There is more to memory than inaccuracy and distortion

Although one can point to forerunners, it was not until the 1960s and 1970s that psychology became dominated by the study of errors and biases in cognition, and began to believe that our

To be published in Behavioural and Brain Sciences

There is more to memory than inaccuracy and distortion

Brady Wagoner

Aalborg University

Kroghstraede 3

Aalborg 9000

Denmark

Telephone: +45 50123934

Email: Wagoner@hum.aau.dk

Webpage: https://aalborg.academia.edu/BradyWagoner

Abstract: Exaggerated claims about inaccuracy and downplaying veracity can also be

found in research on memory This commentary analyzes these developments in

connection with schema and the misinformation effect’s purported role in memory distortion It concludes by looking back to the locus classicus of memory distortion

(viz Bartlett 1932), which in fact provides a more nuanced account of inaccuracy

Although one can point to forerunners, it was not until the 1960s and 1970s that psychology became dominated by the study of errors and biases in cognition, and began to believe that our perception and memory of social reality was for the most part inaccurate As Jussim (2012) points out, at the heart of this approach is the idea

that humans are cognitively lazy, lacking alertness and irrational in their relating to the social world—in short “cognitive misers” (p.4) This development coincided with the metaphor of mind as a computer that processes, encodes, stores and retrieves information; when compared to the standard of decontextualized and literal

processing of information on a computer hard disk the human mind was a poor

performer This focus on identifying error and distortion obscured important, non-mechanical dimensions of mind and the study of accuracy as more than what a

computer does with information Jussim (2012) analyzed this trend in relation to research on our beliefs and expectations of others, while Gigerenzer et al (1990) have shown how it played out in the psychology of thinking In this commentary, I will describe a third area of research, memory, that has also shifted towards a one-sided focus on error Memory was peripherally discussed in Jussim’s book in relation to stereotypes Here I extend Jussim’s treatment to show how memory research began to overemphasis conditions leading to distortion over accuracy

Like person perception and thinking, memory has become mainly a study of

inaccuracy and distortion Memory errors have been generally described in relation to two processes: expectation-based and post-event misinformation effects The most well-known concept for analyzing expectation-based errors is that of ‘schema’ and its derivatives ‘scripts’ and ‘frames’ (Wagoner 2013) Although the concept had been used much earlier (e.g., Bartlett 1932; see below), schema took on a new meaning in the 1970s as an abstract knowledge structure for representing and storing

information—for example, our generic idea of going to a restaurant shapes how we perceive and remember any specific situation of doing so Studies using this concept showed that we are more likely to remember consistent than

schema-inconsistent information, and tend to add information that was schema-consistent but not actually present in the original While early studies tended to look at memory for banal situations—such as going to a restaurant (Shank & Abelson 1977) or a graduate student’s room (Brewer & Treyens 1981)—it was not long before schema was applied

to describe the use and maintenance of stereotypes—for example, in relation to race, gender and social groups In this context, schemas were guides to action that become self-fulfilling prophecies (Fiske 1982) There has been much evidence put forward to show that schema based bias is real, but this research has largely sidelined the issues

of how schema are developed and changed on the basis of social reality (McVee, Densmore & Gavelek 2005) Furthermore, Bransford, McCarrell, Franks and Nitsch (1977) pointed out that schema set the stage for making visible expectation

inconsistent information, an issue that has been largely ignored

In addition to schema, memory distortion and inaccuracy has also been heavily

investigated in terms of “the misinformation effect,” initially demonstrated in a series

of pioneering studies by Loftus (1975; Loftus, Miller & Burns 1978; Loftus & Palmer 1974) The experimental set up begins by showing participants complex, fast-moving events (such as an automobile accident or theft) through film clips or slide shows Immediately afterward participants are questioned about the event For the

experimental group some of the questions asked include misleading information—for

example, “How fast was the white sports car going when it passed the barn while

traveling along the country road?” (There was no barn in the film) These participants were more likely to later remember a barn than the control group in which no barn was mentioned in the post-event questioning Important to note is that the effect was much stronger when barn was presupposed in the question rather than when

participants were asked directly “Did you see a barn in the film?” (Loftus 1975) It is also worth pointing out that participants were fed entirely plausible suggestions by a trusted authority and were only inaccurate a fraction of the time More recently, it has been found that the misinformation can be neutralized if participants are given reason

to mistrust the authority, and may even be reversed if told afterwards that they were given some misinformation (Blank 1998) This suggests that humans are not the memory dupes they have often been made out to be, but can actively manage

suggestions in remembering (Wagoner & Gillespie 2014)

Looking back to Frederic Bartlett’s book Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology, commonly evoked as the locus classicus of memory distortion

research, we find it tells a rather different story (Wagoner, in press) For Bartlett

‘constructive’ remembering meant that it was flexible and adaptable in meeting new

challenges: what is of primary interest is what we can do with our memories In this

way, construction was theorized together with conservation and retention of the past

He also believed that it could lead to accuracy in memory, whereas today it has

become a synonym for ‘distortion’ (Wagoner 2015) Bartlett (1932) in fact gave several examples of accuracy in recall, including remembering the ‘gist’ of some material, the retention of dominant as well as unimportant details, “almost word perfect reminiscence” (p.203) functional in stable environments, and “prodigious retentive capacity” of Swazi herdsman in relation to cattle transactions (see also Ost

& Costall 2002) The last example is noteworthy in that it illustrates his belief that memory is not good or bad in itself but rather that accuracy depends on the context and whether it promotes literal recall As such, we find in Bartlett (1932) a more balanced position towards accuracy and inaccuracy than is typically attributed to him

(cf Allport’s warnings about the overemphasis on inaccuracy in perception—Jussim

2012, p.19ff)

Reflecting on the emerging emphasis on memory inaccuracy in the late 1960s and its relation to his own book Bartlett commented, “I did not say, I think I did not imply that literal retrieval is impossible, but I did imply that it requires special constricting conditions” (Bartlett 1968, p.3), such as in the context of learning by heart in school, witnesses in a court of law or even in a memory experiment Moreover, when these

“constricting conditions” are not present, memory is still accurate enough to provide

an appropriate response to a changing environment His famous concept of schema (mentioned above as a structure in the head) was actually used by him to describe the well-adapted transaction between person and world (Wagoner 2013) He also pointed out that human beings were not merely determined by schema but actively manage and reflect on them in order to master and enjoy the world Thus, we see what for him was the best means of knowing and acting on the world, became the source of

distortion and inaccuracy in later research on memory from the 1970s onwards In summary, like the research on person-perception described by Jussim, memory research became a study of errors, bias and inaccuracy, downplaying the evidence for possibilities of reflection, accuracy and its different manifestations

References

Bartlett, F.C (1932) Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Bartlett, F.C (1968) Notes on Remembering Retrieved from

http://www.bartlett.psychol.cam.ac.uk/

Blank, H (1998) Memory states and memory tasks: An integrative framework for eyewitness memory and suggestibility Memory 6:481–529

Bransford, J.D., McCarrell, N.S., Franks, J.J & Nitsch, K.E (1977) Toward

unexplaining memory In R.E Shaw & J.D Bransford, eds, Perceiving, acting, and knowing: Toward an ecological psychology [431-466] Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates

Brewer, W.F & Treyens, J.C (1981) Role of schemata in memory for places

Cognitive Psychology, 13, 207-230

Fiske, S (1982) Schema-triggered Affect: Applications to Social Perception In M.S Clark & S.T Fiske, eds, Affect and Cognition: 17th Annual Carnegie Mellon Symposium on Cognition [55-78] Hillsdale, N J.: Erlbaum

Gigerenzer, G., Swijtink, Z., Porter, T., Daston, L., Beatty, J., Kruger, L (1990) The Empire of Chance: How Probability Changed Science and Everyday Life Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Loftus, E.F (1975) Leading questions and eyewitness reports Cognitive Psychology 7:560-572

Loftus, E.F., Miller, D G., & Burns, H J (1978) Semantic integration of verbal information into a visual memory Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory 4:19–31

Loftus, E.F & Palmer, J.E (1974) Reconstruction of automobile destruction: An example of the interaction between language and memory Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 13:585–589

McVee, M.B., Dunsmore, K., & Gavelek, J.R (2005) Schema theory revised Review

of Educational Research 75:531-566

Ost, J & Costall, A (2002) Misremembering Bartlett: a study in serial reproduction

British Journal of Psychology 93:243-255

Shank, R & Abelson, R (1977) Scripts, Plans, Goals and Understanding Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum

Wagoner, B (2013) Bartlett’s concept of schema in reconstruction Theory &

Psychology 23:553-575

Wagoner, B (2015) Qualitative Experiments in Psychology: The Case of Frederic

Bartlett's Methodology [82 paragraphs] Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung /

Forum: Qualitative Social Research 16(3): Art 23,

http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs1503230

Wagoner, B (in press) The Constructive Mind: Frederic Bartlett’s Psychology in Reconstruction Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Wagoner, B & Gillespie, A (2014) Sociocultural mediators of remembering: An extension of Bartlett’s method of repeated reproduction British Journal of Social Psychology 53:622-639