MEMORY

MEMORY

1. MODEL

   • Atkinson and Shiffrin: Has three storgaes
     • Sensory Storage
       • Does not process any type of information, instead, it detects information and holds it until it either goes to the short-term store or lost. It mostly works with iconic memory (visual) and echoic memory (audition). Its limit is placed by each individuals perception. The duration of the memory in this component is extremely short, it can last from 1 to 5 seconds. The condition is attention.
     • Short-term
       • When the memory arrives to this component is transformed. The capacity of the STM is about 7+-2 chunks of information. Duration depends on the modality of the memory, but generally does not pass the 30 seconds. Finally, the condition is rehearsal, when you repeat it will consolidate and probably pass to the LTM.
     • Long-term
       • It stores large amounts of memory. The capacity for this component is virtually unlimited, due to the unlimited capacity, there are certain memories that are not easy to remember. Duration is not defined but probably longer than a lifetime and the condition is rehearsal as well be in a major

2. FALSE MEMORY

   • It Is a psychological phenomenon where a person recalls something that did not happen or that something happened differently from the way it happened. They are often created by combining actual memories with suggestions received from others.
   • Elizabeth Loftus
     • American cognitive psychologist and expert on human memory. She has conducted extensive research on the malleability of human memory.
       • Missinformation effect
         • happens when a person's recall of episodic memories becomes less accurate because of post-event information.
       • Eyewitness memory
         • It is a person's episodic memory for a crime or other dramatic event that he or she has witnessed. Eyewitness testimony is often relied upon in the judicial system. It can also refer to an individual's memory for a face, where they are required to remember the face of their perpetrator.
   • Pieces of evidence
     • Mall experiment
       • They took 24 individuals from ages 18 to 53 and they asked them to try to remember childhood events that had been told by their parents to the researchers. They prepared a booklet for each participants that contained paragraphs with stories about three events that actually happened to them and one that had not happened. They asked family to tell them a possible shopping mall trip, but they added to the story that they got lost. After participants read the stories, they wrote that they remembered about the event. If they did not remember the event, they had to write “i do not remember this”. Graph shows that participants remembered true events equally in three events, after reading the booklet, interview 1 and interview 2. Participants forgot thing as time passed. This means that they remembered more after the read the booklet, in interview 1 they remembered less and in interview 2 they remembered even less.
     • Beth Rutherford (1970)
       • Went to therapy and she remembered that her father raped her between ages of 7 and 14 and her mother sometimes helped him by holding her. She developed memories of her father forcing her to abort the fetus herself. Medical exams revealed that at the age of 22 she was still virgin and that she had never been pregnant. Beth sued the therapist and received 1 million dollars.
     • Nadean Cool (1986)
       • During the therapy Nadean Cool was told many things such as: being abused when she was a kid, having sex with animals, being in a satanic cult, eating babies, being raped and being forced to watch the murder of an 8 year old. Nothing was true, but she believed it because she was told that. When Cool finds out that false memories had been planted, she sued the psychiatrist for malpractice.
     • Study of Saul M. Kassin et al.
       • investigated the reaction of individuals falsely accused of damaging a computer by pressing the wrong key. The innocent participants denied at the first place their charge, but when someone says that they saw them in the act, many participants signed a confession. These results show that falsely incriminating evidence can induce people to accept guilt for a crime they did not commit and even to develop memories to support their guilty feelings.

3. Recovered-memory Therapy

   • Is a catch-all psychotherapy term for therapy using one or more method or technique for the purpose of recalling memories. It does not refer to a specific, recognized treatment method, but rather several controversial and/or unproven interviewing techniques.