Remembering and Forgetting: Crash Course Psychology #14
TLDRThe video explores the intricacies and fallibility of human memory through the story of Bernice, an eyewitness to a late-night fruit theft. It details how memories are stored in interconnected webs of association rather than perfect recreations, and the factors that make retrieval prone to failure, from emotions to misinformation. Bernice's honest yet mistaken courtroom identification highlights why eyewitnesses are unreliable. Overall, it reveals how fragile memory is, as we continually reconstruct the past and our brains tweak details, meaning even firm recollections may not match reality.
Takeaways
- π Our memories are stored in webs of association, not as neat, individual memories that can be easily retrieved.
- π― We use retrieval cues like context, emotion, location etc. to help us access memories when we need them.
- π€ Forgetting happens when we fail to encode memories, fail to retrieve them, or they decay over time in storage.
- π Interference from other memories can make it harder to retrieve a specific memory.
- π± Eyewitness testimony is often unreliable because memories can change every time we access them.
- π’ Misinformation and leading suggestions can alter eyewitness memories of events.
- π‘ Faulty eyewitness identifications have led to many wrongful convictions.
- π€ Priming and the serial position effect impact what we're most likely to remember from a list.
- οΏ½wiz Our mood and emotional state serves as memory cues to access mood-congruent memories.
- π§ Every time we retrieve a memory, we change it a bit, so our memories are reconstructions.
Q & A
What are some ways our memories can become distorted?
-Our memories can become distorted through the misinformation effect, where misleading information gets incorporated into the memory. They can also become distorted when we inadvertently tweak or reconstruct memories each time we replay them in our minds or retell them.
What is context-dependent memory and how does it work?
-Context-dependent memory refers to how the context, or situation, in which a memory is formed can serve as a retrieval cue to help recover that memory later. For example, if you start looking for something in one room, get distracted, but then return to the original room where you had the thought, it can help cue the lost memory.
What is the serial position effect in memory?
-The serial position effect refers to how we are more likely to remember the first and last items in a list than the middle items. This is because the early words benefit from the primacy effect and get into long-term memory through increased rehearsal, while the last words stay in working memory through the recency effect.
How can emotions influence memory?
-Our emotional state at the time of encoding or retrieval can influence what we remember or forget. Stress, for example, can impair memory encoding and recall. Our mood can also serve as a retrieval cue to surface mood-congruent memories.
What are some common causes of forgetting?
-Common causes of forgetting include failing to adequately encode a memory, retrieval failure/inability to access a stored memory, storage decay over time, and interference from other memories blocking access.
What is source misattribution?
-Source misattribution refers to when we forget or incorrectly remember the source of a memory, attributing it to the wrong time, place, or person.
How are memories stored in the brain?
-Memories are stored in interconnected webs of associations, with related bits of information linked together. We retrieve memories by using retrieval cues that activate these associations and help us reconstruct the memory.
What is priming and how does it relate to memory?
-Priming refers to the non-conscious activation of associations that can serve as retrieval cues for memories. When we're primed by thoughts, words, sights, sounds or situations, it awakens these memory associations and can help us recall related memories.
Why are eyewitness testimonies often unreliable?
-Eyewitness memories can be unreliable because they are susceptible to interference, reconstruction errors when retelling/replaying the memory, and incorporation of misleading post-event information that distorts the original memory.
What techniques did Elizabeth Loftus use to demonstrate the malleability of memory?
-Loftus planted false memories or distorted recall using leading questions and introducing misinformation after an event. For example, she showed how using a harsher verb like "smashed" versus "hit" altered witnesses' recalled speed estimate and false memories of broken glass.
Outlines
π΄ Remembering and Forgetting Memories
Paragraph 1 introduces Bernice, who witnesses a fruit truck robbery late one night after work. It describes how she tries to recall details to provide to the police, eventually identifies a suspect in a lineup, but then the suspect is set free after a memory expert testifies at the trial. The paragraph then previews the overall lesson about how memories are retrieved and why the accused was released.
π§ How Memory Works...And Fails
Paragraph 2 further explains memory retrieval, storage, and forgetting. It covers concepts like priming, context-dependent memory, serial position effect, storage decay, encoding failures, and interference. It also discusses memory distortions through reconsolidation, the misinformation effect, and source misattribution, using Bernice's eyewitness account as an example case where memory can be unreliable.
Mindmap
Keywords
π‘memory retrieval
π‘encoding
π‘storage decay
π‘retrieval failure
π‘eyewitness testimony
π‘reconstruction
π‘misinformation effect
π‘priming
π‘context-dependent memory
π‘serial position effect
Highlights
Our memories are stored in webs of association, aided by retrieval cues and priming.
Context, mood, and our emotional state serve as retrieval cues to help access memories.
We tend to forget information because we failed to encode it, failed to retrieve it, or it decayed over time in storage.
The amount of information we forget levels off over time - the rate plateaus after an initial rapid decline.
Every time we replay a memory, it changes a bit - we perpetually re-write our pasts.
Misleading information can become incorporated into memories, resulting in the misinformation effect.
Eyewitness testimonies are often unreliable because memory can be reconstructed and altered.
75% of prisoners exonerated by DNA evidence were originally convicted based on mistaken eyewitness testimonies.
The human memory is a fragile thing - we are largely the product of the stories we tell ourselves.
Memories fade quickly at first but then level off - we forget about half of newly learned info after a couple days.
Tip-of-the-tongue moments show how memories can fail to be retrieved even if encoded and stored.
Old learnings can interfere with recalling new info through proactive interference.
New learnings can also interfere with old memories through retroactive interference.
We fill in gaps in our memories with reasonable guesses, altering recollection of actual events.
Stress and emotion experienced during an event skew what we remember and forget about it later.
Transcripts
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