Schemata (schemas) and Memory
Schema: a mental model or representation of a person, object, situation, event,or text based on prior personal experience
Person Schema: Representation of person's beliefs, traits, personality, etc.
Self Schema: Representation of our own traits, dispositions, abilities goals.
Is our self-schema accurate?
Scripts: The expected order of occurence of common, frequently occuring events
Restaurant script
List 20 actions or events that occur commonly in eating at a restaurant.
Large agreement between subjects
All subjects mention:
Look at menu
order food
pay bill
Subjects also group the actions into similar components
Hudson & Nelson (1986) 3 year olds have scripts for eating dinner and other common activities
How does the global structure of the discourse affect comprehension?
Genres: A type of discourse that has a characteristic structure
Class lectures, fairy tales, political speeches, News articles, Research articles, cop movies, romance novels
APA format:
Title page/Abstract
Introduction
Method
Subjects
Materials
Procedure
Results
Discussion
References
Appendices
Why does psychology use a single format?
Narrative Stories:
Introduction of Characters/Goal of main character
Introduction of Setting
Character runs into some obstacles
Character overcomes obstacles
Alba & Hasher (1983)
When a schema is activated, encoding on the basis of 4 processes:
* Selection: Aspects of information are encoded if they are most
relevant to the currently activated schema
* Abstraction: Selected information is encoded in abstract(semantic)
form (not encoded as surface structure)
* Interpretation: Relevant prior knowledge is accessed from LTM to
aid in comprehending new information
* Integration: A single integrated memory is formed through
selection, abstraction and interpretation
Criticisms (Mandler, 1984)
1) We can have several schemas active at once
2) The incosistent, unexpeted or irrelevant information is sometimes best remembered
Bartlett (1932) War of the Ghosts
Recall over time: How does the reader's schemata affect recall?
Process of "normalization" in recall: Stories that are incosistent with a reader's schemata are distorted in the direction of the schemata
Voss baseball study:
* Subjects listen to fictitious baseball game
* High knowledge subjects have better recall of events that are important
for the game
* No difference between high and low knowledge subjects in recall
information not related to the game's goal structure (weather, name of
players)
If a text is written so that we can not activate the appropriate schema, recall will be poor.
The procedure is actually quite simple. First you arrange things into different groups. Of course, one pile may be sufficient depending on how much there is to do. If you have to go somewhere else due to lack of facilities, that is the next step; otherwise you are pretty well set. It is important not to overdo things. That is, it is better to do too few things at once than too many. In the short run this may not seem important, but complications can easily arise. A mistake can be expensive as well. At first the whole procedure will seem complicated. Soon, however, it will become just another facet of life. It is difficult to foresee any end to the necessity for this task in the immediate future, but then one never can tell. After the procedure is completed, one arranges the materials into different groups again. Then they can be put into their appropriate places. Eventually they will be used once more, and the whole cycle will then have to be repeated. However, that is part of life.
Pichert and Anderson (1977)
Text describing the interior of the house.
Read the story from the perspective of:
buying a house
a burglar
Recall the story
now recall the story from the other perspective
After first recall, subjects recall more relevant information for their particular schema
After second recall, subjects able to recall previously unrecalled propositions from the second perspective
We are able to revive information by using a different schema
Conclusion:
* Schemata have a directive effect on comprehension
* Schemata help organize learning and affect recall of information
How do we define a schema?
Story grammar: A schema that identifies the typical arrangement of events in a story
Mandler's rules for a story grammar
* Tree structure representation of stories
Application of story grammars to children's stories
All the animals at the zoo receive very good care. A zookeeper stays up each night to watch over them. One night the lions start making a lot of noise. One by one they started to roar and growl fiercely. The keeper was worred that they were sick or hurt. He wanted to see if something was wrong with them. He carried his bag of medicine into the lions' pen. The keeper fully checked over each one of the lions. He soon discovered that they were not sick at all. Thy were just trying to keep the other animals up. The zookeeper finally got them to go back to sleep. Soon things were quiet, and the zoo was calm again. Later on the elephants all got into a water fight. They used their trunks to toss water at each other. The keeper was mad because they were making a mess. He wanted them all to be quiet and peaceful again. He ran after the frisky elephants with a big stick. He shouted angrily at them to stop the water fight. The paid no attention to him and just ran faster. They squirted lots of water all over the poor man. They made an awful muddy mess in the elephant yard. The zookeeper worked for three days cleaning it up.
* Episodes tend to be recalled in an an all-or-none fashion
(chunks)
* Length of episodes does not affect their recall
The time course of reading episodes
Haberlandt, Berian and Sandson (1980)
Sentence by sentence reading task, recording sentence reading time
Reading times were longer at the beginnings and ends of episodes
What processing is going on?
Begining of episodes
* Identifying new topic of discourse
* Forming expectations
End of episodes
* Summarize the gist of the episode
* Deciding what propositions to hold over
What is retained best from a story?
Attempts and outcomes are retained
Goals, reactions, emotions tend to be lost
Emphasis on what happenend more than what a character was thinking
Memory for places
Brewer and Treyens (1981)
Office, looked like standard graduate student office.
* Items consistent with office schema: typewriter, table, coffee pot,
posters, etc.
* Items inconsistent with office schema: bark, toy top, skull
* Items missing: telephone, pencils, books
Tell subjects to wait for 35 seconds in room.
Then test memory for objects in room.
Second group of subjects rated objects on saliency and schema expectancy
Results: Strong correlation between item recall and item saliency or schema expectancy
Of the total 88 objects recalled by subjects 19 were inferred objects
Evidence that schemas facilitate memory, but can also produce recall errors.
* My doctor said Mylanta
* 4 out of 5 dentists recommend dentine for their patients who chew
gum
* Breck Shampoo, now with vitamin E!
* My opponent voted against the child safety law act.
Pragmatic implication: A statement that leads a person to belive something tht is neither explicitly asserted nor necessarily implied
Constructive changes: Changes during encoding stage
Reconstructive changes: Changes during retreival
Harris (1977) are statements true, false, or indeterminate?
"Wouldn't it be great", asks the mother, "if you could make him coldproof? Well you can't. Nothing can do that (boy sneezes). But there is something that you can do that may help. Have him gargle with Gargoil Antiseptic. Gargoil can't promise to keep him cold-free, but it may help him fight off colds. During the cold-catching season, have him gargle twice a day with full strength Gargoil. Watch his diet, see he gets plenty of sleep, and there's a good chance he'll have fewer colds, milder colds this year."
Test : Gargling with Gargoil Antiseptic helps prevent colds.
Result: Subjects can't distinguish between claims that are asserted vs. those that were implied.
Searleman and Carter (1988)
50.6 % of implied claims accepted as true immediately after presentation
74.4 implied claims accepted as true after a 5 minute delay
Implications:
1) Faulty inferences drawn at the time of comprehension
2) Schemas cause reconstructive changes over time
Improving sensitivity to advertisements.
Harris (1977) some improvement in performance when subjects are explicitly warned about implied claims.
Bruno (1977): 20 minute training session, improved performance for both adults and school children.
Carmichael, Hogan and Walter (1932)
Ambiguious line drawings given with labels
Subjects recall figures that look more like the labels given
Implications of schema effects on memory
1) Schemas can facilitiate comprehension and recall
Pay attention to correct information
Encode information so that it ties in to previous knowledge
2) But schemas can also cause us to:
Pay attention to incorrect information
Make false inferences
Remember incorrectly
What is arousal?
What are the changes in the body during arousal?
Does memory ability change at different levels of arousal? and why?
Yerkes-Dodson Law (1908)
1) Optimal performance is associated with moderate levels of arousal or motivation
2) There is an inverse relationship between arousal or motivational level and task difficulty
(High levels of arousal result in better performance for easy tasks, but lower performance for hard tasks)
* High arousal due to incentives increases capacity/efficiency of
STM
* High arousal due to noise or anxiety decreases
capacity/efficiency of STM
but for LTM:
* incentives have no effect
* noise facilitates retrieval
* anxiety hinders retrieval
Key point: not an simple relationship between arousal and memory
How do you cause arousal in subjects?
Examples of manipulating arousal:
Put people under performance pressure/dual tasks
Threaten with shock
Provide strong/weak motivation $$$$/sex
Arousal focuses attention to fewer cue in the environment
Cue Utilization: Decreases the irrelevant cues
(But it can also decrease some relevant cues)
How does this explain the Yerkes-Dodson law?
Law 1) Low levels of arousal: pay attention to some irrelevant cures high level of arousal: miss some relevant cues
Law 2) Difficult tasks, need to pay attention to many relevant cues, some missed at high levels of arousal.
Example of Cue Utilization: the weapon focus
We tend to remember the weapon during a violent crime, but miss many other obvious cues.
Why do we have a weapon focus?
Evidence shows we recall the central details, but don't have peripheral information in the short term.
However, we do have access to some of that peripheral information over longer periods or time.
Implications:
* 1) Inhibitory process makes retrieving information soon after formation
more difficult
* 2) but with high arousal it increases the probability of consolidation
and recall over long delays
Christianson (1984) Subjects given story over a sequence of slides: Story is either arousing or neutral
* After 12 minutes S's who saw neutral story had better performance on
recognition test
* After 2 weeks S's who saw arousing story had better performance on
recognition test
However, effect is not very strong
Weapon focus seems to apply well for short term recall while action-decrement seems to apply better for long term.
What is stress?
Process of adjusting to or dealing with situations that produce mental or emotional upheavals
Can stress help improve memory?
How do we manipulate stress?
Idzikowksi & Baddely (1987)
Digit span for novice skydivers is lower just before jumping out of plane than 1 day earlier
Peters (1988) Identify a person they saw previously for 15 seconds
* 1) a nurse who had just given them an inoculation
* 2) a person they met after the inoculation
More stress with the nurse, resulted in poorer identification of the nurse and describing her features
Implications:
A little stress can improve memory and performance
A lot of stress can decrease memory and performance
Repression
Sigmund Freud: Extremely stressful/anxiety provoking events could be banished from conscious memory
To what extent does repression exist?
False Memory Syndrome
Are recovered memories reliable?
The Courage to Heal "If you think you may have been abused as a child, then you probably were"
British Psychological Society: in 134 out of 181 cases, memory of abuse not suddenly recovered from amnesia, but partially recalled over varying periods of time.
Children's recall of doctor's exam (Bruck, Ceci, Francouer & Barr, 1995)
"He looked into your ear didn't he?"
Over longer periods of time since the examination had elapsed, and the more often the suggestion was repeated, the higher the probability of recall
Experiment of forming false memories getting lost in mall (Loftus and Coan, 1996)
Interviews of children:
"did you ever get your finger caught in a mouse-trap and have to go to the hospital to get the trap off"?
More than half the children produced false narratives with compelingly vivid details.
Effects of therapists, others on False Memories
General finding: Many recovered memories are unreliable and likely never happened.
Lindsay & Read (1994) "The creation of illusory memories of childhood sexual abuse is not merely an abstract possibility but rather a tragic reality"
Based on diary studies (Linton, 1975; Wagenaar 1986)
The Pollyanna Principle: We tend to remember more pleasant events more than unpleasant events.
Does that mean that this is evidence for repression?
* It could be that we store pleasant items in a way that is more
accessible
* Or anxiety of bad events causes interference with storing the events
* Or we tend to rehearse the good events in our life
What is emotion?
Emotion changes our arousal level
Memory deficits and depression
How do you investigate memory deficits for depression.
1) test depressed vs. non depressed people
2) make people depressed.
Memory tasks that require effort are most difficult for depressed people (Weingartner et al. 1981)
Why?
Resource-Allocation Hypothesis: Depression reduces the available cognitive resources
attention may be paid to inappropriate resources, irrelevant stimuli, or self-absorption
Other explanations:
Depressed subjects are less willing, but not unable to participate in studies
Subjects lack cognitive initiative
Drug-Dependent memory (Eich, 1989)
Manipulate subjects' drug state and test recall
Mood-dependent memory
Manipulate subjects' mood and test recall
Mood Congruence:
A mood causes selective encoding/retrieval of material that is consistent with current mood.
Encoding congruency vs. recall congruency
Evidence for both effects, but strongest evidence for encoding congruency
Mood congruency seems to occur most for positive moods than for negative moods
Why?
Isen (1985) People who feel happy want to stay happy, those who feel sad try to become happier
When was the first thing you can accurately remember from your life?
How old were you?
Infantile Amnesia: No memories are possible from the first few years of life
Why?
* Brain is forming,
* We don't have the appropriate schemas,
* Information is not coded verbally
Later memories:
* What time did you go to bed last night?
* What time did you go to bed on the evening of your 12th birthday?
* What was the name of your 1st grade teacher?
* What were you doing when you heard that Princess Diana had died
* What did you eat for dinner on Monday?
cue-word method
Recall a memory associated with each word. After each word, provide a date when each memory occured
* airplane
* swimming
* bubble gum
* farm
Modifications to the cue-word method:
* Give me the earliest memory
* Give me the most recent memory
* Give me any memory
Patterns in autobiographical memory recall
What types of memories do we recall and from when?
Pollyanna principle: we tend to remember pleasant memories
It depends on strategy
Some use backward-retrieval strategy, others use forward-retrieval strategy.
Experimenter must give explicit instructions on how to search memory
From when do we recall most memories?
Monotonically decreasing retention function
Recall: Gist tends to be accurate, but there are systematic distortions of our memories, primarily for details.
Why?
1) Memory is reconstructive
We often don't remember the details, but just tend to fill in the gaps using plausible inferences
2) Schematization occurs
Our prior schemas influence our interpretation and recall of events
3) We tend to reconstruct based on our self-schemas
We remember events in such a way to be consistent with our self-concept.
What factors influence eyewitness memory?
Stress/arousal, weapons focus, length of time between event and interview, rehearsal, types of questions asked, distractor items
Loftus (1986), about 8500 wrongful convictions each year in U.S. about half are due to faulty eyewitness testimony.
Why so many mistakes?
Memory, perception is fallible and juries tend to believe eyewitnesses
If misleading information is presented about an event, people make errors remembering the event.
Standard procedure for investigating misinformation effect
1) Subjects all "witness" or experience an event
2) Subjects are given post event information that is
a) consistent with a detail seen
b) inconsistent with a detail seen
c) neutral (no new information provided)
3) Subjects tested for recall of original information witnessed
Example from Loftus (1978)
1) S's see sideshow of Datsun stop at intersection, turn corner and hit pedestrian
half see stop sign, half see yield sign
2) S's given questions: (for those who saw yield sign)
a) consistent: "Did another car pass the Datsun while it was stopped at the yield sign?
b) inconsistent : "Did another car pass the Datsun while it was stopped at the stop sign?"
c) neutral "Did another car pass the Datsun?"
3) S's shown pairs of slides from step 1 and had to say which one they had seen (stop sign vs. yield sign)
hammers vs. screwdrivers
coke cans vs. peanut cans
Vogue magazine vs. Mademoiselle
Breakfast cereal vs. eggs
man with mustache vs. clean shaven man
How do we avoid causing the misinformation effect?
How do we avoid having the misinformation effect?
What types of people will be most susceptible to misleading information?
Children
Levinson (1965)
10 dental patients anesthetized
Anesthesiologist says:
Stop the operation. I don't like the patient's color. His/Her lips are too blue. I'm going to give a little oxygen".
There that's better now. You can carry on with the operation".
1 month later under hypnosis:
* 4/10 patients could recall almost verbatim the words from
operation
* 4/10 patients showed anxiety about recalling operation
Any problems with the experiment
Loftus, Schooler, Loftus & Glauber (1985): Loftus heard 100 words during operation
Recognition memory for words at 28, 53 and 82 hours later was at chance
Most other studies show that memory performance is at chance
Conclusion: There is very little evidence for explicit memory during anesthesia
Godmann (1986)
Before operation: Patients try to answer list of questions What is the blood pressure of an octopus?
During operation: Answers are given to half the subjects
After operation: S's who heard answers showed improvement
However, no explicit recall of the information
Bennett, Davis & Giannini, 1985: Patients instructed to touch their ears under anesthesia tend to do it more.
Can positive statements under anesthesia help you recover faster?
Example: Evans & Richardson (1988)
Hysterectomy operations:
1/2 of S's receive positive feedback "You will not feel any pain", "The operation is going well"
1/2 of S's receive no information
Positive suggestion group spent 1.33 fewer days in hospital, had lower fever and were rated as recovering faster by their nurses
Conclusion: No conscious awareness of information presented during anesthesia, but it may be learned implicitly.
Do we learn anything in the womb?
DeCasper and Spence (1986)
* Newborns modify sucking rate to Dr. Suess books that were read to them in
the womb.
* Newborns prefer mother's voice over strangers and fathers
Indicates that newborns have innate preparation to perceive speech at birth
Speaking to infantsMotherese, baby talk
Higher pitch, more variable, more exaggerated
Maintains attention better than adult speech
Do children prefer child or adult-directed speech?
Fernald and Kuhl (1987)
* 4 month old infants reinforced for turning head
* Infants tended to turn head towards voice speaking child-directed
speech
Habituation-dishabituation paradigm: A method for testing visual recognition
Infants lose interest (become habituated) to same stimuli displayed many times
Friedman (1972)
1-4 day old infants look at 4 square or 144 square checkerboards
* Decrease in looking time with each presentation of same board
* Increase in looking time if different checkerboard is shown
What visual information of an object is remembered?
Strauss & Cohen (1978): Habituate 5-month olds to object with a particular:
form, orientation, size and color (large black, right-side-up arrow)
Later infants shown original object plus another one that varied in one or more attributes (large white, right-side-up arrow): Measure preference (looking time)
* Immediately after seeing first stimulus, 5-months old remember all four
attributes
* After 15 minutes, they remember: form and color
* 24 hours later they only remember: form
Infants will turn themselves towards breast pads that have their mother's smell rather than those worn by other mothers
The Conjugate Reinforcement Paradigm:
Association, recall and generalization in infants
Apparatus: Ribbon tied to ankle of infant which is tied to a mobile over crib
Infants rate of kicking increases abruptly when they "discover" that kicking moves mobile
When mobile detached, rate decreases, but is higher than baseline
How durable are the memories?
* Baseline: Baseline kicking is first determined (about 5-10
kicks/min)
* Acquisition: Infants given 9 minute acquisition phase
* Immediate retention test: Determine kicking rate with no mobile
The higher the rate of kicking during immediate retention test (over baseline) the better memory
2-months old: Above baseline at 1 day delay
At baseline for 3 day delay
3-month old: Above baseline for 3 and 8 day delay
Decay around 13 days
What happens if you change items/colors on the mobile?
Retrieval is highly specific to the training context
Encoding specificity in infants:
3-month olds show lower kicking rates with 7 day delay if the crib bumper changes colors between training and testing.
The effects of reminding on reactivating memories
After 14 days memory can be reinstated by infants if they see experimenter pull ribbon to make mobile move.
Does memory ability as infants correlate with later cognitive abilities?
Some studies show positive correlation between recognition memory in first months of life and vocabulary and intelligence testslater in life
but:
Many studies also show no relationship.
Infantile Amnesia: No memories are possible from the first few years of life
Finding is consistent for humans, dogs, wolves, rats, mice, frogs
Why?
It isn't that we aren't forming memories: children between 2.5 and 3 remember experiences that occurred in their first years (Myers, Clifton & Clarkson, 1987)
Physiological changes in memory
* Brain is forming, Maturation of frontal lobes continues through
childhood
* Explicit memory develops later than implicit memory Evidence:
9 year olds shown pictures of classmates from preschool do not recognize them, but show physiological changes indicating recognition.
Incompatibilities in encoding
* Information is not coded verbally
Encoding specificity say we would have trouble retrieving if not encoded in the way we would want to retrieve it
* We don't have the appropriate schemas
Are there differences between adult and child memory?
Sensory Store: No evidence of change
Differences in STM and LTM
STM Memory span:
Two year olds: ~2 items
Seven year olds ~5 items
Twelve year olds: ~7 items
Does this mean that the physical capacity of STM is increasing with age?
* No strong evidence for physical changes memory capacity
* Some young children have large spans for items of high familiarity
* However, there is an increase in functional capacity of STM
Examples: automaticity, chunking
With practice items take fewer resources in STM
Children have good recognition memory but poor recall
What does this suggest?
Children have good encoding skills, but have troubles with memory search and memory cues
Memory can be improved in 3-5 year olds if they are given proper prompts (Ceci, Lea & Howe, 1980)
Effects of Knowledge-Base on memory
Recall of chessboard positions: Chi (1978)
Children who are chess experts have better recall than normal adults
(Even though children and adults had same digit spans)
Why?
Chunking, use of prior knowledge & motivation
How elaborate is a child's knowledge of a topic?
Chi & Koeskey (1983) Children's dinosaur knowledge
How do children develop such an elaborate knowledge base?
Ability to use strategies: organization, planning, rehearsal
Metamemory is poor at young ages but improves
3-4 year olds exhibit some metamemory (show awareness of how many items are easy to memorize)
Production deficits: failure to spontaneously generate an appropriate memory strategy when needed
Preschoolers overestimate memory prowess compared to elementary-school children
Implication: Preschoolers don't realize when they may need to use a memory strategy
Older children and adults can adapt strategies when they realize they need them
Other failures: Younger children often select the wrong strategy
Strategies in young children are often different than those of older children or adults
Don't tend to use rehearsal or chunking
Rehearsal strategies in children
Flavell, Beach, Chinsky (1966)
Strategies of 5,7, & 10 year olds: Recall order in which experimenter pointed to pictures
Immediate vs. delay conditions
Experimenter lip read children: Found most rehearsal in 10 then 7 year olds, not much in 5 year olds
Other evidence:
Seven year olds often only rehears one word at a time
11 year olds could not selectively rehearse only the items that they needed to remember
Organizational strategies in children
Organizational strategies tend to develop later than rehearsal strategies
5-6 year olds could organize groups of pictures into categories to help memory if told to do so. Those not given explicit instructions had lower recall (Moely, Olson, Halwes, & Flavell, 1969)
What memory processes are affected by aging?
What does it mean if elderly do worse on a memory test?
Have to account for health (hearing, vision), amount of formal education, motivation, drugs, amount of formal education, practice in memorizing
Motivation is a strong factor in memory tests
Sensory memory: Very few differences due to age
STM and LTM differences depend on type of task
Very little elderly vs. young difference in: meaningful, highly practiced, well-learned material
Examples:
* Chess experts retain skills through old age
* Elderly can be trained to have good chunking skills
Very little differences as long as there is no active reorganization of material needed
Could be
1) Reduction in speed of processing information in working memory (Salthouse, 1991)
2) Inability to inhibit irrelevant thoughts/information (Hasher & Zacks, 1988)
3) Reduction in attentional capacity to process information
* Less processing to do encoding and retrieval strategies
* Implication: Elderly do worse on tasks that require attentional resources
and mental effort
Free recall vs. recognition
Elderly have more difficulty with free recall tasks
But there are very few differences with cued recall tasks
Spontaneous use of strategies
Elderly less likely to spontaneously use mental strategies
Aging and Prospective memories
Elderly have more trouble with time-based prospective memory tasks, but not with event-based tasks (Einstein & McDaniel, 1991)
Why? no external reminder for time-based tasks
Implications for aiding memory of older adults