Memory's Faults

On my way to the gym from work i listen to NPR to get caught up on the happenings in the world. They tend to run their wrap of the news on the half hour marks, but I get out to my car shortly after that. If it is still early in the hour they will typically go in depth with one of the larger news stories of the day, bringing in people to interview and give their opinions on events. If it is later in the hour you may catch stories about how cow bells were used in 70's era rock songs and have since all but disappeared, or one like that aired on Wednesday February 9th about how memory can fail.

It went on to say that the memory actually ends up distorting the truth. Granted the human brain could not simply capture all of the detail that occurs at a single event, it would be over whelming, but getting the gist of it typically comes naturally. They used the verdict of the OJ Simpson case about eight years ago as an example. They asked students at a college in California several days after the verdict was announced where they were when it was announced. In as little as 32 months time answers started to vary where they heard the verdict (Allow me to gloat a bit here, I was in my high school keyboarding class when Ms. Igo, the teacher came in and told us that he was not guilty. I vividly remember talking to a couple of people in the class and put my personal prediction of what the verdict was going to be, that being not guilty. Although I still to this day say he did kill them, even though he was found innocent). "The source of information becomes critical, but the brain confuses information gained directly from the senses with information from the imagination or from another persons suggestion."

Elizabeth Loftus is a memory expert at the University of California at Irvine; she says it is extraordinarily easy to induce false memories about people’s childhoods. Since the gist of the memory is there one could simply embellish what happened with details of things that never did happen.

Granted this is not earth shattering, people do forget things – but I found the story interesting regardless.