1. Chapter 9 Memory pt. 3: Motivated Forgetting and Memory Reconstruction

2. Eyewitness memory http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6fRH5MLBIU
Memory Training

3. What purpose might motivated forgetting serve?
Motivated Forgetting is the idea that people unknowingly revise their history.
What purpose might motivated forgetting serve?

4. Motivated Forgetting
Repression: idea put forth by psychoanalytic theorists like Freud which states anxiety arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories can be banished from consciousness.
Ex: child abuse, rape, incest may be repressed and not be able to be actively recalled.

5. Memory Construction Affected By:
Misinformation Effect: incorporating misleading information into one's memory of an event
Coke Vs. Peanuts
Challenger
Imagined events are more familiar, and familiar things are more real

6. Memory Construction Affected By:
Source Amnesia: attributing to the wrong source an event that we experienced, heard about, read about, or imagined (misattribution)
Piaget and his nursemaid

7. Memory Construction
Memory Construction refers to the idea that memories are NOT objective, recordings of the actual events we experience.
Our memories are often affected by our pre-existing schemas and involve information filtering and interpretations.

8. Memory Construction Eyewitnesses reconstruct memories when questioned
Depiction of actual accident
Leading question:
“About how fast were the cars
going when they smashed into
each other?”
Memory
construction
Eyewitnesses reconstruct memories when questioned

9. Memory Construction Overview
People fill in memory gaps with plausible guesses and assumptions
Imagining events can create false memories
Persistence and confidence does not mean accuracy
Children's eyewitness recall
Child sexual abuse does occur
Some innocent people suffer false accusations
Some guilty cast doubt on true testimony
Children are fairly accurate when their memories are not tampered with

10. Memory Construction Roediger and McDermott Brain Study
False and true memories registered in the hippocampus
True memories only registered in the left Temporal Lobe
Processes speech sounds

11. Memory Construction and Abuse
Memories of Abuse
Repressed or Constructed?
Child sexual abuse does occur
Some adults do actually forget such episodes
Recovered memories are common
Memories before age 3 are unreliable
Infantile amnesia

12. Memory Construction and Abuse
False Memory Syndrome
condition in which a person’s identity and relationships center around a false but strongly believed memory of traumatic experience
sometimes induced by well-meaning therapists

13. How Can Chapter 9 Concepts Help You Study
Study repeatedly
Rehearse
Make it meaningful
Use mnemonics
Use retrieval Codes
Recall before interference takes place
Minimize interference
Test Yourself