This document summarizes key aspects of autobiographical memory and memory errors. It discusses how autobiographical memory is influenced by age, with enhanced recall of adolescence and young adulthood in older adults known as the reminiscence bump. Emotional memories are better remembered due to involvement of the amygdala. Flashbulb memories are vivid recollections of shocking events. Memory is constructive in nature, influenced by knowledge and expectations which can lead to errors like source misattributions. The misinformation effect describes how misleading post-event information can change event recall. Eyewitness testimony is prone to errors from factors like suggestion. Improving lineup procedures and witness confidence ratings can help reduce eyewitness identification errors. Recovered memories of

1. Everyday Memory
and
Memory Errors
By:
Bilal Anwaar
Roll no, 191065

2. Autobiographical memory (definition):
• The memory for specific experiences from our life, which can
include both episodic and semantic components is called
autobiographical memory.
• For example, an autobiographical memory of a childhood birthday
party might include images of the cake, people at the party, (episodic
memory); it might also include when the party occurred, (semantic
memory).
• It is multidimensional in nature.

3. Autobiographical memory (Role of age):
• Autobiographical memory can be influenced by age.
• The enhanced memory for adolescence and young adulthood found
in people over 40 is called the reminiscence bump.
• This phenomenon can be explained by:
1. self-image hypothesis.
2. the cognitive hypothesis.
3. the cultural life script hypothesis.

4. Figure:
Memories from different
ages recalled by a 55-year-
old, showing the
reminiscence bump, which
occurs for events
experienced between
about 10 and 30 years of
age (dashed lines).

5. Autobiographical memory (Role of age):
1. The self-image hypothesis proposes that memory is enhanced for
events that occur as a person’s self-image or life identity is being
formed.
2. the cognitive hypothesis, proposes that periods of rapid change
that are followed by stability cause stronger encoding of memories.
3. the cultural life script hypothesis distinguishes between a person’s
life story, which is all of the events that have occurred in a person’s
life, and a cultural life script, which is the culturally expected events
that occur at a particular time in the life span.

6. Emotions & Memory:
• Emotions are often associated with events that are easily
remembered. The amygdala is a key structure for emotional
memories, and emotion has been linked to improve memory
consolidation.

7. Flashbulb Memories:
• The term flashbulb memory to refer to a person’s memory for the
circumstances surrounding shocking, highly charged events.
• Flashbulb memories are vivid and detailed, like photographs.
• Roger Brown and James Kulik coined the term flashbulb memory.

8. The Constructive Nature of Memory:
• People report as memories are constructed based on what actually
happened plus additional factors, such as the person’s knowledge,
experiences, and expectations.
• This is caused by following the factors:
1. Source monitoring error, misidentifying the source of a memory.
2. Source misattributions, because the memory is attributed to the
wrong source.
3. Cryptomnesia, unconscious plagiarism of the work of others.

9. The Constructive Nature of Memory:
• According to the constructive approach to memory, proposed by
Bartlett based on his “War of the Ghosts” experiment, what people
report as memories are constructed based on what actually
happened plus additional factors such as the person’s knowledge,
experiences, and expectations.

10. The Misinformation Effect:
• Misleading information presented after a person witnesses an event
can change how the person describes that event later is called the
misinformation effect.
• This misleading information is referred to as misleading postevent
information (MPI).

11. Errors in Eyewitness Testimony:
• Testimony by someone who has witnessed a crime is called
eyewitness testimony.
• Errors is eyewitness testimony can occur due to following factors:
1. Errors of Eyewitness Identification.
2. Errors Associated with Perception and Attention.
3. Misidentifications Due to Familiarity.
4. Errors Due to Suggestion.

12. How to Improve Eyewitness Testimony?
• Recommendation 1: When asking a witness to pick the perpetrator
from a lineup, inform the witness that the perpetrator may not be in
the particular lineup he or she is viewing.
• Recommendation 2: When constructing a lineup, use “fillers” who are
similar to the suspect, like a tape of a crime scene.
• Recommendation 3: Use a “blind” lineup administrator, someone who
doesn’t know who the suspect is.
• Recommendation 4: Have witnesses rate their confidence
immediately, as they are making their identification.

13. The Recovered/False Memory:
• Victims of abuse can and/or do repress memories of incidents of
abuse, retrieving these so-called recovered memories.
• Later in therapy, or whether instead some therapists, inadvertently
prompt their clients to create false memories.
• False memories are the memory of the things that never really
happened.

14. Thanks