Psychology Chapter on Memory

Collaborative Memory

• Collaboration can improve memory.
• Collaborative inhibition: groups recall fewer items than individuals working alone.

Forgetting

• Transience: Forgetting increases with time, but most forgetting occurs soon after the event.
• Retroactive interference: Later learning impairs earlier memories.
• Proactive interference: Earlier learning impairs later memories.

Absentmindedness

• Absentmindedness: A lapse in attention leading to memory failure.
• Dividing attention prevents proper semantic encoding in the lower left frontal lobe.
• Prospective memory failures contribute to absentmindedness.

Blocking

• Blocking: Inability to retrieve available information.
• Blocking is common for names and locations due to weaker connections to related concepts.

Memory Misattribution

• Memory misattribution: Incorrectly assigning a memory or idea to the wrong source.
• Source memory: Recalling when, where, and how information was learned.
• Deja vu: feeling of familiarity with something that should be unfamiliar.
• Frontal lobe damage increases errors in memory misattribution.
• Similar brain regions are active during true and false recognition, including the hippocampus.

Suggestibility

• Suggestibility: Incorporating misleading information into memories.
• Incomplete memory storage makes us susceptible to suggestions.

Bias

• Bias: Present knowledge, beliefs, and feelings affect memory recall.
• Current mood influences memory of past experiences.
• Change bias: Exaggerating differences between past and present beliefs.
• People remember the past as they want it to be, not how it truly was.

Persistence

• Persistence: Unwanted recollection of events.
• Emotional experiences create more vivid, lasting memories.
• Flashbulb memories: Detailed memories of surprising events.
• The amygdala and hormonal systems play a key role in the vividness of these memories.