Category: Memory

Some of the most widespread beliefs about memory are myths and misconceptions.

One of the classic criticisms levelled at psychology is that it’s just common sense.

And there’s nothing that winds up psychologists more than having this old saw repeated back to them.

If it’s true we should be able to ask the general public six easy questions about the psychology of, let’s say, memory, and they should do pretty well.

After all, everyone has a mind of their own and can introspect and see what’s going on inside it, so they should be able to answer these questions easily, shouldn’t they?

Myths about memory

Simons and Chabris (2011) had 1,838 Americans polled with six basic statements, testing some common myths about memory.

Great care was taken to try and get a representative sample of the general population.

Their responses were compared with those of almost 100 psychologists.

Amongst these were 16 professors with at least 10 years experience in researching memory.

The statements are all below in their original form:

1. “People suffering from amnesia typically cannot recall their own name or identity.”

Fully 83 percent of people agreed either ‘mostly’ or ‘strongly’ with this statement.

In contrast, all the experts disagreed ‘mostly’ or ‘strongly’ with this statement.

In fact, people suffering from amnesia normally can remember their own name and identity, so it is a myth about memory.

The reason people get this so wrong is probably because they are often exposed to incredibly inaccurate depictions of amnesia.

Films like ‘The Bourne Identity’ (and every sitcom ever made that uses an amnesia plot) are partly to blame; while films like ‘Memento’, with its much more accurate depiction of amnesia, are in the minority.

2. “In my opinion, the testimony of one confident eyewitness should be enough evidence to convict a defendant of a crime.”

37 percent of the public agreed, while all 16 experts disagreed.

Actually eyewitness testimony can be frighteningly inaccurate, so it is another of the myths about memory.

One of the problems with memory is that people are surprisingly suggestible.

Even relatively small differences in the way eyewitnesses are handled can have a huge impact on what they claim to have seen.

For a good example have a look at this article on suggestibility.

3. “Human memory works like a video camera, accurately recording the events we see and hear so that we can review and inspect them later.”

63 percent of the public agreed, while all 16 experts disagreed.

This is a surprisingly high percentage given how most people frequently have problems recalling basic facts.

In fact, it is one of the myths about memory, since it works nothing like a video camera.

In reality, what we recall is affected by our current emotional state, our motivations and so on.

And, of course, a lot of the time we can’t remember it at all.

See this article on the short-term memory vs. long-term memory.

4. “Hypnosis is useful in helping witnesses accurately recall details of crimes.”

55 percent of the public agreed, while 14 experts disagreed and 2 didn’t know or thought it was unclear.

Hypnosis is a bit more controversial, but still the public had a lot more faith in it than the psychologists.

Part of the problem with hypnosis is that it can make people incredibly suggestible to completely false information.

Through hypnosis, eyewitnesses can come to believe things that never happened.

One great example is the ‘lost in the mall‘ study.

5. “People generally notice when something unexpected enters their field of view, even when they’re paying attention to something else.”

78 percent of the public agreed and 13 experts disagreed, while 3 agreed.

This one was the most controversial for the experts, but probably because there’s little evidence about how often we fail to notice when something unexpected comes into view.

The general point here is that people are much more absent-minded than they think.

That’s because of the paradox that we don’t notice what we don’t notice.

For all the classic examples check out this article on absent-mindedness.

6. “Once you have experienced an event and formed a memory of it, that memory does not change.”

48 percent of the public agreed while 15 experts disagreed and one thought it was unclear.

This is yet another myth about memory.

Actually even so-called ‘flashbulb memories’—like where you were when Kennedy was shot—can be quite inaccurate or easily change over time.

For a great example of how malleable memories are, check out this previous article on misattribution, how memories are distorted and invented.

Not common sense

By and large, then, according to memory experts, all these statements are false — they are all myths about memory.

So, should anyone say to you: “psychology is just common sense”, try asking them if they agree with a couple of the above six statements.

If they do, your work is done.

You’ll have spotted that the context for these questions is often related to eyewitness testimony.

That’s because in court, lay beliefs about memory are so important. Simons and Chabris conclude by saying:

“The prevalence of mistaken beliefs in the general public implies that similar misunderstandings likely are common among jurors and could well lead to flawed analyses of testimony that involves memory. At least for these basic properties of memory, commonsense intuitions are more likely to be wrong than right.”

Try not to think about what kind of effect these mistaken models of how memory works have on our legal system and public life in general or you’re likely to become mighty depressed.

→ Continue reading: Facts About Memory: 10 Interesting Things You Should Know

Learning to play music can have a powerful effect on long-term memory and overall brain function.

Professional musicians show superior long-term memory compared with non-musicians, research shows.

Their brains are also capable of much faster neural responses in key areas of the brain related to decision-making, memory and attention.

The results were presented at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in Washington, DC (Schaeffer et al., 2014).

Dr Heekyeong Park, who led the study, said:

“Musically trained people are known to process linguistic materials a split second faster than those without training, and previous research also has shown musicians have advantages in working memory.

What we wanted to know is whether there are differences between pictorial and verbal tasks and whether any advantages extend to long-term memory.

If proven, those advantages could represent an intervention option to explore for people with cognitive challenges.”

Music and memory study

The 14 professional musicians in the study — all of whom had been playing for 15 years — were given a series of pictures and words to remember.

Their results on a long-term memory test were compared with a group of 15 non-musicians.

While they did the test, their neural responses were measured using electroencephalography (EEG) technology.

The musicians had the advantage in long-term memory for the pictures, although not the verbal items.

Measures of the musicians’ brain function also showed that their neural response was faster than non-musicians.

Areas in the mid-frontal region — those associated with decision-making — were between one-third and half-a-second faster.

In the parietal lobes — which are associated with the senses, memory and attention — their neural response were sometimes almost one second faster than non-musicians.

It’s not yet known why these advantages in processing and memory occur, but Dr. Park speculates that learning to navigate musical scores may be partly responsible.

This study adds to a growing body of evidence showing that musical training has a wonderful positive effect on cognitive abilities.

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Dramatic examples of false memory, implanting false memories and seminal research by Professor Elizabeth Loftus.

A false memory in psychology is a fabricated or distorted recollection.

False memories could be imaginary, distorted or even implanted by someone else.

False memories are common because memory is not a perfect recording device.

Instead, memory is highly prone to influence, as we shall see in these dramatic false memory examples.

False memory example: The George Franklin case

In 1990 George Franklin became the first ever US citizen convicted of murder by a witness who recovered false memories more than 20 years after the event.

The fact that the witness was Franklin’s daughter, Eileen, ensured the case was splashed across the news media.

Franklin was released in 1996 after 6 years in prison when irregularities were discovered in Eileen’s evidence: it emerged she had been hypnotised before testifying, when the false memory was probably created.

There is a good reason why hypnotised witnesses are barred from testifying in some jurisdictions: under hypnosis people are highly suggestible to false memory.

Implanting false memories

Even without hypnosis, studies show that people’s memories are open to influence.

But, can it be demonstrated in the lab that a false memory can be implanted?

False memories are hard to research for one simple reason: it’s difficult to verify whether a false memory is really false or not (Loftus, 1993).

Often a considerable amount of time has passed since the original event and it’s not possible to corroborate what people say a false memory.

But, while it’s difficult, it’s not impossible – it just takes some concerted effort.

Elizabeth Loftus, Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Irvine, has been at the forefront of psychological research into false memory and repressed memories and testified in George Franklin’s case.

She has also carried out some fascinating research into the possibility of implanting a false memory.

False memory of being lost in the mall

In a seminal false memory study Loftus and Pickrell (1995) recruited 24 participants who were to be presented with four stories from when they were between 4 and 6 years old, three of which were true, and one false.

To get the true stories, the researchers spoke to participants’ relatives to get three events for each person which had really happened.

The events were chosen so that they were not traumatic or emotionally difficult to recall.

Each family was also asked to provide the circumstances of another event that could possibly have happened, but didn’t.

This was the target false memory to be implanted.

In each case the false memory was for getting lost in a shopping mall.

Relatives provided details for the false memory of a specific shopping mall it could have been along with other details to make the fake story plausible.

They also confirmed that an event like this had not actually occurred — it definitely was a false memory.

Do you remember this false memory?

Participants themselves were told they were involved in a study about their ability to recall details of childhood memories.

They weren’t told it was about false memory.

Each participant was first sent a written description of the four events their relatives had outlined – three being real and one being the false memory.

They were then asked to write down which events they remembered and more details of the events those events.

Then, soon after, participants were interviewed.

At this point they were reminded about the four memories and asked to recall as much as they could about them.

At a second interview a week later, a similar procedure was followed.

At the end of both interviews participants rated the clarity of their memories, including the false memory.

It was then revealed to them that one was a false memory and they were asked to guess which one it was.

Of the 24 participants, 5 falsely recalled the false memory as a real memory, although participants understandably found the false memory much less clear.

This may seem like quite an unimpressive proportion, but considering the very low level of suggestion or coercion involved in the interviews, it does at least show the possibility of implanting false memories.

Up to half believe a false memory

A later study with more participants which examined a wider range of memories was carried out by Hyman and Pentland (1996).

This found that, depending on experimental variables, at least some kind of false memory could be implanted in between 20 percent and 40 percent of participants.

But psychologists have done better.

In a fantastically titled paper, ‘A picture is worth a thousand lies’, Kimbereley Wade and colleagues used a doctored photograph of a fictitious balloon flight to implant false memories (Wade et al., 2002).

Using similar interview procedures to Loftus and Pickrell (1995), they found that 50 percent of participants created either complete or partial false memories of the flight.

The false memory case of Paul Ingram

Critics argue that the problem with these sorts of studies is that they only implant inconsequential memories.

Traumatic memories, such as those claimed by George Franklin’s daughter, might be a completely different matter.

This is a fair point and difficult to refute because it would be highly unethical to implant traumatic memories into participants.

Well, actually this has been done, in one of the most bizarre and dramatic false memory experiments ever documented.

In 1988 Paul Ingram, a police officer, was arrested for sexually abusing his two daughters, an allegation he strongly denied.

Over an extended period of five months, however, he was subjected to pressure by fellow police officers, psychologists and other advisors, suggesting he had committed child abuse, including having raped his own daughters.

Eventually Ingram began to confess to all manner of rapes, child sexual abuses and even to participation in a Satan-worshipping cult which had allegedly murdered 25 babies.

At one point the prosecution brought in the renowned memory researcher, Dr Richard Ofshe, now Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley.

He was asked to interview Ingram.

Ofshe soon became suspicious of Ingram’s credibility.

In order to test Ingram, he made up a story that his son and daughter claimed he had forced them to have sex with each other while he watched.

This was something Ofshe confirmed with both son and daughter had not actually happened.

Over a period of hours, and despite initially denying the memory, Ingram slowly began to generate these false memories.

Ultimately Ingram wrote a three-page confession to a crime that was completely fabricated.

What else might he have fabricated under this kind of intense pressure?

Unfortunately for Paul Ingram, Ofshe’s report wasn’t issued until after he had already confessed to the crimes and been convicted.

He was then unable to withdraw his guilty plea.

Paul Ingram remained in jail until 2003 and is still a registered sex offender despite many doubting his guilt.

The extremes of false memory

The case of Paul Ingram along with the experimental studies on false memory probably represent two extremes of a continuum.

At one end, when politely asked within the context of a psychology study, some people can be induced into believing relatively benign false memories.

Perhaps as many as 50 percent.

At the other end, when placed under incredible psychological pressure, like Paul Ingram, who knows what people will claim to remember.

→ This post is part of a series on the seven sins of memory:

1. Short-Term Memory vs. Long-Term Memory: Definition And Examples
2. Absent-Mindedness: 2 Factors That Cause Forgetfulness
3. Tip-of-the-Tongue Phenomenon Or Lethologica
4. Misattribution: How Memories are Distorted and Invented
5. Suggestibility: How Memory Is Biased By Suggestions
   • False Memory: Dramatic Examples Of Fake Memories
6. Commitment and Consistency Bias: How It Warps Memory
7. Long-Term Memory: When Persistence Is A Curse

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Scientists have found that phenolic compounds in this drink can help improve spatial memory.

One to three glasses of champagne each week could slow memory loss from ageing, research finds.

Scientists have found that phenolic compounds in champagne can help improve spatial memory.

The phenolic compounds come from the Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier red grapes which are used alongside Chardonnay in the production of champagne.

The compounds affect the signals sent from the hippocampus to the cortex.

The compounds were found to slow the age-related decline in this signalling.

Professor Jeremy Spencer, an expert on phytochemicals and brain function, said:

“These exciting results illustrate for the first time that the moderate consumption of champagne has the potential to influence cognitive functioning, such as memory.

Such observations have previously been reported with red wine, through the actions of flavonoids contained within it.

However, our research shows that champagne, which lacks flavonoids, is also capable of influencing brain function through the actions of smaller phenolic compounds, previously thought to lack biological activity.

We encourage a responsible approach to alcohol consumption, and our results suggest that a very low intake of one to two glasses a week can be effective.”

The research was carried out on rodents, but Dr David Vauzour, one of the study’s authors, said:

“In the near future we will be looking to translate these findings into humans.

This has been achieved successfully with other polyphenol-rich foods, such as blueberry and cocoa, and we predict similar outcomes for moderate champagne intake on cognition in humans.”

The study was published in the journal Antioxidants and Redox Signalling (Corona et al., 2013)