Research shows us what we think is total recall may be a mass of distortion. Never forget
MOST PEOPLE TEND to think of memory as some kind of refined recording device, and we are often extremely confident about the accuracy of our memories. The evidence does not support such certainty, however. How many times have you had disputes with colleagues or family about events that you all witnessed but recall quite differently?
One of the pioneering researchers in the area of memory is Elizabeth Loftus of the University of California at Irvine and the University of Washington. She has demonstrated the unreliability of memory in many contexts and has developed techniques whereby false memories can be implanted in significant numbers of research subjects.
Memories are constructive in nature and are influenced by present needs, desires, misinformation, leading questions and so on. Memory is so malleable that we really need objective corroborative evidence to be assured of its accuracy.
Experiments involving witness accounts of car crashes resulted in varying accounts of aspects of the scene. Also, if asked to estimate the speed at which the vehicles involved were travelling when they “contacted/hit/smashed” into each other, subjects’ responses were influenced by the language used, with perceived speed increasing in line with the choice of particular descriptor.
Experimental evidence from police line-ups following a mock crime indicated that about 30 per cent of witnesses picked a person from a group not containing the perpetrator.
When told (wrongly) that the perpetrator was in the line-up, 78 per cent of people chose someone. Findings such as these cast doubt on the dependability of witness accounts in obtaining convictions.
The most famous formula for creating false memories is referred to as the lost-in-the-mall technique. Participants in the experiment were told that they were lost in a shopping centre when they were five years old. They were very upset but were found by an elderly person who reunited them with their family. Over time this contrived episode was accepted, embellished and experienced as a real memory. This effect has been replicated using many kinds of scenes, including being hospitalised, being attacked by a wild animal and witnessing scenes of demonic possession.
Loftus’s work in this area was precipitated by concern about a rash of claims regarding recovered memories of sexual abuse. Many of these memories were elicited in therapy sessions and turned out to be false.
It is important to emphasise, however, that not all recovered memories are false, but there is, as yet, no reliable way to distinguish between those that are true and those that are false without independent evidence.
In some cases parents have suffered enormous distress following false allegations arising during therapy sessions. A number of therapists have been successfully sued when independent evidence has clearly contradicted claims made. Recurrence of this problem has reduced significantly as a direct consequence of Loftus’s work.
Jean Piaget, the famous child psychologist, claimed that his earliest memory was of being nearly kidnapped at the age of two. He remembered a lot of details, and these had been reinforced as he talked about them over time with his nurse and family. The memory was confirmed as false many years later, when his nurse admitted that she had made up the story.
The psychologist blogger Mr Shea recounts how as an 11-year-old he and his cousin watched the 1960 Olympic Games from Rome. Part of the huge excitement he felt came from being allowed to stay up late. He realised many years later that these memories, though vivid, could not possibly be true, as he lived near Windsor in Canada. Midnight there corresponds to 6am in Rome – a little too early for competition to be under way.
In his new book Subliminal, Leonard Mlodinow points out that the situation regarding memory was concisely summed up many years ago by the German psychologist Hugo Munsterberg: people have a good memory for the general gist of events but a poor one for details. When pressed for details they will fill in the gaps by making things up and, perhaps most importantly, will believe what they make up.
Munsterberg hypothesises that, given the mind-numbing amount of data with which we are continually bombarded, we have traded perfect recall for the ability to process so much information.
For an excellent case study account of the perils of a perfect memory, I recommend AR Luria’s wonderful little book The Mind of a Mnemonist.
Remember, when it comes to memory, inaccuracy is the rule, not the exception.
Paul O’Donoghue is a clinical psychologist and founding member of the Irish Skeptics Society; contact@irishskeptics.org