMORIES” ARE NOT LIKE PHOTOGRAPHS
• Subjects weren’t asked what they remembered until years after the events had
occurred – no way to determine whether the reported memories were accurate
• The only way to check for accuracy is to compare the person’s memory to what
actually happened or to memory reports collected immediately after the event
METHOD: REPEATED RECALL
• Determine whether memory changes over time by testing subjects a number of times
after an event
• First measured immediately after a stimulus is presented or something happens
• Results are compared to the baseline when asked to remember what happened days,
months, years later
• Memories for how they heard about flashbulb events change over time, lacking in
detail, inaccurate
• Ulric Neisser and Nicole Harsch (1992) – asked subjects how they heard about the
explosion of the space shuttle Challenger (filled out a questionnaire a day after the
explosion and then filled out the same questionnaire 2 ½ to 3 years later)
• After the explosion only 21% of the subjects indicated they had first heard it on TV
• 2 ½ years later 45% reported that they had first heard about it on the TV
• Affected by people’s experiences following the event and their general knowledge
ARE FLASHBULB MEMORIES DIFFERENT FROM OTHER MEMORIES?
• Flashbulb memories decay just like regular memories
• Group of college students were asked a number of questions on September 12, 2001
(some were questions about the terrorist attack and some about an everyday event)
• Subject created a two or three-word description that could serve as a cue in the future
• Some were retested 1 week later, some 6 weeks and some 32 weeks later
• Remembered fewer details and made more errors at longer intervals after the events
• People’s belief that their memories were accurate stayed high over the entire 32-week
period for the flashbulb memories but dropped for the everyday memories
• Vividness and how well they could ‘relive’ the events also stayed high and constant
Document Summary
Chapter 8 everyday memory and memory errors. Memory for exceptional events: significant and important to the person and are associated with emotions. Flashbulb memories: events experienced by a large number of people often ask people to remember where they were and how they first learned of the event. The constructive nature of memory: what people report as memories are constructed based on what actually happened plus additional factors (person"s knowledge, experiences and expectations, the mind constructs memories based on a number of sources of information. Information from the actual event, perceptual experiences, emotions and thoughts that were occurring at the time. Remembering who said what: source monitoring and gender. Included material that wasn"t presented in the original story. Memory can be modified or created by suggestion: people are suggestible e. g. advertisements. Information presented by others can also influence a person"s memory for past events.
