Form of misattribution where a memory is mistaken for imagination, because there is no subjective experience of it being a memory
False Memory
Confusion of imagination with memory, or the confusion of true memories with false memories.
Cognitive and brain mechanisms of false memories and beliefs. Marcia K Johnson, C L Raye (2000). Memory brain and belief p. 35–86
Source Confusion
Misattributing the source of a memory, e.g. misremembering that one saw an event personally when actually it was seen on television.
Hindsight bias
Filtering memory of past events through present knowledge, so that those events look more predictable than they actually were; also known as the "I-knew-it-all-along effect."
Positivity effect
Older adults remember relatively more positive than negative things, compared with younger adults
Reminiscence Bump
People tend to recall more personal events from adolescence and early adulthood than from other lifetime periods.
Rubin, Wetzler & Nebes, 1986
Rubin, Rahhal & Poon, 1998
Rosy Retrospection
Remembering the past as having been better than it really was.
Telescoping Effect
Recent events appear to have occurred more remotely and remote events appear to have occurred more recently.
Childhood Amnesia
Most people retain few memories from before the age of four.
Consistency Bias
Incorrectly recalling one's past attitudes and behavior as resembling present attitudes and behavior.
Context effect
Cognition and memory are dependent on context: Out-of-context memories are more difficult to retrieve than in-context memories (e.g., recall time and accuracy for a work-related memory will be lower at home, and vice versa)
Fading Affect Bias
Emotion associated with unpleasant memories fades more quickly than the emotion associated with positive events
Egocentric Bias
Recalling the past in a self-serving manner, e.g., remembering one's exam grades as being better than they were, or remembering a caught fish as bigger than it really was
Self-relevance Effect
Memories relating to the self tend to be better recalled than similar information relating to others.
Mood Congruent Memory Bias
Improved recall of information congruent with one's current mood.
Humor Effect
Humorous items are more easily remembered than non-humorous ones, which might be explained by the distinctiveness of humor, the increased cognitive processing time to understand the humor, or the emotional arousal caused by the humor.
Suggestibility
A form of misattribution where ideas suggested by a questioner are mistaken for memory.
Osborn Effect
Being intoxicated with a mind-altering substance makes it harder to retrieve motor patterns from the Basal Ganglion.
Shushaka, 1958
Persistence
Unwanted recurrence of memories of a traumatic event.
Memory Errors
List-length Effect
Smaller percentage of items are remembered in a longer list, but as the length of the list increases, the absolute number of items remembered increases as well.
Modality Effect
Memory recall is higher for the last items of a list when the list items were received via speech than when they were received via writing.
Leveling and Sharpening
Memory distortions introduced by the loss of details in a recollection over time, often concurrent with sharpening or selective recollection of certain details that take on exaggerated significance in relation to the details or aspects of the experience lost through leveling. Both biases may be reinforced over time, and by repeated recollection or re-telling of a memory.
Von Restorff effect
An item that "stands out like a sore thumb" is more likely to be remembered than other items.
Levels-of-processing effect
Different methods of encoding information into memory have different levels of effectiveness
Craik & Lockhart, 1972
Part-list cueing effect
Being shown some items from a list makes it harder to retrieve the other items
Slamecka, 1968
Primacy Effect, Recency Effect and Serial position Effect
Items near the end of a list are the easiest to recall, followed by the items at the beginning of a list; items in the middle are the least likely to be remembered.
Picture Superiority Effect
Concepts are much more likely to be remembered experientially if they are presented in picture form than if they are presented in word form.
Spacing Effect
Information is better recalled if exposure to it is repeated over a longer span of time.
Lag Effect
Suffix Effect
Weakening of the recency effect: When an item is appended to the list that the subject is not required to recall
Morton, Crowder & Prussin, 1971
Testing Effect
Frequent testing of material that has been committed to memory improves memory recall.
Tip of the Tongue Phenomenon
A subject is able to recall parts of an item, or related information, but is frustratingly unable to recall the whole item. This is thought an instance of "blocking" where multiple similar memories are being recalled and interfere with each other.
Verbatim Effect
The "gist" of what someone has said is better remembered than the verbatim wording
A person in a group has diminished recall for the words of others who spoke immediately before or after this person.
Peak-End Effect
People seem to perceive not the sum of an experience but the average of how it was at its peak (e.g. pleasant or unpleasant) and how it ended.
Generation Effect (Self-Generation Effect)
Self-generated information is remembered best. For instance, people are better able to recall memories of statements that they have generated than similar statements generated by others.