Reconstructive memory
By using multiple interdependent cognitive processes and functions, there is never a single location in the brain where a given complete memory trace of experience is stored.
[5] By employing reconstructive processes, individuals supplement other aspects of available personal knowledge and schema into the gaps found in episodic memory in order to provide a fuller and more coherent version, albeit one that is often distorted.
All of the supplemental processes occurring during the course of reconstruction rely on the use of schema, information networks that organize and store abstract knowledge in the brain.
Frederic Bartlett was one of the first psychologists to propose Schematic theory, suggesting that the individual's understanding of the world is influenced by elaborate neural networks that organize abstract information and concepts.
To assimilate, Piaget defined a second cognitive process that served to integrate new information into memory by altering preexisting schematic networks to fit novel concepts, what he referred to as accommodation.
[10] For Piaget, these two processes, accommodation, and assimilation, are mutually reliant on one another and are vital requirements for people to form basic conceptual networks around world knowledge and to add onto these structures by utilizing preexisting learning to understand new information, respectively.
[11] Frederic Bartlett originally tested his idea of the reconstructive nature of recall by presenting a group of participants with foreign folk tales (his most famous being "War of the Ghosts"[12]) with which they had no previous experience.
[8] For instance, allusions made to magic and Native American mysticism that were in the original version were omitted as they failed to fit into the average Westerner schematic network.
[13] This concept was later tested by Carmichael, Hogan, and Walter (1932) who exposed a group of participants to a series of simple figures and provided different words to describe each images.
The experiment revealed that when the participants were later tasked with replicating the images, they tended to add features to their own reproduction that more closely resembled the word they were primed with.
Confirmation bias results in overconfidence in personal perception and usually leads to a strengthening of beliefs, often in the face of contradictory dis-confirming evidence.
[14] Recent research using neuro-imaging technology including PET and fMRI scanning has shown that there is an extensive amount of distributed brain activation during the process of episodic encoding and retrieval.
[16][17] Most popular research holds that the Hippocampus becomes less important in long term memory functioning after more extensive consolidation of the distinct features present at the time of episode encoding has occurred.
In this way long term episodic functioning moves away from the CA3 region of the Hippocampal formation into the neocortex, effectively freeing up the CA3 area for more initial processing.
[18] The Prefrontal cortex appears to be utilized for executive functioning primarily for directing the focus of attention during retrieval processing, as well as for setting the appropriate criterion required to find the desired target memory.
[19] Unfortunately, eyewitness testimony can be easily manipulated by a variety of factors such as: Anxiety is a state of distress or uneasiness of mind caused by fear[20] and it is a consistently associated with witnessing crimes.
In a study done by Yuille and Cutshall (1986), they discovered that witnesses of real-life violent crimes were able to remember the event quite vividly even five months after it originally occurred.
[19] In a study by Brigham et al. (2010), subjects who experienced an electrical shock were less accurate in facial recognition tests, suggesting that some details were not well remembered under stressful situations.
A study by Tuckey and Brewer[25] found that after 12 weeks, memories of information inconsistent with a schema-typical robbery decays much faster than those that are schema-consistent.
[30] This is associated with a relatively common occurrence known as the tip of the tongue (TOT) phenomenon, originally developed by the psychologist William James.
[32] Priming is believed to occur outside of conscious awareness, which makes it different from memory that relies on the direct retrieval of information.
