Memory Biases

  • Cryptomnesia 
  • False memory 
  • Hindsight bias
  • Source Confusion 
  • Source amnesia
  • Mood congruent memory bias
  • Self-relevance effect
  • Next-in-line effect
  • Osborn effect
  • Peak-end effect
  • Positivity effect 

  • Processing difficulty effect
  • Reminiscence bump 
  • Rosy retrospection
  • Persistence
  • Childhood amnesia
  • Consistency bias
  • Context effect
  • Fading affect bias
  • Egocentric bias
  • Humor effect
  • Generation effect
  • Suggestibility
  • Tip of the tongue phenomenon
  • Verbatim effect

Memory Errors

  • List-length effect
  • Modality effect
  • Leveling and Sharpening
  • Lag effect
  • Telescoping effect
  • Von Restorff effect
  • Levels-of-processing effect
  • Part-list cueing effect
  • Picture superiority effect
  • Primacy effect
  • Suffix effect
  • Testing effect

Memory Biases

Cryptomnesia

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
  • Poppenk, Walia, Joanisse, Danckert, & Köhler, 2006

Next-in-Line Effect

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.