Introduction to Cognitive Psychology - Department of Psychological ...

Prof. Greg Francis 1/2/13Memory discriminationPSY 200Greg FrancisLecture 19DiscriminationMany cognitive tasks require you todiscriminate between events/stimuli Is this a real smile? Is this fruit ripe? Is the stapler on the desk?The same kind of discrimination is required for memoryHow to take a test.Purdue UniversityPurdue UniversityDiscriminationFalse memoryDiscrimination is difficult because memoriescan come from lots of different sourcesConsider so-called False memory studies as in CogLab subject views a list of words the list of words have something in common» they are all related to a target wordAn example list is smooth, bumpy, road, tough, sandpaper, jagged, ready,coarse, uneven, riders, rugged, sand, boards, ground,gravel the special target is rough, which is not shown to thesubjectAfter viewing the list, the subject must go through aset of words and identify which ones were in thejust seen list some words were in the list some words were not seen» including the special targetPurdue UniversityPurdue UniversityFalse memoryFalse memoryThe main finding is that the special target is oftenidentified as part of the just seen list even though it was notSometimes people will even report that theyrecall seeing the special target but this is impossible because it was never shownCogLab data (193 participants) Type of selected items ! !Percentage of recalls! In original list ! ! !75.5! Normal distractor (not in list) ! 7.4! Special distractor (not in list) !70.3!Purdue UniversityThese types of findings suggest that ourmemories are not necessarily accurate, we can remember things thatnever occurred able to be manipulated, to a certain extent, I can makeyou have certain memoriesWhy does the false memory effecthappen?Purdue UniversityPSY 200: Intro. to Cognitive Psychology 1