How reliable is our memory? PART 1

Schema and Memory Distortion Piaget argued that children learn through interacting with the environment - and through this process, schema are created. So, when a child learns what a dog is, a schema of a dog is created. Think of it like a memory. A memory of a dog is created, but not as a photograph of the dog, but as a generic representation of dogs. schema is a mental representation that helps us to understand and predict the world around us. Our memory economizes. We don't need to remember every seen object that we see in order to function.

Reconstructive Memory When we reconstruct memory, we are activating schema that are relevant to an event. In this process we may distort memories. FOR EXAMPLE: When I remember a day at school, I am activating several schema: the schema of my classroom, my students, a schema about test taking, of group discussions, of my boss.... And putting those schema together, I have an "impression" of what happened today. Not a photograph. Therefore-memories are only reliable to some extent.

Bartlett, 1932 & Hunter, 1964 Remember Bartlett’s Study? Ian Hunter (1964) used the War of the Ghost in a replication of Bartlett’s study and he confirmed Bartlett’s finding, including: The story becomes noticeably shorter, e.g.. Bartlett found that after six or seven reproductions, it shrank from 330 to 180 words. Despite becoming shorter, and details being omitted, the story becomes more coherent; no matter how distorted it might become, it remains a story because the participants are interpreting the story as a whole, both listening to it and retelling it. The story becomes more conventional, i.e.. it retains only those details which can be easily assimilated to the shared past experience and cultural background of the participants. The story becomes more clichéd, i.e.. like a traditional story, and any individual or peculiar interpretations tend to be dropped.

Bartlett & The Theory of Reconstructive Memory “War of Ghosts” study Assumes that humans are active info processors Schemas are stored in the LTM Stored schemas help people make sense of the world Remember the ‘gist’ or big picture based on schema

Bartlett & The Theory of Reconstructive Memory Bartlett refers to efforts after meaning, i.e.. trying to make the past more logical, more coherent and generally more ‘sensible’, which involves making inferences or deduction about what could or should have happened. Rather than human memory being computer-like, with the output matching the input, Bartlett and Hunter believe that we process information in an active attempt to understand it. Memory is ‘an imaginative reconstruction’ of experience.

The Theory of Reconstructive Memory Strengths Limitations Can explain memory distortions Supported by many empirical studies and lab experiments May focus too much on inaccuracy of memory Schema processing is a vague idea

Video: Eyewitness Testimony

Application: Reliability of eyewitness testimony Witnesses are sometimes quite confident of various circumstances they remember even though their recollections don’t fit the actual facts. An accident occurred months ago, and its details have dimmed over time. As the witness tries to retrieve this past event, he may fill in the gaps by an inference of which he is quite unaware. In these cases, schematic distortion can have very damaging effects. A series of studies by Elisabeth Loftus has highlighted this problem of schematized memory processes in eyewitness testimony. An important factor is the way in which police may get people to recall an incident.

Graphic Organizer on Loftus and Palmer, 1974 Use the hand out and your study guides to complete the GO. Video on Study

Other Research: Another study showed that leading questions during a first interrogation might change how the witnessed event is reported sometimes later. Participants were again shown film segments of a car accident. Shortly afterward some of them were asked leading questions such as, “Did you see the children getting on the school bus in the film?” A week later, all participants were asked the direct question, “Did you see a school bus in the film?” In actual fact, there was no school bus. But when compared to controls, participants who were originally asked the leading questions that mentioned the school bus were three to four times more likely to say that they had seen one. It would seem that a false memory of a bus had been implanted (Loftus, 1975). Crombag et al (1996) interviewed Dutch people on the streets of Amsterdam after a Boeing 747 crashed into a high-rise apartment in October 1992. Despite the fact that no scenes of the actual crash were recorded, when asked “Did you see the television film of the moment the plane hit the apartment,” 2/3 of participants said yes and were able to give details. The question of the effect of post-event information is also relevant in the study of history. For example, this has been an issue when combating holocaust denial. Robert Jan van Pelt was the expert witness in the famous Holocaust denial case Lipstadt vs. Irving. van Pelt refused to use Holocaust survivor testimony because he knew that much of it was unreliable because of post-event information. After movies like Schindler’s List or articles in the press about people like Dr. Mengele, several survivors incorporated part these stories into their own memories of the events. Shmuel Krakowski, former director of Yad Vashem, told a reporter in 1986 that most of the 20.000 testimonies that the museum had collected at that time were unreliable, because many of the witnesses “were never in the places where they claim to have witnessed atrocities, while others relied on second-hand information given to them by friends or passing strangers. (Barbara Amotal in the Jerusalem Post, August 17, 1986). Loftus & Pickrell (1995) carried out another study to test the possibility of implanting false memories.  Watch the video below of her classic "Lost in the Mall" study.

Evaluation of Research Studies by Loftus done under controlled conditions are open to criticism. They often are artificial in nature. When watching a video of a car crash, one does not experience the emotions that one would experience when actually seeing a real car accident. Thus, emotion or stress, which are conditions normal for most eye-witnesses, are absent in her research. The studies also isolate variables in a way that is not possible in a real crime scene. For example, in the study of "the" and "a" broken headlight, this one piece of information influenced the memory of the participants. Would this happen under normal conditions? The studies have been replicated many times and show a high degree of reliability. There is evidence - for example, Crombag & evidence from the testimonies of Holocaust survivors - that shows that the research has high ecological validity. What is seen in the laboratory is seen in real life. In the case of Holocaust survivors, we have actual historical data which we can use to compare their memories to actual events and establish the level of accuracy. There are ethical concerns about manipulating a participant's memories. The research has been applied in order to improve the process of gathering data from eyewitnesses.