Hi everyone,
Our next Cognitive Workshop of the quarter will be at 12:00 PM on Thursday, May 15th in Beecher 101. Ayanna Thomas (Tufts University) will be presenting her talk “How Remembering Remakes the Past.”
Abstract:
Our reconstruction of the past is as imperfect as the construction of the new human skull recently found in Kenya. This new human skull was pieced together with recovered and degraded fossils. Some pieces were missing and all found had been altered by time. Missing pieces were constructed by archeologists using their professionally based inferences and expectations. Thus, the new human skull allows us to infer the appearance of our distant ancestor. Our memories represent a similar inference of previous events. Memories are reconstructed, rather than relived (for a similar argument see Neisser, 1967). The reconstruction is influenced by our present perspective, expectations of the future, our emotional state, and by our available cognitive resources. My research has been directed at examining the various factors that systematically influence memory construction. The research presented focuses on one aspect – retrieval – and how that one aspect systematically influences memorial and metamemorial processes. I will present research examines how the retrieval process can shape memory in both positive and negative ways- how retrieval can reduce effects of interference in a verbal-learning paradigm, how retrieval can increase susceptibility to memory distortion in an eyewitness paradigm, and how retrieval systematically potentiates learning by modulating attention. Thus, retrieval pulls together some intact and some degraded memory fossils to reconstruct the past.
Food and drink will be provided.