Module 28

OUTLINE OF RESOURCES I. Forgetting A. Encoding Failure Lecture/Discussion Topic: Change Blindness (p. 2) UPDATED Classroom Exercises: Memory of a Penny (p. 3) Encoding Failure (p. 4) B. Storage Decay C. Retrieval Failure Lecture/Discussion Topic: Suppressed Memory (p. 7) Classroom Exercises: The Tip-of-the-Tongue Phenomenon and Capital Cities (p. 5) Repression or Inadequate Retrieval Cues? (p. 6) Student Project: A Forgetting Journal (p. 4) Student Project/Classroom Exercise: Earliest Recollections (p. 4) PsychSim 5: Forgetting (p. 5) II. Memory Construction A. Misinformation and Imagination Effects Lecture/Discussion Topics: Misremembering the Causes of Behavior (p. 8) The Misinformation Effect (p. 8) Student Project: Constructive Memory (p. 7) Videocassettes: Moving Images: Exploring Psychology Through Film, Program 13: False Memories: Imagination Effects (p. 7) NEW Scientific American Frontiers, 2nd ed., Segment 17: True or False? (p. 8) PsychSim 5: Trusting Your Memory (p. 9) B. Source Amnesia Lecture/Discussion Topic: Source Amnesia (p. 9) C. Discerning True and False Memories Lecture/Discussion Topics: True Photos and False Memories (p. 10) NEW False Memories Surrounding the Iraq War (p. 11) NEW Classroom Exercises: Creating a False Memory (p. 10) Eyewitness Testimony?What Have We Learned? (p. 11) Eyewitness Recall (p. 12) D. Children?s Eyewitness Recall E. Repressed or Constructed Memories of Abuse Lecture/Discussion Topic: Repressed Memories of Abuse (p. 12) 1 28 Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Memory Improvement MO DUL E 2 Module 28 Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Memory Improvement III. Improving Memory Lecture/Discussion Topic: Making Doctors? Instructions More Memorable (p. 13) UPDATED MODULE OBJECTIVES After completing their study of this module, students should be able to: 28-1. Explain why we should value our ability to forget, and distinguish three general ways our memory fails us. 28-2. Discuss the role of encoding failure in forgetting. 28-3. Discuss the concept of storage decay, and describe Ebbinghaus? forgetting curve. 28-4. Contrast proactive and retroactive interference, and explain how they can cause retrieval failure. 28-5. Summarize Freud?s concept of repression, and state whether this view is reflected in current memory research. 28-6. Explain how misinformation and imagination can distort our memory of an event. 28-7. Describe source amnesia?s contribution to false memories. 28-8. List some differences and similarities between true and false memories. 28-9. Give arguments supporting and rejecting the position that very young children?s reports of abuse are reliable. 28-10. Discuss the controversy over reports of repressed and recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse. 28-11. Explain how an understanding of memory can contribute to effective study techniques. MODULE OUTLINE I. Forgetting (pp. 377?382) A. Encoding Failure (pp. 377?378) Lecture/Discussion Topic: Change Blindness David Myers discusses change blindness on text page 239. You may want to discuss it again here, in relation to encoding failure. Remind students that change blind- ness occurs when people fail to detect changes in objects or scenes that occur over time. In their field study, Levin and Simons had an experimenters ask a research participant on a college campus for directions. In the middle of the conversation, two men walked between them holding a door that temporarily hid the experimenter. Behind the door, the two experimenters changed places so that when the experimenter reap- peared, a different person was asking for directions. Less than half (only 7 of 15) of the participants noticed the change! Simons and Levin concluded that people typically encode features of a scene at an extremely shallow level, noting the general gist of the scene but few of the specific details. They note, ?Successful change detec- tion probably requires effortful encoding of precisely those features or properties that will distinguish the original from the changed object.? Having noted that observers who showed change blindness were older adults (college students tended to notice the change), Simons and Levin hypothesized that the older persons may have encoded the initial (young) experimenters simply as ?college students,? whereas the college students may have encoded their peers at a more specific level. To test this hypothesis, the experi- menters repeated the study, this time attired as construc- tion workers. They reasoned that the college students might now encode them categorically as ?construction workers? and, as a result, demonstrate greater change blindness. Indeed, now only 4 of 12 students noticed when a different construction worker emerged from behind the door to ask directions. Shallow encoding that does not go beyond a categorical level produces poor recollection of scene details and greater suscepti- bility to change blindness. In their recent review of research on change blind- ness, Simons and Ambinder note how individual differ- ences in expertise and culture (as well as age) can affect change-detection performance. For example, experts in American football are better able to detect meaningful changes in football scenes that those who are unfamiliar with the sport. Presumably, expertise guides attention when viewing images, thereby enhancing change detec- tion for semantically meaningful changes. Levin, D. T., & Simons, D. J. (1997). Failure to detect changes to attended objects in motion pictures. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 4, 501?506. Simons, D. J., & Ambinder, M. S. (2005). Change blind- ness: Theory and consequences. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14, 44?48. Simons, D. J., & Levin, D. T. (1998). Failure to detect changes to people during a real-world interaction. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 4, 644?649. Classroom Exercise: Memory of a Penny This exercise (or student project) provides an entertain- ing way to introduce forgetting as encoding failure. It is based on Raymond Nickerson and Marilyn Adams? re- search, which is reported in the text. Although it is best to do this exercise before students have read that sec- tion, it will probably work after they have read it. Nickerson and Adams preceded the recognition task described in the text with a simple recall task. Either provide each student with a piece of paper on which you have drawn 20 or so empty circles (2 inches in diameter) or instruct them to draw such circles on a blank sheet of paper. They are to draw from memory both sides of a U.S. penny. Tell them to include all the pictorial and alphanumeric detail they can. Also tell them they may draw as many versions as they like.Have them score their own drawings according to: (a) whether each of the eight features is present [Top side: Head (Lincoln?s profile), ?IN GOD WE TRUST,? ?LIBERTY,? Date. Bottom side: Building (Lincoln Memorial), ?UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,? ?E PLURIBUS UNUM,? ?ONE CENT?], (b) whether each is located on the correct side, and (c) whether it was drawn in the correct position on the circular area. The profile is scored as being in the correct position only if it is drawn as east-facing. If you want to simplify the scoring, use only criterion ?a.? With a show of hands compare your class? scores with those of Nickerson and Adams. Of the eight criti- cal features, the median number recalled and located correctly was three. Not counting the Lincoln head and the Lincoln Memorial, the median number of recalled and correctly located features was one. Only 4 of 20 subjects got as many as half of them correct, and only 1 subject (an active penny collector) accurately recalled and located all eight. Before scoring the exercise, you can take it another step. Identify the eight features and ask students to locate them correctly. When Nickerson and Adams gave a group of 20 subjects this task, no one located all of the details correctly. Only four were correct on half of them. A third exercise involving recognition is to have students number from 1 to 20 on a blank sheet of paper and then read to them the items below. Instruct students to write down (?Yes? or ?No?) whether the feature appears on a penny. Have them score their responses. (Features 2, 5, 6, 11, 14, 15, 16, and 19 appear on a penny.) Module 28 Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Memory Improvement 3 1. The words ONE PENNY 11. The right side of Lincoln?s face 2. The words UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 12. A laurel wreath 3. The words ONE NATION UNDER GOD 13. The words MADE IN TAIWAN 4. The right side of Washington?s face 14. The Lincoln Memorial 5. The words ONE CENT 15. The words IN GOD WE TRUST 6. The date (year) of mint 16. The word LIBERTY 7. The great seal 17. The words ANNO DOMINI 8. The words LINCOLN MEMORIAL 18. The word COPPER 9. The number 1 centered 19. The words E PLURIBUS UNUM 10. The full face of Lincoln 20. The Statue of Liberty?s torch Nickerson and Adams?s research participants did somewhat better on this task. The investigators report, ?The overall probability of a correct response was .85.? While you can use your students? better performance on this task to highlight the greater ease of recognition over recall, it is clear that the performance measure is somewhat misleading. As the authors suggest, it may reflect not only what subjects remember about a penny but what they infer. Even someone who has never seen a penny might accept some of the features on the basis that they ought to be on a U.S. penny (e.g., United States of America) and reject others on the grounds that they ought not to be there (e.g., Made in Taiwan). (The latter always elicits laughter.) The authors conclude that the results of the studies demonstrate that the visual details of an object, even a very familiar one, are avail- able from memory only to the degree they are useful in everyday life. In other words, we do not encode infor- mation we don?t consider useful. Nickerson, R. S., & Adams, M. J. (1979). Long-term memory for a common object. Cognitive Psychology, 11, 287?307. Classroom Exercise: Encoding Failure Much of what we are exposed to, we never notice. You can demonstrate encoding failure by posing the follow- ing questions. 1. The standard telephone dial has ten numbers, one through nine plus zero. However, it doesn?t have all 26 letters of the alphabet. Which ones don?t appear on the dial? (?Q? and ?Z?) 2. What is the color of the top stripe of the American flag? (Red) The bottom stripe? (Red) How many red and how many white stripes does it have? (seven red and six white) 3. If you have a watch with mechanical hands, cover the face and try to recall what it looks like. How many numbers does it have? Are they Arabic or Roman numerals?or does it have any numbers at all? 4. Most wooden pencils are not round. How many sides do they typically have? (Six) 5. In what hand does the Statue of Liberty hold her torch? (Right) 6. The White House is pictured on the back of a $20 bill. What is on the back of a $10 bill? (Treasury Building) A $5 bill? (Lincoln Memorial) A $1 bill? (The word ?One?) 7. What four words besides ?In God We Trust? appear on most U.S. coins? (United States of America) Albrecht, K. (1980). Brain power. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. B. Storage Decay (pp. 378?379) C. Retrieval Failure (pp. 379?382) Student Project: A Forgetting Journal Ask volunteers to maintain a forgetting journal for at least a couple of weeks. The task is simple. They are to record specific instances of having forgotten something, such as forgetting names, appointments, intentions, or routes; repetitive checking (e.g., Did I turn the stove off?); and the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon. They should write down the situation, any factors they think were relevant to the forgetting (for example, their emo- tional state or focus of attention), and some judgment as to why the forgetting occurred. They should also note whether the forgotten material was later recalled. In proposing a ?forgetting journal? for memory courses, W. Scott Terry suggests that students also record unusual instances of remembering?for example, the sudden remembrance of something they thought they had forgotten. Again, students should describe the conditions surrounding the unexpected retrieval. In reading the journals, you are certain to find illus- trations of memory principles that can be shared in class. In fact, as Terry reports, reading only a few jour- nals will reveal examples of nearly every concept pre- sented in a learning and memory course. You might also ask students to suggest possible remedies for their spe- cific forgetting problems. Terry, W. S. (1984). A ?forgetting journal? for memory courses. Teaching of Psychology, 11(2), 111?112. Student Project/Classroom Exercise: Earliest Recollections Les Parrott suggests a student project or classroom exercise that can be used to extend the text discussions of motivated forgetting, memory construction, and mood-congruent memories. Originally, he proposed the exercise as an introduction to Alfred Adler?s suggestion that early recollections are ?the most trustworthy way of exploring personality? because they often encapsu- late a person?s life theme or script. While Freud argued that the past determines the future, Adler believed that the present determines the past. He wrote: ?There are no chance memories. Out of the incalculable number of impressions which meet an individual, he chooses to remember only those which he feels, however darkly, to have a bearing on his situation . . . so that he will meet the future with an already tested style of action.? It fol- lows, for example, that if people live their lives believ- ing that others are always trying to humiliate them, the memories they are likely to recall are interpreted as humiliating experiences. As a homework assignment, which will take rough- ly 15 to 30 minutes, ask students to write out their earli- est memory. What they believe happened is important, not whether it actually happened. Instruct them to describe the memory in detail and even to draw a pic- ture of it. After students have completed the assign- ment, have them process their early recollection from an Adlerian perspective to discover what it might say about their personalities. To help them ask, ?If all you know about life was what is in your early recollection, how would you complete these sentences . . . Men are . . . Women are . . . Life is . . . .? Then have them con- sider how the answers might shed light on their life themes or what Adler called life-style. Finally, have students consider ten questions to examine their early recollections in light of Adler?s theory: 1. Who is present in your early recollection?mom, dad, siblings, friends, strangers? 2. Who is not present? 3. How are different people portrayed?basic thoughts and feelings? 4. What is the world like?friendly, hostile, coopera- tive, exciting? 5. What is your role or behavior?helping, passive, sick, dependent? 4 Module 28 Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Memory Improvement 6. What is the outcome of your behavior?success, punishment? 7. What is your primary social attitude?I or we? 8. What is your dominant emotion?happy, worried, fearful, guilty, proud? 9. What is your primary motive?to help, to gain attention, to exert power? 10. What are the underlying themes, expressed as a single sentence??for example, I need to rescue people. Have volunteers share their earliest recollections with classmates as part of a general discussion focusing on how earliest recollections seem to influence personality. Parrott, L. (1992). Earliest recollections and birth order: Two Adlerian exercises. Teaching of Psychology, 19, 40?42. PsychSim 5: Forgetting The program can be assigned under the section on encoding failure, but is better here because it focuses on retrieval failure. It opens with a demonstration of encoding failure produced by the presentation of irrele- vant distractors. Then, the concepts of proactive and retroactive interference are explained and illustrated. Next the student learns a list of 20 word pairs, and is tested for recall. The student then learns another list in which the second word of each pair from the first list has been replaced by a different word with similar asso- ciation value. After the recall test of this second list, the student is retested for recall of the original word pairs. The student?s performance on all three tests is graphed and interpreted. Generally, students will perform more poorly on the second test than the first, demonstrating proactive interference (learning the first list interfered with their learning of the second). In addition, memory for the first list will generally be poorer after the second list has been learned, thus demonstrating retroactive interference. Classroom Exercise: The Tip-of-the-Tongue Phenomenon and Capital Cities Retrieval failure is most obvious in the tip-of-the- tongue (TOT) experience. The TOT experience refers to the sensation that we are certain we know the word for which we are searching, yet we cannot recall it. Psychologists Roger Brown and David McNeill cap- tured the experience in the laboratory and described it this way: ?The signs of it were unmistakable; the sub- ject would appear to be in mild torment, something like on the brink of a sneeze, and if he found the word his relief was considerable.? What Brown and McNeill had done was to read the definitions of 49 words that were familiar to students but not so familiar that they would be used in everyday conversation. The subjects were to name the object being defined. For example, ?a musical instrument comprising a frame holding a series of tubes struck by hammers.? Participants were instructed to indicate if they were in the tip-of-the-tongue state, and, if so, to guess the number of syllables in the word and to pro- vide any other information they could, such as the ini- tial letter. Findings indicated that those in the TOT state were much better at providing such information than one would expect by chance. Other studies have indi- cated that giving the participant the initial letter, in this case ?X,? frequently elicited the correct word, xylophone. Alan Baddeley uses the task of remembering capi- tal cities to elicit the TOT in students. Handout 28?1 lists both foreign countries and American states. Distribute copies to the students and have them read through it quickly, crossing off countries or states whose capitals they are sure they know, as well as those they are fairly convinced they do not know. Those remaining are most likely to elicit a TOT. Clearly, our memory stores more than we can access at any given moment. Forgetting is sometimes the result of retrieval failure. Now provide students with the first letter of each correct answer, as given below. You can either read them aloud or list the item numbers and letters on the board. The cues are likely to promote recall for many students in the TOT state. 1. Oslo 21. Juneau 2. Ankara 22. Santa Fe 3. Nairobi 23. Pierre 4. Montevideo 24. Jefferson City 5. Lhasa 25. Topeka 6. Canberra 26. Dover 7. Lisbon 27. Raleigh 8. Bucharest 28. Montpelier 9. Port-au-Prince 29. Olympia 10. Sofia 30. Cheyenne 11. Seoul 31. Jackson 12. Baghdad 32. Concord 13. Nicosia 33. Boise 14. Manila 34. Springfield 15. Managua 35. Harrisburg 16. Helsinki 36. Salem 17. Bogota 37. Helena 18. Ottawa 38. Hartford 19. Bangkok 39. Lansing 20. Caracas 40. Augusta Generally, the feeling that we know something is a reasonably good indication that we do, provided we are given the right prompting. In one test, recall was over 50 percent when cues were given for the capital cities people thought they knew, but it was only 16 percent for those they thought they didn?t. Read the correct Module 28 Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Memory Improvement 5 answers, and by a show of hands determine how effective the first letter cue was in promoting retrieval. Baddeley, A. (1982). Your memory: A user?s guide. New York: Macmillan. Brown, R., & McNeill, D. (1966). The ?tip of the tongue? phenomenon. Journal of Verbal Learning and Behavior, 5, 325?337. Classroom Exercise: Repression or Inadequate Retrieval Cues? Gordon Bower notes that motivated suppression of the reporting of memories is commonplace. It occurs in the everyday lies we tell others out of politeness. More dra- matically it occurs whenever a spy or criminal with- holds answers under interrogation. However, empirical evidence for the Freudian concept of repression as the unconscious blocking of painful memories and unac- ceptable impulses is meager. Bower argues that retrieval failure is the largest contributor to forgetting. One important implication of a retrieval view of forget- ting is that some cues will fail, whereas others will suc- ceed in retrieving one and the same memory trace. Failure to recognize this reality can readily lead us to falsely accept a belief in repression. For example, when confronted with a memory being recalled under one condition but not another, we may ask, ?Where did the memory go? Was it repressed?? The answer, argues Bower, is not that the memory was repressed or that it ?went somewhere?; memories are simply ?dispositions that can be actualized in certain circumstances (or retrieval environments) and not in others. They are like ?responses? waiting for the right ?stimulus? to release them.? To make this point, Bower suggests the following exercise. Begin by noting the predictability of certain verbal associations. When asked to respond with the first word that comes to mind when given the stimulus word ?salt,? for example, most people respond with ?pepper.? Similarly, ?man? elicits ?woman,? ?black? produces ?white,? ?wet? generates ?dry.? Remote associates? those that occur second, third, and so on when someone continues to associate to the same stimulus term?have been studied less frequently. After this introduction, tell students you wish to know more about secondary and tertiary associations. You will give them a stimulus term and then indicate whether you want their first, second, or third associa- tion. Students should keep track of their thought process and record the term requested. For example, if you request the third association, ?City in Ohio,? the student might think, ?Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Columbus,? and should record ?Columbus.? Read the following stimulus items and the association to be recorded. 1. Precious Stone: First 2. Fish: Second 3. State: Third 4. Insect: Second 5. Type of Music: First 6. Alcoholic Beverage: Third 7. Color: Second 8. Military Title: Third 9. Article of Clothing: First 10. Sport: Second 11. Musical Instrument: First 12. A Four-Footed Animal: Third 13. Occupation: First 14. Weapon: Third 15. Article of Furniture: Second 16. Type of Fuel: Second 17. Disease: First 18. Vegetable: Third 19. Type of Vehicle: Second 20. Part of the Human Body: First Have students fold their answer sheets vertically and place them out of sight, their answers facing down- ward. At the end of the class period (or the beginning of the next), have them take out their response sheets and, without looking at their original answers, write down as many as they can remember. Give them four or five minutes to do so. Next, tell your students that you will repeat the original stimulus list with the association number. As you do so, they are to write a third list next to the sec- ond one, again without looking at the original (correct) list. Finally, have students score their two efforts at recall. Typically, students will recall 8 to 10 items with- out cues. In contrast, when given the retrieval cues, most students will recall all their responses. The exercise provides a new perspective on claims that a client in therapy has just ?recovered a repressed memory.? Bower grants that clients in therapy may eventually remember many events from their childhood that they had not thought about for a long time. The important question, however, is, ?How hard or persist- ently did the person try to recall those events on previ- ous occasions? What cues did the therapist provide the client? What feeling, moods, or images did the therapist elicit in order to promote recall?? Memory for life events, writes Bower, is like a sausage chain. If you retrieve one, its linkages prompt you to retrieve another, and still another from your biographical storehouse. Most of us can remember many events from our childhoods (after about 3 years of age) if we relax, take our time, and systematically probe ourselves with context cues (?Where did I live? Who were my friends? What were my toys like?? etc.) In fact, several experimental studies show that such techniques can be quite effective if a person struggling 6 Module 28 Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Memory Improvement to recall slowly retrieves ?lost memories? over a period of hours or days. The important point is that when a client in therapy brings forth a memory not thought of for a long time, this cannot be taken as evidence that the memory was repressed. In addition to emphasizing the value of retrieval cues, you might note that material is better retained when it is meaningful. Student recall is extremely high because the material is personally significant; that is, it consists of the student?s own associations. Bower, G. (1990). Awareness, the unconscious, and repression: An experimental psychologist?s perspective. In J. Singer (Ed.), Repression and dissociation: Implications for personality theory, psychopathology, and health. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Halonen, J. S. (1986). Teaching critical thinking in psy- chology. Milwaukee: Alverno Productions. Lecture/Discussion Topic: Suppressed Memory Freud?s concept of repression raises the broader ques- tion of whether people can influence the content of their memories. Michael Anderson and Collin Green of the University of Oregon asked people to memorize a list of 50 simple pairs of words, such as ?ordeal? and ?roach.? Research participants were then presented the first word and asked either to recall its pair or banish it from their minds for four seconds. The volunteers were asked to suppress the second word between 0 and 16 times. Anderson and Green found that volunteers were much less able to recall words that had been repressed many times, even when they were promised money to remember. Obviously, word pairs do not have the emotional content of many suppressed memories. Still the experi- mental results, suggests Anderson, indicate that ?there must exist a collection of executive control functions,? with people influencing the content of their own memo- ries. Martin Conway of the University of Bristol agrees that the results are important: ?Their methods offer a way of exploring the underlying mechanisms and may ultimately shed light on how repression comes about.? Conway intends to extend the experiment by doing brain imaging to determine where the inhibition occurs. Anderson?s interest in memory control was sparked by the finding that victims of childhood abuse are more likely to inhibit memories if the perpetrator is a trusted caregiver than if he or she is a stranger. Presumably, the known abuser is providing a constant memory cue so the victim may have to actively suppress the memory in order to go forward with life. In general, memory inhi- bition may be adaptive. It may be counterproductive to remember yesterday?s parking spot or the name of last year?s lover. Anderson, M., & Green, C. (2001). Suppressing unwant- ed memories by executive control. Nature, 410, 366. II. Memory Construction (pp. 382?390) A. Misinformation and Imagination Effects (pp. 382?384) Videocassette: Moving Images: Exploring Psychology Through Film, Program 13: False Memories: Imagination Effects See the Faculty Guide that accompanies Moving Images: Exploring Psychology Through Film for a description. Student Project: Constructive Memory Elizabeth Loftus has dramatically shown that eyewit- nesses construct their reports when asked to recall inci- dents. Your class may have fun replicating an assign- ment she gave her students some years ago. Instruct your students to go out and create in someone?s mind a ?memory? for something that does not exist. They will be surprised to discover how easy this can be. They will be further amazed to find that a memory so acquired can be as real to a person as that of a true event. For example, Loftus? students conducted one study in a train station. Two females left a large bag on a bench. While they checked a schedule a short distance away, another male student walked over to the bag, pre- tended to pull out an object and stuff it under his coat. He then quickly scurried away. The women immediate- ly returned and one, noting the bag had been tampered with, cried out, ?Oh, no, my tape recorder is missing.? She went on to describe how her boss had loaned it to her for a special reason, that it was very expensive, etc. The two women then began to talk to the people in the immediate area. Most were extremely sympathetic and cooperative. The student whose tape recorder had been stolen asked ?eyewitnesses? for their telephone num- bers ?in case we need it for insurance purposes.? Most gladly provided them. A week later, an ?insurance agent? called the eye- witnesses. All were asked, for example, ?Did you see the tape recorder?? Although there had been no tape recorder, over half the eyewitnesses remembered seeing it and nearly all could describe it in reasonably good detail. The descriptions were, of course, very diverse: some saw it as gray, others as black, some claimed it was in a case, others said it was not, some even said it had an antenna. In short, their descriptions indicated a vivid ?memory? for a nonexistent tape recorder. Loftus notes that all of us can readily come to believe things that never really happened. You might read to your students the following example provided by the famous psychologist Jean Piaget, which is briefly described in the text: There is also the question of memories which depend on other people. For instance, one of my first memories would date, if it were true, from my second year. I can Module 28 Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Memory Improvement 7 still see, most clearly, the following scene, in which I believed until I was about fifteen. I was sitting in my pram, which my nurse was pushing in the Champs Elysees, when a man tried to kidnap me. I was held in by the strap fastened round me while my nurse bravely tried to stand between me and the thief. She received various scratches, and I can still see vaguely those on her face. Then a crowd gathered, a policeman with a short cloak and a white baton came up, and the man took to his heels. I can still see the whole scene, and can even place it near the tube station. When I was about fifteen, my parents received a letter from my former nurse saying she had been converted to the Salvation Army. She want- ed to confess her past faults, and in particular to return the watch she had been given as a reward on this occa- sion. She had made up the whole story, faking the scratches. I, therefore, must have heard, as a child, the account of this story, which my parents believed, and projected into the past in the form of a visual memory. More recently, Loftus and her colleagues have been studying how implanted false memories can influence people?s dietary choices. For example, they have been able to give research participants a false memory of a negative experience with eggs or pickles or a false memory of a positive experience with asparagus. Subsequently, the people were more likely to avoid eggs and pickles and more likely to eat asparagus. Although this strategy has the potential for helping peo- ple to lose weight and maintain a healthy diet, it has not worked with all foods. For example, convincing people that they once became sick from eating chocolate cake or potato chips has not altered their eating of these pop- ular foods. Loftus and her team speculate that false memories may work best if they are about a food that is not a universal favorite. That might explain, reasons Loftus, why experiments with pickles, eggs, asparagus, and strawberry ice cream have actually led to a new avoidance or acceptance of these foods. Loftus, E. (1979). Eyewitness testimony. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Newman, M. E. (2005, April). Making memories. APS Observer, 17?19. Piaget, J. (1962). Play, dreams, and imitation in child- hood. New York: Norton. Videocassette: Scientific American Frontiers, 2nd ed., Segment 17: True or False? See the Faculty Guide accompanying the Scientific American Frontiers Series for a description. Lecture/Discussion Topic: Misremembering the Causes of Behavior Module 2 of these resources includes a Lecture/ Discussion Topic on false memory. If you did not use it then, you might want to do so now. This Lecture/ Discussion Topic relates how the need for a coherent world sometimes leads to error. Briefly, Sharon Hannigan and Mark Reinitz showed research partici- pants pictures depicting some kind of ?effect,? for example, oranges sprawled on a supermarket floor or a student toppling onto the floor. Hannigan and Reinitz later showed the same participants pictures of the most probable cause of the effect?someone reaching for an orange from the bottom of the stack or a student leaning back in a chair?and asked them if they had seen the picture before. A statistically significant number said they did. Hannigan, S. L., & Reinitz, M. T. (2001). A demonstra- tion and comparison of two types of inference-based memory errors. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 27, 931?940. Lecture/Discussion Topic: The Misinformation Effect In a review of the literature on the misinformation effect, Elizabeth Loftus reports that four questions have occupied the attention of researchers: 1. When are people susceptible to misinformation? People are particularly prone to misinformation when the passage of time allows the original mem- ory to fade. This finding leads to the discrepancy detection principle, which states that recollections are more likely to change if a person does not immediately detect discrepancies between postevent information and memory for the original event. Consistent with this principle is the finding that people are more likely to be influenced if they are exposed to misinformation that is subtle. For example, the question, ?Was the mustache worn by the tall intruder light or dark brown?? is less subtle in suggesting the existence of a mustache than is the question, ?Did the intruder who was tall and had a mustache say anything to the professor?? People are more likely to falsely claim they saw a mustache when exposed to the latter. Also consistent with the discrepancy detection principle is the finding that forewarning people that a postevent narrative may be misleading enables them to better resist its influence. They are more likely to scrutinize the information and thus detect a discrepancy. 2. Who is susceptible to misinformation? Young children are particularly susceptible to the misinformation effect. The largest study examining individual differences involved the nearly 2000 people who attended a science museum in San Francisco. All subjects watched a short film clip and later answered a series of questions about it. Some were exposed to misleading questions. Memory performance rose as a function of age up to the twenties, leveled off, and then fell sharply 8 Module 28 Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Memory Improvement for subjects over 65. Moreover, the youngest and oldest groups (subjects varied from 5 to 75 years of age) showed large misinformation effects. 3. What happens to the original memory? Some have argued that the original memory traces are changed by postevent information. For exam- ple, new information may update the previously formed memory. Others have argued that misinfor- mation does not affect memory at all but merely influences the reports of subjects who did not encode the original event in the first place. Or, if they have encoded the event, they select the mis- leading information because they conclude it must be correct. Several lines of research indicate that misinformation does impair the ability to remem- ber original details. One line of evidence involves studies using tests that do not permit the misinfor- mation option. For example, subjects see a stop sign that is later referred to as a yield sign. They are now given a test that does not permit the selec- tion of the yield sign (e.g., the choice is between a stop sign and a no-parking sign). If the misinforma- tion has impaired memory for the stop sign, then the misinformed subjects would be less likely to remember the stop sign than the control subjects. If there has been no memory impairment, then misled subjects would be expected to be as accurate as control subjects. Several published studies show that the misled subjects do perform more poorly! 4. Do people genuinely believe the misinformation? One reason to think that subjects believe in their misinformation memories is that they often express these memories with great confidence. However, it seems possible that subjects report misinformation memories merely to prove that they are ?good? subjects. To test for this possibility, subjects in one study were told that the information contained in a postevent narrative was wrong and should not be reported on the test. It seems reasonable that if sub- jects still showed evidence of the misinformation effect, then they truly believed they saw the details suggested in the postevent narrative at the time of the original event. This is in fact what the research has found. Loftus concludes that misleading information can turn a lie into memory?s truth. It can cause people to believe that they saw things that never really existed or that they saw things differently from the way things actually were. Writing with a colleague she states, ?Give us a dozen healthy memories . . . and our own specified world to handle them in. And we?ll guarantee to take any one at random and train it to become any type of memory that we might select . . . regardless of its origin or the brain that holds it.? Loftus, E. (1992). When a lie becomes memory?s truth: Memory distortion after exposure to misinformation. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 1, 121?123. PsychSim 5: Trusting Your Memory This module explains research by Loftus, Schacter, Roediger, and others about memory errors based on gist memory, source confusion, and suggestibility. Students test the reliability of their memory and learn what researchers have discovered about the way memories are stored and modified by new information. B. Source Amnesia (p. 384) Lecture/Discussion Topic: Source Amnesia In a review of the literature on childhood amnesia, Nora S. Newcombe and her colleagues examine the development of children?s ability to recall the source of facts (source monitoring). Research suggests that source monitoring develops rapidly between the ages of 3 and 5 so that it is relatively mature by the time children are 6 years old. For example, investigators have shown that 3-year-olds do little better than chance when asked how they know what is in a drawer (i.e., whether they had been shown, told, or been given a clue). When children of various ages were taught a set of novel facts (e.g., that the Nile is the longest river in the world), 4-year- olds later remembered more that 70 percent of these facts but were typically unable to remember where they learned this information. Most said the information was learned from a parent, teacher, or the media. On the other hand, the 6- and 8-year-olds rarely made such errors. Improvement of source memory seems to be linked to the development of the prefrontal cortex. People with damage to this area typically perform poorly on tests of source memory. Source amnesia is also apparent in the elderly; their scores on tests of source memory correlate with their scores on tests of prefrontal functioning. More generally, Newcombe and her colleagues note that young children?s poor episodic memories, that is memories for particular events or specific stimuli occurring in particular contexts, may be due to their inability to bind together specific combinations of memory characteristics, including perceptual, contextu- al, and affective information. Access to such informa- tion is in large part responsible for people?s ability to determine whether an event is imagined or real. A memory for a real event includes more perceptual infor- mation (e.g., color), more spatial-temporal information, and more meaningful details than a memory for an imagined event. In one study, children 4, 6, and 8 years old either experienced or imagined scenarios (e.g., planting a flower, unpacking a picnic basket) guided by a taped script. One week later, they were asked whether the Module 28 Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Memory Improvement 9 events had been experienced or imagined. They also answered a number of questions about the perceptual, spatial-temporal, and semantic aspects of the events. For example, in the case of unpacking the picnic basket, they were asked the color of the napkin, the shape of the basket, and the kind of utensil that was in the bas- ket. The 4-year-olds performed poorly in distinguishing experienced from imagined events, whereas 6- and 8- year-olds did very well. In addition, recall for various aspects of real events increased markedly between the ages of 4 and 6 but relatively little between 6 and 8. Newcombe, N. S., Drummey, A. B., Fox, N. A., Lie, E., & Ottinger-Alberts, W. (2000). Remembering early childhood: How much, how, and why (or why not). Current Directions in Psychological Science, 9, 55?58. C. Discerning True and False Memories (pp. 384?386) Lecture/Discussion Topic: True Photos and False Memories Recently, Stephen Lindsay and colleagues successfully planted in undergraduates false memories of a distinc- tive first-grade event. What makes their findings remarkable was the sheer number of people who were led to believe in a pseudoevent that was highly unlikely to have happened to very many people. The research participants were persuaded that they had gotten into trouble with a friend for putting Slime (a brightly col- ored gelatinous substance manufactured as a toy) in their teacher?s desk. Each participant was led to believe that his or her parents had provided the following narrative, of course, customized with his or her own name as well as that of the first-grade teacher: I remember when Jane was in grade 1, and like all kids back then Jane had one of those revolting Slime toys that kids used to play with. I remember her telling me one day that she had taken the Slime to school and slid it into the teacher?s desk before she arrived. Jane claimed it wasn?t her idea and that her friend decided they should do it. I think the teacher, Mrs. Smollett, wasn?t very happy and made Jane and her friend sit with their arms folded and legs crossed, facing a wall for the next half hour (Lindsay et al. 2004, p. 150). The most powerful method of persuasion coupled this narrative with an actual photo of the participant?s first-grade class. In this condition, an amazing two- thirds of the participants developed false memories of the event. In fact, when later told that their memories were false, some participants expressed disbelief that the event had not actually happened: ?You mean that didn?t happen to me?? and ?No way! I remember it! That is so weird!? Not only may the class photo have added to the credibility of the suggested event, it may have encour- aged elaboration of the details surrounding it. For example, in looking at the photo, participants may have speculated about the identity of the friend who put them up to the trick. Lindsay, D. S., Hagen, L., Read, J. D., Wade, K. A., & Garry, M. (2004). True photographs and false memories. Psychological Science, 15, 149?154. Classroom Exercise: Creating a False Memory A classroom demonstration adapted from Henry Roediger III and Kathleen McDermott?s research will effectively show how easily we form false memories. The activity can also be used to demonstrate the superi- ority of recognition over recall and the serial position effect. To begin, tell students that you are going to demon- strate the superiority of recognition over recall memory. Ask students to listen carefully as you read a list of words. Then present the following words at about 1.5 second intervals: thread pin eye injection syringe sewing sharp point hurt knitting prick thimble haystack pain After reading the words, ask students to write down as many as they can recall on a sheet of paper. Then distribute Handout 28?2 to the students and have them complete it. First, students are certain to recognize words they did not recall, demonstrating the superiority of recogni- tion to recall memory. Next, ask students how many recalled and wrote down the following: pain (last item) thread (first item) point (middle item) sharp (middle item) The results are almost certain to demonstrate a serial position effect (better recall of first and last items). 10 Module 28 Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Memory Improvement Finally, for the false memory, ask how many recalled and wrote down the word needle. On the recognition task, ask how many gave ?needle? a ?3? or ?4?? A good half are likely to have recalled needle, and even more will say they recognized it. Roediger, H. L. III., & McDermott, K. B. (1995). Creating false memories: Remembering words not pre- sented in lists. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 21, 803?814. Lecture/Discussion Topic: False Memories Surrounding the Iraq War A study of memories surrounding the Iraq War in 2003 by Stephan Lewandowsky and colleagues extends the study of false memories to a significant international event and also highlights factors that may affect their maintenance. As the researchers note, media coverage of the war was marked by frequent corrections and retractions of earlier reports. In examining the extent to which people resist mis- information and false memories, the investigators asked about events that were actually true (e.g., ?A 19-year- old female U.S. prisoner of war was rescued from an Iraqi hospital and flown out of Iraq for medical treat- ment), events that were initially presented as true but then retracted (e.g., ?During the first few days of the war, an entire Iraqi division?some 8000 soldiers?was captured and/or surrendered?), and freely invented fic- tional events (e.g., ?The U.S. offered amnesty to Iraqi officers, even if they ordered use of weapons of mass destruction, provided they surrendered with their divi- sions?). Participants from the United States and Australia (two coalition countries) and from Germany (a country that opposed the war) first rated their memory for each event and the likelihood of it being true or false. Those who acknowledged hearing of an event then indicated whether the information had been retracted subsequent to its first publication (participants were not allowed to refer to their first responses when providing retraction ratings). One additional item queried whether WMDs (weapons of mass destruction) had been discovered in Iraq at any time during the war. Finally, respondents were asked to rate their agreement with a set of six potential reasons for the war (e.g., destroy weapons of mass destruction, secure oil supplies for Western nations, change the regime in Iraq). The results indicated that German and Australian respondents were sensitive to corrections of misinfor- mation. That is, truth ratings were below the midpoint of a scale between 0 = definitely false and 4 = definite- ly true for retracted items. In addition, there was a neg- ative relationship between knowing an item had been retracted and the truth rating. However, for Americans, truth ratings for the retracted items was above the mid- point, and they demonstrated no sensitivity to correc- tions of misinformation. Remarkably, in this sample, there was no relationship between the truth rating of an event and knowing that the report of the event had been retracted. Differences among the samples, suggest the researchers, reflect different degrees of suspicion about the motives underlying the war. This conclusion was supported by a regression analysis that identified suspi- cion as a modulator of people?s discounting behavior. Finally, participants? ratings of certainty that WMDs had been discovered varied across samples. Although all means were below the midpoint demonstrating that on average people resisted the creation of false memo- ries, still 34 percent of Americans, 17 percent of Australians, and 5 percent of Germans falsely remem- bered that WMDs had been discovered in Iraq. The investigators conclude that (1) the repetition of tentative news stories, even if they are later discounted, assist in the formation of false memories in a substan- tial proportion of people, (2) corrected misinformation does not alter people?s beliefs unless they are suspicious about the motives underlying the events the new stories are about, and (3) when people ignore corrections, they do so regardless of how certain they are that corrections occurred. Lewandowsky, S., Stritzke, W., Oberauer, K., & Morales, M. (2005). Memory for fact, fiction, and misinformation: The Iraq war 2003. Psychological Science, 16, 190?195. Classroom Exercise: Eyewitness Testimony?What Have We Learned? You can reinforce and extend the text discussion of eyewitness recall with Handout 28?3. Saul Kassin and his colleagues recently reported the results of a survey of eyewitness experts. A total of 64 psychologists were asked their opinions on 30 eyewitness phenomena. By an agreement rate of at least 80 percent, the psycholo- gists viewed all the statements on the handout except statement 9 as true. On statement 9, 28 experts indicat- ed that the ?reverse is probably true,? 28 indicated ?no support for it,? 5 indicated that it was ?inconclusive,? and 2 said ?I don?t know.? Interestingly, two of the thir- teen items that did not show the 80 percent consensus rate (and thus do not appear on the handout) related to long-term repression and false childhood memories. Twenty-eight respondents evaluated the research evi- dence on ?Traumatic experiences can be repressed for many years and then recovered? as ?inconclusive.? Another 24 said that there was no support for the claim and 10 reported support. Ten experts evaluated the research on ?Young children are less accurate as wit- nesses than are adults? as inconclusive. Another 13 found no support for the claim, but 40 voiced support. One reported, ?I don?t know.? Module 28 Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Memory Improvement 11 Experts set high standards for their willingness to testify in court. For example, only 4 percent were will- ing to testify when they felt the body of research was inconclusive. When they believed there was ?no sup- port? for a claim, 27 percent said they were willing to testify, presumably to say just that. When the evidence ?tends to favor the issue? or when it ?suggests the reverse is probably true? (45 percent and 44 percent, respectively), experts were split on whether they would testify. The majority of experts were willing to testify when they judged the research evidence to be ?general- ly reliable? (77 percent) or ?very reliable? (91 percent). Kassin, S. M., Tubb, V. A., Hosch, H. M., & Memon, A. (2001). On the ?general acceptance? of eyewitness testi- mony research: A new survey of the experts. American Psychologist, 56, 405?415. Classroom Exercise: Eyewitness Recall William Dragon provides a wonderful exercise for demonstrating the limits of eyewitness recall. It utilizes a videotape of the opening minutes of Dragon?s class lecture on short-term memory. Three minutes into the lecture a student stands and fires a starter?s pistol at the instructor. The assailant flees, several other students rush forward to assist the instructor, and the segment ends. (You can receive a free copy of the segment by sending a blank videocassette to Dr. William Dragon, Department of Psychology, Cornell College, 600 First Street West, Mt. Vernon, IA 52314-1098. Include a postage-paid envelope for return of the tape to you.) Dragon shows the clip and simply asks students to write down what they saw. Small groups are then formed to construct a description of what happened, with the requirement that all members must agree on the description. This task challenges students to consid- er how well they see reality as well as their assumptions about how others see the world. Finally, have each small group read its description to the full class. At the end of the session, show the tape again. The class will readily see significant differences between their memo- ry of an event and the actual event. There are numerous variations on this effective exercise. You could vary the length of time between viewing the scene and recall. You could, for example, delay recall until the next class or even next week, with instructions to the class not to discuss the tape in the interval. You can also create specific questions about the scene to test viewer accuracy. Think of including some leading questions, such as ?Did you see the gun?? versus ?Did you see a gun?? to see how they influence eyewitness report. D. Children?s Eyewitness Recall (pp. 386?387) E. Repressed or Constructed Memories of Abuse (pp. 387?390) Lecture/Discussion Topic: Repressed Memories of Abuse The text discussion of repressed memories of childhood abuse can be readily extended in class. Elizabeth Loftus reviews the history and some of the key questions sur- rounding this highly controversial issue. In 1990, George Franklin Sr., 51 years old, was tried and convicted of murder on the basis of his daugh- ter Eileen?s testimony. The victim, 8-year-old Susan Kay Nason, a friend of Eileen?s, had been murdered on September 22, 1969. Eileen?s memory of witnessing the murder had been repressed for more than twenty years. Eileen?s confident memory had come back gradually in a series of flashbacks. Although the basic account remained the same, some details of what happened changed over several retellings of the event. Franklin spent five years in jail. In April 1995, a San Francisco federal judge reversed his conviction. Soon after the Franklin case, other long-forgotten memories of abuse appeared in the media. In addition to actress Roseanne?s claim of having been abused in infancy, former Miss America Marilyn Van Derbur reportedly repressed knowledge of sexual violation by her father until she was 24 years old, when her father died and she finally told the world about it. Loftus also reports receiving scores of spontaneously written letters from strangers describing the emergence of long- repressed memories. Many states enacted legislation that enabled people previously barred from suing by statutes of limitations to sue for injury suffered as a result of childhood abuse at any time within three years of the time they remembered the abuse. How common are repressed memories of childhood abuse? There is no clear answer, says Loftus, and there are few satisfying ways to discover it because we are in the strange position of asking people for a memory about forgetting a memory. Clearly, actual childhood abuse is tragically common. At present, estimates of these incidents not being remembered range all the way form 18 to 59 percent. Loftus concludes that because this range is disturbingly great, a concerted research effort should be made to learn how to interpret claims about the commonness of repression, as well as abuse characteristics the repression might be related to. In trial cases, jurors? reactions to repressed memory claims have varied greatly. Because the laws are new and most cases have been settled out of court, there are too few actual trial cases from which to gather data 12 Module 28 Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Memory Improvement about reactions to repressed memory claims. However, several juror simulation studies have explored how peo- ple react to the same case with the only manipulation being a repressed versus a nonrepressed memory of abuse. Although subjects may be slightly more skeptical of the claim based on a repressed memory, the majority accept claims under both conditions to be true and accurate. What are such repressed memories like? Loftus notes that they vary from being detailed and vivid to extremely vague. Sometimes they relate to events in early childhood, even infancy, and sometimes to occur- rences in adolescence. They may have happened 5 years ago or as long as 40 years ago. Sometimes they include fondling, sometimes rapes, and sometimes ritualism of an unimaginable sort. Since most empirical studies of childhood memory suggest that people?s earliest recol- lections do not date back before the age of 3, questions ought to be raised about the accuracy of repressed memory claims that refer to events occurring when the child was 1 year old or less. Perhaps the most important and difficult question concerns the accuracy of the memories. Clearly, the data suggest that therapists believe in their clients? memories. They point to symptomatology as their evi- dence and are impressed with the emotional pain that accompanies the expression of the memories. At the same time, there may be at least two ways in which false memories, however honestly believed, could come about. First, an internal drive to manufacture an abuse memory may come about as a way to provide a screen for more prosaic but, ironically, less tolerable experi- ences of childhood. Manufacturing a fantasy of abuse with its clear-cut distinction between good and evil may provide a logical explanation for confusing experiences and feelings. Second, external sources, including popu- lar writings such as The Courage to Heal and thera- pists? suggestions may feed into the construction of false memories. Evidence comes from therapist accounts of what is appropriate to do with clients (e.g., ?It is crucial . . . that clinicians ask about sexual abuse during every intake?), client accounts of what happened during therapy (clients reporting an inability to recall abuse that therapists say is likely to have occurred), sworn statements of clients and therapists during litiga- tion, and taped interviews of therapy sessions. More recently, Loftus and Melvin Guyer relate the danger of case histories in science and practice. They reexamine the case of Jane Doe, who at 6 years of age reported being sexually abused by her mother. At a sec- ond interview when she was 11, she apparently forgot and then remembered the abuse. (Both interviews were videotaped.) Jane?s case has often been cited as proof of repressed memory. The author of the original article, who introduced the influential case into the literature, cited several pieces of supporting evidence for Jane Doe truly being an example of recovered memory. In conducting a very careful analysis of the case, Loftus and Guyer not only cast doubt on the supporting evi- dence but question whether the abuse ever took place. Loftus, E. F., & Guyer, M. J. (2002). Who abused Jane Doe? The hazards of the single case history: Parts I and II. The Skeptical Inquirer, 26, 24?32, 37?44. Loftus, E. (1993). The reality of repressed memories. American Psychologist, 48, 518?537. III. Improving Memory (pp. 390?391) Lecture/Discussion Topic: Making Doctors? Instructions More Memorable The text suggests several strategies for improving your memory. Equally important are strategies for presenting material in a way that allows it to be understood and remembered well. For example, does the research sug- gest how doctors might present instructions to their patients so that the instructions are memorable? Studies indicate that patients typically forget up to half the information provided by their doctor. The remembering of advice is obviously important to physical well-being; it also correlates highly with a patient?s general level of satisfaction with medical care. In the case of surgical patients, the provision of adequate and memorable information reduces both the number of analgesics required during recovery and recovery time itself. Ley, a clinical psychologist, has conducted a series of studies on the practical problems of enhancing the comprehension and retention of medical instructions. In one study, he applied the primacy effect and found that the retention of advice and instructions was enhanced when more important and salient features were present- ed first. In another study, Ley applied the research on organization and meaningfulness. Patients remembered more if doctors explicitly divided their statements into clear categories. For example, the doctor might say, ?I am going to tell you what is wrong, what tests will be needed, and what the treatment will be. First, what is wrong with you: I think you have bronchitis. Second, what tests will be needed: You will have to have an x-ray and a blood test to make sure. Third, what the treatment will be: I?ll give you an antibiotic to take. Take it on an empty stomach at least one hour before a meal.? This careful categorization led to a 42 percent improvement in recall in one study, and to a 24 percent improvement in another. In yet a third study, Ley and his colleagues found that recall of advice could be improved by using specif- ic rather than general instructions. General statements, such as ?You must weigh yourself regularly? or ?You Module 28 Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Memory Improvement 13 must lose weight,? were much less likely to be recalled than more specific statements, such as ?Weigh yourself every Saturday before breakfast? or ?You must lose 15 pounds in weight.? Specific statements were in fact twice as likely to be recalled as were the more general statements. Researchers Linda Liu and Denise Park found that when they instructed 60- to 81-year-old adults to spend a few minutes picturing how they would test their blood sugar, they were significantly more likely to carry out the monitoring. In fact, over a three-week period, those in this ?imagination? condition remembered to test their blood sugar levels at the right time of day 76 percent of the time. In contrast, those in ?rehearsal? (asked to repeatedly recite aloud the instructions) or ?delibera- tion? (asked to write down the pros and cons for testing blood sugar) groups carried out the monitoring only 46 percent of the time. The investigators speculated that imagination may be more effective than other techniques for following medical advice because it relies on automatic memory, a primitive component of memory that doesn?t decline with age. Using this strategy, one might imagine taking pills right after drinking morning orange juice. At breakfast the next day, taking a sip of orange juice auto- matically cues one to take the medication. Baddeley, A. (1990). Human memory: Theory and practice. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Liu, L. L., & Park, D. C. (2004). Aging and medical adherence: The use of automatic processes to achieve effortful things. Psychology and Aging, 14, 179?191. 14 Module 28 Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Memory Improvement HANDOUT 28?1 Identify the capital city of the following. Country State __________________________ _________________________ 1. Norway 21. Alaska 2. Turkey 22. New Mexico 3. Kenya 23. South Dakota 4. Uruguay 24. Missouri 5. Tibet 25. Kansas 6. Australia 26. Delaware 7. Portugal 27. North Carolina 8. Romania 28. Vermont 9. Haiti 29. Washington 10. Bulgaria 30. Wyoming 11. South Korea 31. Mississippi 12. Iraq 32. New Hampshire 13. Cyprus 33. Idaho 14. Philippines 34. Illinois 15. Nicaragua 35. Pennsylvania 16. Finland 36. Oregon 17. Colombia 37. Montana 18. Canada 38. Connecticut 19. Thailand 39. Michigan 20. Venezuela 40. Maine Module 28 Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Memory Improvement 15 HANDOUT 28?2 Using the scale below, indicate whether you think each of the following words was presented: 4 = I?m sure I heard the word 3 = I think I heard the word 2 = I think the word is new 1 = I?m sure the word is new 1. eye 2. pin 3. point 4. hurt 5. syringe 6. pain 7. thimble 8. haystack 9. thread 10. needle 11. prick 12. sharp 13. sewing 14. injection 15. knitting 16 Module 28 Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Memory Improvement HANDOUT 28?3 Eyewitness Memory Please indicate your agreement with each of the following: TF 1. The presence of a weapon impairs an eyewitness? ability to accurately identify the perpetrator?s face. TF 2. Police instructions can affect an eyewitness? willingness to make an identification. TF 3. The less time an eyewitness has to observe an event, the less well he or she will remember it. TF 4. The rate of memory loss for an event is greatest right after the event and then levels off over time. TF 5. An eyewitness? confidence is not a good predictor of his or her identification accura- cy. TF 6. Eyewitness testimony about an event often reflects not only what they actually saw but information they obtained later on. TF 7. An eyewitness? testimony about an event can be affected by how the questions put to that witness are worded. TF 8. Eyewitnesses sometimes identify as a culprit someone they have seen in another sit- uation or context. TF 9. Hypnosis increases the accuracy of an eyewitness? reported memory. TF 10. Hypnosis increases suggestibility to leading and misleading questions. TF 11. An eyewitness? perception and memory for an event may be affected by his or her attitudes and expectations. TF 12. Eyewitnesses are more accurate when identifying members of their own race than members of other races. TF 13. An eyewitness? confidence can be influenced by factors that are unrelated to identifi- cation accuracy. TF 14. Alcoholic intoxication impairs an eyewitness? later ability to recall persons and events. TF 15. Exposure to mug shots of a suspect increases the likelihood that the witness will later choose that suspect in a lineup. TF 16. Young children are more vulnerable than adults to interviewer suggestion, peer pres- sures, and other social influences. TF 17. Witnesses are more likely to misidentify someone by making a relative judgment when presented with a simultaneous (as opposed to sequential) lineup. Source: Kassin, S. M., Tubb, V. A., Hosch, H. M., & Memon, A. (2001). On the ?general acceptance? of eyewitness testi- mony research: A new survey of the experts. American Psychologist, 56, 405?415. Module 28 Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Memory Improvement 17 Betty Probert Bolt Mod8/e IRM28.1-18B