Ken Larsen's web site - Memory Tips/Biases
Below is a table of memory biases that I culled from this list of psychology terms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
I've ordered them top-to-bottom by what I regard as their importance:
|
Name |
Description |
1 |
Bizarre
material is better remembered than common material. |
|
2 |
Lag effect |
The
phenomenon whereby learning is greater when studying is spread
out over time, as opposed to studying the same amount of time in
a single session. See also spacing effect. |
3 |
Generation effect (Self-generation
effect) |
That
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. |
4 |
The notion
that concepts that are learned by viewing pictures are more
easily and frequently recalled than are concepts that are
learned by viewing their written word form counterparts. |
|
5 |
Humor
effect |
That
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. |
6 |
A bias in
which the emotion associated with unpleasant memories fades more
quickly than the emotion associated with positive events. |
|
7 |
That
information is better recalled if exposure to it is repeated
over a long span of time rather than a short one. |
|
8 |
That an
item that sticks out is more likely to be remembered than other
items. |
|
9 |
Processing
difficulty effect |
That
information that takes longer to read and is thought about more
(processed with more difficulty) is more easily remembered. |
10 |
Verbatim
effect |
That the
"gist" of what someone has said is better remembered than the
verbatim wording. This is because memories are representations,
not exact copies. |
11 |
The fact
that you more easily remember information you have read by
rewriting it instead of rereading it. |
|
12 |
Conservatism or Regressive bias |
Tendency
to remember high values and high
likelihoods/probabilities/frequencies as lower than they
actually were and low ones as higher than they actually were.
Based on the evidence, memories are not extreme enough. |
13 |
The
improved recall of information congruent with one's current
mood. |
|
14 |
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. |
|
15 |
Stereotypical bias |
Memory
distorted towards stereotypes (e.g., racial or gender). |
16 |
Self-relevance effect |
That
memories relating to the self are better recalled than similar
information relating to others. |
17 |
Positivity
effect (Socioemotional selectivity theory) |
That older
adults favor positive over negative information in their
memories. |
18 |
The
tendency to forget information that can be found readily online
by using Internet search engines. |
|
19 |
That
different methods of encoding information into memory have
different levels of effectiveness. |
|
20 |
That items
near the end of a sequence are the easiest to recall, followed
by the items at the beginning of a sequence; items in the middle
are the least likely to be remembered. |
|
21 |
List-length effect |
A 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. For example, consider a list of 30
items ("L30") and a list of 100 items ("L100"). An individual
may remember 15 items from L30, or 50%, whereas the individual
may remember 40 items from L100, or 40%. Although the percent of
L30 items remembered (50%) is greater than the percent of L100
(40%), more L100 items (40) are remembered than L30 items (15). |
22 |
That
memory recall is higher for the last items of a list when the
list items were received via speech than when they were received
through writing. |
|
23 |
Next-in-line effect |
When
taking turns speaking in a group using a predetermined order
(e.g. going clockwise around a room, taking numbers, etc.)
people tend to have diminished recall for the words of the
person who spoke immediately before them. |
24 |
Memory
becoming less accurate because of interference from post-event
information. |
|
25 |
A form of
misattribution where ideas suggested by a questioner are
mistaken for memory. |
|
26 |
That
uncompleted or interrupted tasks are remembered better than
completed ones. |
|
27 |
When time
perceived by the individual either lengthens, making events
appear to slow down, or contracts.
|
|
28 |
That being
shown some items from a list and later retrieving one item
causes it to become harder to retrieve the other items. |
|
29 |
The
tendency to overestimate the amount that other people notice
your appearance or behavior. |
|
30 |
That
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. |
|
31 |
The
tendency to displace recent events backward in time and remote
events forward in time, so that recent events appear more
remote, and remote events, more recent. |
|
32 |
Tip of the tongue phenomenon |
When 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 to be an instance of "blocking" where
multiple similar memories are being recalled and interfere with
each other. |
33 |
Consistency bias |
Incorrectly remembering one's past attitudes and behavior as
resembling present attitudes and behavior. |
34 |
Confusing
episodic memories with other information, creating distorted
memories. |
|
35 |
Suffix
effect |
Diminishment of the recency effect because a sound item is
appended to the list that the subject is not required to
recall. |
36 |
Travis
Syndrome |
Overestimating the significance of the present. It is related
to chronological
snobbery with possibly an appeal to novelty logical fallacy being
part of the bias. |
37 |
That
cognition and memory are dependent on context, such that
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). |
|
38 |
The
recalling of more personal events from adolescence and early
adulthood than personal events from other lifetime periods. |
|
39 |
A form of misattribution where
a memory is mistaken for imagination, because there is no
subjective experience of it being a memory |
|
40 |
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. |
|
41 |
The
tendency for people of one race to have difficulty identifying
members of a race other than their own. |
|
42 |
A form of misattribution where
imagination is mistaken for a memory. |