The Interaction Between Memory and Language

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The Interaction Between Memory and Language

• PS111 March 19th, 2007

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So Why Do We Forget?

• Decay
• Interference
• Inappropriate Retrieval Cues

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Why Do Memories Become Distorted?

• Memories are reconstructive in nature
• Bartletts War of the Ghost Experiment
• One night two young men from Egulac went down to
  the river to hunt seals and while they were there
  it became foggy and calm. Then they heard
  war-cries, and they thought "Maybe this is a
  war-party". They escaped to the shore, and hid
  behind a log. Now canoes came up, and they heard
  the noise of paddles, and saw one canoe coming up
  to them. There were five men in the canoe, and
  they said
• "What do you think? We wish to take you along.
  We are going up the river to make war on the
  people."
  
• One of the young men said," I have no arrows."
• "Arrows are in the canoe," they said.
• "I will not go along. I might be killed. My
  relatives do not know where I have gone. But
  you," he said, turning to the other, "may go with
  them."
• So one of the young men went, but the other
  returned home.
  
• And the warriors went on up the river to a town
  on the other side of Kalama. The people came down
  to the water and they began to fight, and many
  were killed. But presently the young man heard
  one of the warriors say, "Quick, let us go home
  that Indian has been hit." Now he thought "Oh,
  they are ghosts." He did not feel sick, but they
  said he had been shot.
• So the canoes went back to Egulac and the young
  man went ashore to his house and made a fire. And
  he told everybody and said "Behold I accompanied
  the ghosts, and we went to fight. Many of our
  fellows were killed, and many of those who
  attacked us were killed. They said I was hit, and
  I did not feel sick."
• He told it all, and then he became quiet. When
  the sun rose he fell down. Something black came
  out of his mouth. His face became contorted. The
  people jumped up and cried.
• He was dead.

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How Did Western Subjects Retell the Story?

• Personal interests and experiences play a part in
  retelling stories from memory
  
• Bartlett's readers (typically unconsciously) made
  the story more orderly and coherent within their
  own cultural framework
  
• Something black came from his mouth' tended to
  become 'he frothed at the mouth', 'he vomited' or
  'breath escaped from his mouth'.
  
• 'Hunting seals' tended to become 'fishing'.
• 'Canoe' tended to become 'boat' and 'paddles' to
  become 'oars
  

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Distortion Through RI

• Present an event to encode
• Series of slides
• Then ask questions
• Put Leading information in those questions
• How do phrasing of questions affect how we
  remember (or misremember)?
  
• How fast were the cars moving when they hit?

Loftus Palmer, 1974
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Distortion Through RI
Contacted 31MPH
Bumped 38 MPH
Collided - 39 MPH
Smashed 41 MPH
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Distortion Through RI
Was there broken glass at the accident?
Contacted 14
Smashed 32
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Summary of Retrieval Successes and Failures

• Information is lost due to interference, decay,
  cues dependent forgetting
  
• Memory is fallible
• Memory can be subject to distortion
• Implications for eyewitness testimony
• Salient emotionally arousing stimuli are less
  likely to be forgotten than neutral stimuli
  
• But there is no special mechanism for memory of
  this information

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Different Systems of Memory
Memory
Declarative
Non -Declarative
Facts Semantic Memory
Events Episodic Memory
Skills/Habits Procedural Memory
Priming Classical Conditioning
Events Episodic Memory
Events Episodic Memory
Skills/Habits Procedural Memory
Skills/Habits Procedural Memory
Facts Semantic Memory
Facts Semantic Memory
Priming Classical Conditioning
Priming Classical Conditioning
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How is Our Knowledge Organized?

• How is semantic memory organized?
• Infer the organization of semantic memory through
  a variety of cognitive tasks that uses language
  
• Sentence processing
• Picture naming

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Hierarchical Model of Semantic Memory
Collins Quillian (1969)
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Task Answer TRUE or FALSE (Collins Quillian,
1969)
Typicality effects?
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Spreading Activation in Semantic Memory
Collins Loftus, 1975
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Priming, Facilitation and the idea of Implicit
Memory
Memory
Declarative
Non -Declarative
Facts Semantic Memory
Events Episodic Memory
Skills/Habits Procedural Memory
Priming Classical Conditioning
Events Episodic Memory
Events Episodic Memory
Skills/Habits Procedural Memory
Skills/Habits Procedural Memory
Facts Semantic Memory
Facts Semantic Memory
Priming Classical Conditioning
Priming Classical Conditioning
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Implicit Memory

• People demonstrate after effects of experience in
  the behavior without being able to consciously
  recollect the experience itself
  
• Unconscious influence on behavior

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