PsychSim 5: TRUSTING YOUR MEMORY
Name: _MICHELLE RAWANA_________ Period: 2
Date: _____JANUARY 4TH
In this activity you’ll be able to test the reliability of your memory, and then learn what researchers have discovered about the way that memories are stored and modified by new information.
Measuring Memory
• According to researchers, what are the three memory processes?
1. ENCODING
2. STORAGE
3. RETRIEVAL
• How do recall tasks differ from recognition tasks?
- Recall Tasks are more essay , short answers that provide cues that specify the info you must recall
- Recognition Tasks are multiple choice , matching and true or false that provide all possible answers where you have to check three answers agaisnt your memory to recongnize the right answer.
A Look at Your Performance
• What was your score on the Recall Test? ______10 out of 15______
• What was your score on the Recognition Test? ____15 out of 15____
Examining Your Performance: Serial Position Effect
• What was your pattern of performance across the 15 words? Did your performance show a serial position effect?
It was much higher than my initial test.
Examining Your Performance: False Memory
• What is a “false memory?”
- Remembering something that didn’t actually happen.
• Did you show false recall or false recognition for “sleep”? If so, why do you think this happened?
- Yes , because all the words that were shown had to do with sleeping so it seemed right and appropiate to be used in the same list
If not, why do you think your performance was different from the Roediger & McDermott study?
Other Ways We Create False Memories
• List and briefly explain the two “sins of forgetting” especially relevant to the topic of false memories:
1. Misattribution – distortions based on confusing the source of information
2. Suggestibility – distortions introduced by misinformation from outside sources
Application: Eyewitness Testimony
• How might memory distortions affect eyewitness testimony?
- They will more likely report things that werent actually there or happened , making it more dramatic or less than the actual thing/event.