False Memories

Not All Memories Are Created Equal

Memory is not perfect. It does not record like a tape recorder or video camera. Instead, people tend to store bits of information from their experiences. These portions of memory are susceptible to distortion because memory is a reconstructive process. People tend to create memories from the various bits of stored information in their brain each time they remember something. In the process, details are sometimes changed or chunks of new material added.

Another reason for imperfect memory is that people tend to store the gist of events in their memories instead of the details. Not all events that people experience end up being stored as long-term memories. Many aspects of daily life go unnoticed or are quickly forgotten. For example, people fail miserably when asked to describe a U.S. penny because details, such as the way Abraham Lincoln is facing and the location of the date on the penny, simply aren't important enough to be remembered.

Time is also important to people's ability to recall information. Memories fade as time passes and become more prone to distortion. Also, the phenomenon of infantile amnesia makes it difficult for people to remember events from when they were very young. Adults generally cannot remember events that occurred before age 2, even if the events were very important or traumatic.

Distortion in Memory

How does memory distortion occur? One important influence on memory is called a schema. Schemas are ways of organizing knowledge into predictable patterns or expectations. For example, people have schemas about how certain types of people are expected to behave (stereotypes) and about how events are supposed to happen (such as how to behave in a restaurant). By providing a “script” for how events are supposed to unfold, schemas act as energy savers that allow the mind to take shortcuts when processing information.

Usually these shortcuts work well, but sometimes they mislead memory. For example, when people are presented with a list of words that include bed, rest, and dream, but not the word sleep, and they are asked to recall all the presented words, people often falsely report the word sleep as being part of the list. This occurs because the list of words forms a script that is highly consistent with sleep. Because people's memories are influenced by schemas, they sometimes “remember” things that are consistent with the script for an event, even though those events did not occur.

False memories also occur when people make mistakes about the source of certain information. For instance, someone could mistakenly recall an event happening to him or her when in reality the person merely dreamed or imagined it. Source monitoring errors occur when information is recalled correctly, but the source is not.

...