Memory Limitations

10. MEMORY LIMITATIONS

Everyone complains of his memory, and no one complains of his judgment.

• Francois Due de la Rochefoucauld

Our memory is selective. We remember certain things and distort or forget others. Every time we recall an event, we reconstruct our memories. We only remember fragments of our real past experiences. Fragments influenced by what we have learned, our experiences, beliefs, mood, expectations, stress, and biases. Certain experiences create strong feelings and are therefore more memorable than others. Dramatic or fearful experiences or events stick in our memories. Emotion can make an experience memorable without making every remembered detail accurate. A vivid story may help students remember an idea, but recall also depends on attention, context, and how the material is taught.

Psychologist Daniel Schacter proposes in The Seven Sins of Memory that our memory's malfunctions can be divided into seven "sins."

(1) Our memory weakens and we lose memory over time. (2) We are preoccupied with distracting issues and don't focus attention on what we need to remember. (3) We search for information that we may be desperately trying to retrieve - something we know that we know - but are blocked. (4) We assign memory to the wrong source. (5) Memories are implanted as a result of leading questions, comments, or suggestions when we try to call up a past experience. (6) Our present knowledge influences how we remember our pasts. We often edit or entirely rewrite our previous experiences. (7) We recall disturbing events that we would prefer to eliminate from our minds altogether: remembering what we cannot forget, even though we wish that we could.

Individuals remember the same things differently. We remember events that never happened or assign what happened to the wrong place, time or person. Studies show that memories of emotional experiences are often different from what actually happened. We misinterpret what we saw. That is why there are variations in eyewitness accounts. Mistaken eyewitness identification, including the identification of strangers, has contributed to wrongful convictions.

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"/never forget a face."

Bevelin recounts an incident in which Australian psychologist Donald Thomson appeared on a live TV debate about the unreliability of eyewitness testimony. He was later picked up by the police, placed in a lineup, and identified by a victim as the man who had raped her. In this account, Thomson had an alibi: the assault occurred while he was on TV. It later turned out that the rapist had attacked the woman as she was watching the very show on which Thomson had appeared.

Studies show that we remember a face but wrongly remember the time and place we saw it. Leading and suggestive questions can cause misidentification, and influence by information obtained after the event. After a delay, misleading information or suggestive questioning can alter what a witness reports remembering. Psychology Professor Elisabeth Loftus' work has shown that people can be led to remember rather familiar and common experiences, even when they had not happened. For example, her studies show that people can believe that a childhood experience had happened when it never happened.

Studies show that jurors believe witnesses even when they are later shown to have made an incorrect identification. Eyewitnesses can be highly inaccurate but appear confident. Confidence and detail can make a witness persuasive, even when the account contains errors. Neither quality alone establishes accuracy.

Children’s reports can also be affected by suggestive questioning. Experiments described here show that some children come to report events that did not happen, sometimes adding vivid details over time. This is a reason to examine how an account was elicited, rather than assume that either detail or the witness’s age settles its reliability.

Keep in mind

• Keep records of important events.