Biology Forums - Study Force

Discuss how our memories both serve us well and lead to memory errors.

•   Memories can serve us well in different ways.
•   When asking people to recognize whether they have seen a particular object previously, or presenting information in a multiple-choice format, many people are able to show strikingly good recall of information (above 90 percent accuracy).
•   There are certain people who have naturally gifted memory abilities. For some, this allows them to remember quite clearly many of the events that have occurred throughout their lives. For others, it means that they are able to encode and retrieve large amounts of information from several specific domains (like Rajan’s ability to recall long lists of digits from the number pi).
•   Human memory, however, is far from perfect.
•   Rather than functioning like an uncorrupted computer file or videotape of the event, our memories are reconstructions rather than representations of the past. These reconstructions can be influenced by suggestions from authority figures, such as therapists or the police, and lead to the implanting of false memories.
•   Our normal adaptive memory processes lead us to remember seeing or hearing things that were not presented (e.g., remembering the word sleep after reading a list of words that were all related to the word sleep but did not actually contain it). This reconstruction can also occur because we fail to encode certain information and then fill in the gaps in our memories with our best guesses about what occurred. This can lead to errors in memory due to misattribution and bias, as well as transience, absentmindedness, blocking, and persistence.