Eyewitness Reliability Elizabeth Loftus Loftus Palmer 1974 Aday

Eyewitness Reliability • Elizabeth Loftus (Loftus & Palmer 1974)

A-day trial • “Smashed” – 36. 74 mph • “Contacted” – 33. 47 mph

2018 data “Contacted” “Smashed” Mean: 35 Median: 28 Mode: 20 Mean: 35 (+/- 0) Median: 30 (+2) Mode: 25 (+5) 2017 Mean: 29 Median: 30 Mode: 20 2017 Mean: 33 (+4) Median: 35 (+5) Mode: 35, 45 (+15 +20)

Language influences Memory Leading Questions: Presuppositions: • Use of certain terms like “smashed” as opposed to “contacted” influenced the way in which the subjects reconstructed the event in their mind. • A condition or assumption that must be true for the question to make sense • Subjects included the presupposed objects (stop sign, white barn) in their later reconstructions of events, days or weeks later even if they hadn’t included it the first time they were asked

Misinformation effect • Loftus • After exposure to misinformation subjects remembered an event differently • When repeatedly shown doctored digital pics of themselves in childhood events that never took place 50% of the participants “remembered” the event in detail

(a) (b) Figure 7 A. 27 Our assumptions alter our perceptual memories Researchers showed people faces with computer-blended expressions, such as the angry/happy face in (a), then asked them to explain why the person was either angry or happy. Those asked to explain an “angry” expression later (when sliding a bar on a morphing movie to identify the earlier-seen face) remembered an angrier face, such as the one shown in (b). © 2010 by Worth Publishers

Source Amnesia • Hearing something and recalling seeing it • Recognizing a face but not knowing from where • Not knowing if you dreamed a remembered event or if it really happened • Debra Poole and Stephen Lindsay (1995, 2001, 2002) - Preschoolers and Mr. Science – Kids remembered activities they took part in and some that they only read about as if they had experienced them all directly

False Memory vs True • False memories feel real • How one feels today influences your memory of how you felt in the past about both issues and personal events

Memory • Persistence of learning over time • 3 elements of memory – Encoding Storage Retrieval

Automatic processing • Time • Space • Frequency Effortful Processing: Everything else! Data, terms, names

Awareness Test

3 stages 1. Sensory memory (you must “notice” to move to #2) 2. Working Memory aka Short-term memory (you must “rehearse” to move to #3) 3. Long-term memory (you must review / revisit to maintain)

Attkinson & Shiffrin Model of Memory

“Working memory” – we focus on new or novel stimuli out of many others – we combine the new with retrieved information to solve problems

• Flip book

Sensory Memory • Iconic • Echoic • SEIM (sensory, echoic, iconic, memory)

3 stages 1. Sensory memory (you must “notice” to move to #2) 2. Working Memory aka Short-term memory (you must “rehearse” to move to #3) 3. Long-term memory (you must review / revisit to maintain)

Short –term Memory • 7 + or – 2 • Up to about 30 seconds with rehearsal! – Can be extended longer through using chunking or mnemonic devices, repetitive rehearsal

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H. Ebbinghaus, 1850 - 1909 • Advocated “rehearsal” and “overlearning” to increase retention • Rehearsal = repetition • Serial Positioning effect • Spacing effect

“Overlearning" • When skills or info are rehearsed / reviewed beyond what is needed to initially remember them without aid • better performance in high stress situations

Elaboration • Connecting what you are trying to learn to things already stored in LTM • Ex: - Connecting words to images / visuals - Connecting terms from one language to another you are learning

Spacing effect • Lean quickly forget quickly • Instead distribute study time in smaller bursts and review your topics after some time

Theoretical Explanations for the Spacing Effect 1. Spacing Prompts More Attention / Focus 2. Spacing Prompts Retrieval (you have to try to remember and review) 3. Spacing Prompts More-Difficult Retrieval 4. Spacing Involves More Contextual Variability (context is your environment)

Synaptic Changes in the Brain Figure 7 A. 13 Doubled receptor sites Electron microscope images show just one receptor site (gray) reaching toward a sending neuron before long-term potentiation (left) and two sites after LTP (right). A doubling of the receptor sites means that the receiving neuron has increased sensitivity for detecting the presence of the neurotransmitter molecules that may be released by the sending neuron.

Serial position effect Primacy vs Recency

The testing effect • Roediger and Karpicke – repeated quizzing of studied material helps improve learning, not just assess learning

Elaborative rehearsal (encoding aids) Imagery • Mnemonic Devices – examples you know? • Method of loci • Peg Word system

The One Bun Rhyme Peg Word system The One-Bun Rhyme Mnemonic is a simple technique One is a Bun Two is a Shoe Three is a Tree Four is a Door Five is a Hive Six is Sticks Seven is Heaven Eight is a Gate Nine is Wine Ten is a Hen

Organization & Memory Visual vs Acoustic vs Semantic

A Hierarchy of Encoding Methods

3 stages 1. Sensory memory (you must “notice” to move to #2) 2. Working Memory aka Short-term memory (you must “rehearse” to move to #3) 3. Long-term memory (you must review / revisit to maintain)

Long-term memory • Info in STM must be rehearsed or utilized (effortful processing) in order to go into long –term memory storage • Long-term Potentiation – a tendency for increased synaptic firing with less effort and increased receptor sites after repeated stimulation – this process allows learning and storage /retrieval of memory

Fetal Neurons Making connections!

Synaptic Changes in the Brain Figure 7 A. 13 Doubled receptor sites Electron microscope images show just one receptor site (gray) reaching toward a sending neuron before long-term potentiation (left) and two sites after LTP (right). A doubling of the receptor sites means that the receiving neuron has increased sensitivity for detecting the presence of the neurotransmitter molecules that may be released by the sending neuron.

Figure 7 A. 25 When do we forget? Forgetting can occur at any memory stage. As we process information, we filter, alter, or lose much of it. © 2010 by Worth Publishers

Memory and emotion • Memories are more easily formed re: emotional events – Stress and hormones trigger glucose which signals brain that something important is happening – Amygdala which processes emotions also boosts activity in hippocampus

Where are memories stored? • Hippocampus is involved • Clive Wearing • No single area • “connectionism” • Memories emerge from interconnected neural networks (patterns of activity)

Explicit memories for facts and episodes are processed in the hippocampus and fed to other brain regions for storage. Explicit memory

Procedural Memory is a separate system! • Brenda Milner and Patient HM

Procedural Memory or implicit memory Muscle Memory, repetitive actions & procedures are stored here. Example – driving a car, using a pen, swimming, playing an instrument.

Long-term memory • E&G Loftus 1980 – some flashbacks are invented • We do not store memories in precise locations • How Memories Work • Lasky – 1950 – rats with parts of cerebral cortex removed were still able to remember a maze run

The effects of context on memory Words heard underwater are best recalled underwater; words heard on land are best recalled on land.

Figure 7 A. 18 Forgetting as encoding failure We cannot remember what we have not encoded. © 2010 by Worth Publishers

Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850 -1909) Figure 7 A. 20 Ebbinghaus’ forgetting curve After learning lists of nonsense syllables, Ebbinghaus studied how much he retained up to 30 days later. He found that memory for novel information fades quickly, then levels out. Adapted from Ebbinghaus, 1885 © 2010 by Worth Publishers

Figure 7 A. 21 The forgetting curve for Spanish learned in school Compared with people just completing a Spanish course, those 3 years out of the course remembered much less. Compared with the 3 -year group, however, those who studied Spanish even longer ago did not forget much more. Adapted from Bahrick, 1984 © 2010 by Worth Publishers

Figure 7 A. 22 Retrieval failure We store in long-term memory what’s important to us or what we’ve rehearsed. But sometimes even stored information cannot be accessed, which leads to forgetting. © 2010 by Worth Publishers

Figure 7 A. 23 Retroactive interference More forgetting occurred when a person stayed awake and experienced other new material. From Jenkins & Dallenbach, 1924 © 2010 by Worth Publishers

Figure 7 A. 24 Proactive and retroactive interference © 2010 by Worth Publishers

Figure 7 A. 25 When do we forget? Forgetting can occur at any memory stage. As we process information, we filter, alter, or lose much of it. © 2010 by Worth Publishers

Figure 7 A. 26 Memory construction When people who had seen the film of a car accident were later asked a leading question, they recalled a more serious accident than they had witnessed. From Loftus, 1979 © 2010 by Worth Publishers

(a) (b) Figure 7 A. 27 Our assumptions alter our perceptual memories Researchers showed people faces with computer-blended expressions, such as the angry/happy face in (a), then asked them to explain why the person was either angry or happy. Those asked to explain an “angry” expression later (when sliding a bar on a morphing movie to identify the earlier-seen face) remembered an angrier face, such as the one shown in (b). © 2010 by Worth Publishers

Figure 7 A. 1 What is this? © 2010 by Worth Publishers