Psychology Memories are an important part of the human experience. They help us define who we are, based on our past experiences, the people we have met, the places we have been and the things that we have done. Yet, there is much that we take for granted about memories, and they are often misunderstood. Consider for example criminal trials, where testimony is given on the basis of what people remember about an incident. This is just one example of how we rely on memories, but examples exist throughout human society. The problem is that memories are not perfect. They are sometimes inaccurate -- we remember things differently from how they occurred, we confuse time frames, and over time it becomes more difficult to remember specific details. Psychologists have dedicated a substantial amount of study to memories, and the different factors that influence memory formulation, retention and recall. Consider that the cells in our brain tissue are constantly regenerating -- in that process, information must be transmitted from one cell to another, lest a memory die when a cell does. But passing along this information over time leads to imperfect memories, and there are a number of factors that influence this process. This paper will describe some of these factors that influence memory. At the conclusion, an experiment will be proposed to investigate memory.

Part A Schacter (1999) outlined his seven sins of memory. These are different ways in which memory is fallible: transience, absent-mindedness, blocking, misattribution, suggestibility, bias and persistence. He categorizes these into three different types: forgetting, distortions and intrusive recollections. Among the forgetting type is absent-mindedness. This is when the processing of new information is relatively shallow, such that this new information is not retained well in memory. Misattribution is one of the distortion memory sins, where the source of the information is remembered wrongly. This can be, for example, thinking that your spouse said something when in fact it was your parent. Worse, you could remember that somebody did something, when in fact it was someone else. Like being mad at your friend for stealing your girlfriend in high school when it was actually your cousin.

A practical example of working with memory to help with absent-mindedness is as follows. A lot of new information is processed at any given point in time, but the mind is not normally committed to remembering it. For example, if somebody was asked to recall what their barista from last Monday looked like, they are unlikely to recall that information. Only if there was a reason to commit that information to memory would they do so. Where absent-mindedness is seen as a memory sin is when that information is something that should have been remembered. An example would be somebody who says they never remember people's names. For the most part, people try to remember names of those to whom they have been introduced, at least for a short while. But somebody who cannot recall the name of someone they met at the same party, just a few minutes before, is experiencing absent-mindedness, where that person's name was never really committed to memory, so is not available for recall. Overcoming absent-mindedness to improve one's social skills would be a handy application of having a better understanding of absent-mindedness.

Loftus and Pickrell discuss false memories -- misattribution. In their experiment, it was found that a fairly high percentage of people misremembered what they had witnessed after having been fed false information. These findings have important real world implications where the use of memories is required. In criminal proceedings, people's recollections of events are used to try people. Imperfect memory puts this process at risk. The shopping mall memory experiment was also interesting, because that sort of thing could have therapeutic value, helping people restore memories that have been blocked, or to block memories that they would like to block.

The Chan paper is similar because it studies suggestibility. If false memories can be created, this gives rise to the possibility of false testimony, if witnesses are coached with respect to incidents. Exposure to misinformation carries with it significant risk of altered memory. They found that immediate recall of an event prior to receiving misinformation actually strengthened the effect of the misinformation -- stronger retention of details actually set up the memory for the later introduction of misinformation. This held true for both young and old adults. These findings, along with those in the Loftus paper,...

Often, witnesses are asked to recall shortly after an event. That this enhances the strength of later misinformation makes it imperative that misinformation is not introduced so that future recall of the incident is closer to the truth. Eyewitness memory is not necessarily reliable and should be understood in the context of how memory is affected and influenced. The legal system, for example, relies on witness memories and gives them significant weight, even though they are more susceptible to misinformation than previously believed.
One of the most important takeaways from this discussion is how important memory is to a lot of what we do. On a personal level, memory is used constantly for routine tasks. But often, there are more important things for which memory is used. The legal system is a great example, since people's futures are often decided on the memories of people thinking years back to incidents where they were not originally engaging their memories. There are other instances of this nature, however, such as a boss trying to remember how a person performed their job in the past year. The fact that memory is so susceptible to these faults is worth remembering, and it highlights why we need to learn more about memory. The better we understand memory, the more we can do to improve it.

Part B

To study memory I would want to see if prepping somebody for memorizing things is something that has an effect. The hypothesis is that it would. What I mean is that the experiment can take a common situation. In this case, the subjects will be introduced to somebody. They will either be told that this person is important -- a VP at their company, a millionaire, a respected athlete, something of that nature. The control will be meeting somebody who is presented as just an average person. Do people who normally struggle to remember names show any different in their ability to remember the names of these people later on?

I would also like to investigate if there are mitigating factors, such as if they remember other things about the person. I feel that this might be the case -- where when prompted to commit somebody's name to memory people might rely on some sort of devices. If the person's job title does not help, maybe there is memory of a physical trait that matters. In general I would want to use fairly generic-looking people (i.e. not particularly attractive or unattractive).

The participants in the study will be members of the general public, men and women, young and old. I would perhaps want to test people who express that they perceive themselves as having trouble remembering names. They might actually meet the person as a member of the team when they arrive at the facility to conduct the experiment, in which case what the person thinks is the experiment is just a dummy variable. When meeting this person in a group of three people, they will either be introduced as the important person, or as a research assistant.

The independent variable will be if the perception of importance of remembering a certain bit of information stimulates greater remembrance of that information. So the importance is the independent variable and the remembrance is the dependent variable. The participants will be assigned to different groups randomly.

It is predicted that the study will show that the perceived importance of the information will improve memory. I believe that this will show that absent-mindedness is something that can be overcome with training. If people make a concerted effort, and are mindful, they can begin to remember certain types of information better. This research will also help understand what processes help to activate certain memory centers. Absent-mindedness comes from thin memory, where something is not committed to deep memory, but this research is expected to show that certain triggers or techniques can help a person subconsciously to commit something routine to memory.

The research is not perfect at this point in its conceptualization. The variables, and the structure of the experiment probably need to be refined further, but what is presented here is a rough outline of what such an experiment might look like. Doubtless the ideas can be sharpened up a bit over time.

At this point, there are no ethical concerns with this experiment. There is no risk of physical or psychological harm that would come from this experiment, and all subjects will be given due informed consent. No minors will be studied.

The purpose of the paper is to better understand how memory works, in…