You hear a story from a close friend or family member of something that has happened in the past, and as they are telling the story, you start to picture the scene, the people that are there and the scenario in which it occurred.  By the end of the story, you can remember in detail what had happened that day.  However, whoever is telling you the story lets you know at the end that you weren’t even there.  Why is it that you can remember in such vivid detail the events if you did not participate?  This is due to something called false memory.  A false memory is one that is created in your mind although you did not actually create the memory from a real life experience.

Elizabeth Loftus and her colleagues wanted to test false memories for experiences and therefore ran an experiment to see if false memories for an event could be implanted into someone’s mind (Goldstein, 2011).  Loftus used a 14yr old boy, Chris and his older brother.  They had Chris and his older brother Jim sit down and talk about things that had happened to Chris as a child.  Most of what they talked about were true and did actually happen except for one event.  Jim was instructed to talk about the time Chris was lost in a shopping mall when he was 5.  This was an event that never actually took place. At first, Chris was unable to recall memories from this event.  Jim then went on to explain what had happened during the event.  Chris was then questioned about this event a couple of days after Jim described it to him. At that time, Chris started to recall things that happened the day he was lost at the mall.  Chris was creating false memories without even realizing what he was doing (Goldstein, 2011).

A more personal example of creating false memories is from a time very recently when I visited Las Vegas.   I turned 30 in August 2015 and for my birthday, my husband and I decided to take a trip with some family members and friends to Las Vegas.  We were sharing a room with my sister and her boyfriend and before we went out on the town the first night we decided to play some blackjack with two of our friends that also came.  We ended up winning some money but instead of cashing in the chips, we decided to bring them to the room for safe keeping.  We thought if we waited to cash in the chips until my birthday, which was the following day, we could then use that money to go out to a nice dinner. We then put the chips into one of the drawers in the hotel room for safe keeping.  We then left the room to walk the strip and have a couple of drinks.  We returned to the room pretty late, we are still unsure of the exact time, and went to bed.  The next day, when we went to find the chips, there were gone! We couldn’t figure out what had happened?  My sister then said, she remembered my husband taking them out of the drawer when we got back to the room the night before and waving them around.  As soon as she said that, I immediately remembered the same thing.  I remembered him taking them out and holding them in the air and saying “look what I found”.  We couldn’t remember anything after that.  We assumed that he had lost the chips. We searched the whole room to no avail.  At that point we had given up and assumed that he had lost them.  A couple of weeks later, after my husband received much ridicule from everyone on the trip, our friend found the chips in his suit jacket pocket.  At that point, we realized we had created false memories of my husband taking the chips from the drawer in the first place.  As soon as my sister mentioned him taking the chips from the drawer, I could have bet my life on the fact that I saw him do that as well.  As the days went on, the memory seemed to become more vivid and we were convinced that he had lost the chips. Needless to say, we owed him a huge apology!

This example proves just how easy it is to create a false memory. It can be a scary thought that something that seems so real in your mind, may actually not have even happened.  This is a good reason why eye witness testimony cannot always be trusted, as not everything we remember is correct. Although eye witness testimony cannot compare to losing some poker chips, both are good examples of creating false memories.  I can still can picture my husband taking those chips out of the drawer even though we now have proof that never happened.  Although a false memory, I think I will always remember it as though it actually happened.

References

Goldstein, E. B. (2011). Cognitive psychology: Connecting mind, research, and everyday experience (3rd ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Say you are talking with a friend during a cocktail party.  The party is likely loud with many different conversations going on at once.  Although you are having a conversation of your own, you somehow hear someone from across the room say your name.  This is something that has been called the cocktail party phenomenon. So the next question is, how does this work?

The cocktail party phenomenon can be explained by the attenuation theory. The attenuation theory is one that has been studied for many years.  Treisman developed this intermediate selection theory in 1964 (Goldstein, 2011).  The theory states that all received information is processed to some extent although the unattended information is then diminished (Goldstein, 2011, p. 86).  Basically, the information that is coming in is analyzed in three ways.  The first is by its physical characteristics such as pitch and speed.  The second is its language, meaning whether the message is grouped into syllables or words. The third way the message is analyzed is its meaning and whether it can be a meaningful word or phrase to the person hearing it.

A personal example of this is when I go grocery shopping with my husband.  We usually go about once a week and tend to separate when we are there.  He goes towards the cereal and I end up in produce. However the issue then, is that only one of us has the shopping cart! My husband decided he needed to come up with something to help find me in this crowded, loud grocery store.  One day he started whistling, not too loud and usually just one quick whistle when he saw me from across the store in order to get my attention.  After doing this many times for a lot of different trips to the store, I started to hear it every time he whistled, although other shoppers tend not to notice.  Even though I am never expecting it, once I hear the whistle, I stop and look around to see where he is.  This is a great example of the cocktail party phenomenon.  Not only is this a high pitched sound, which explains the first way that incoming information is analyzed, but it also explains the third way the information is processed since it has specific meaning to me.

In general, we all experience this at some point in our lives.  Whether it is while at an actual cocktail party or a grocery store, if someone were to yell fire or mention your name, you would likely be able to pick this out of many other conversations that you might be hearing at the same time.  The attenuation theory does a great job as explaining why this phenomenon takes place.

References

Goldstein, E. B. (2011). Cognitive psychology: Connecting mind, research, and everyday experience (3rd ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Positive reinforcement has been a useful tool in shaping human and animal behaviors for countless years. Although forms of this have been used for many years, it wasn’t until 1938 that B.F. Skinner actually defined this as operant conditioning (Goldstein, 2011). The actual definition, according to Skinner, is behavior is strengthened by presentation of positive reinforces such as food or social approval (Goldstein, 2011, p. 10).  Operant conditioning has been used in a wide variety of settings with numerous subjects (Goldstein, 2011).  One of the most fascinating uses for operant conditioning is for training animals, specifically the domestic dog.

In my previous career I worked as a veterinary technician for a local SPCA.  During my time there, I worked very closely with domestic animals such as cats and dogs.  Part of my job was to train these animals to behave in appropriate ways in order to improve their chances for adoption.  The better their behavior was, the higher the likelihood they would be adopted into a good home.  Unknown to me at the time, we used operant conditioning to train these animals.

Since the SPCA was a shelter, several dogs would come in that were subjected to fighting rings.  In one specific example, a dog named Noelle was brought in one night from a dog fighting ring. She was very ill-behaved and knew no human commands. Our job now was to train Noelle to learn the basic commands, such as sit and stay.  We did this by offering positive reinforcement in the form of dog treats. Every time we would ask Noelle to sit or stay, we would then praise her and give her a treat.  After only a couple of days she was already understanding that sitting when asked, would get her a reward of a treat.  After a few weeks, her positive behavior increased dramatically, so much so that she was adopted within the first month of coming into the shelter.

In a study from ‘‘Applied Animal Behaviour Science’’ 6 dogs were chosen to participate in a multi-step positive reinforcement training protocol by using a remote controlled food dispenser. These dogs were known to have poor behavior such as barking and jumping when a person came to the front door. This study used operant conditioning to train the dogs to sit on a mat when someone approached the front door.  The researchers demonstrated that the dogs remained in a down-stay position significantly longer after operant conditioning training than dogs that were not trained (Yin, Fernandez, Pagan, Richardson, & Snyder, 2008).

Operant conditioning has been proven to reinforce positive behaviors for many years and will likely continue to do so in the future.  As shown in the experiment from “Applied Animal Behaviour Science” and my personal experiences at the SPCA, it is a great method for increasing positive behavior in animals (Yin et al., 2008).

References

Goldstein, E. B. (2011). Cognitive psychology: Connecting mind, research, and everyday experience (3rd ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Yin, S., Fernandez, E. J., Pagan, S., Richardson, S. L., & Snyder, G. (2008). Efficacy of remote-controlled, positive-reinforcement, dog-training system for modifying problem behaviors exhibited when people arrive at the door. . Applied animal behavior science, 113, 123-138. http://dx.doi.org/http://dx.doi.org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/10.1016/j.applanim.2007.11.001