How Memory Errors Occur?

Memory errors happened in real life, and they are several cases mentioned in news articles. The cases showed the consequences for their mistakes, and researchers revealed the reasons behind their loss of memories and how it is possible for people to make mistakes about events.

“Brian Williams was a famous news anchor on NBC for many years he said that he was in the helicopter in 2003 during the US invasion in Iraq and the helicopter was forced down. The truth was that he was in another helicopter, not the one which was forced down. According to the science of memory article, “He said he remembered the event differently than they occurred. He also blamed the mistake on “fog of memory over 12 years.” “ Many experts, especially Psychological Science, are still working on finding the reasons for false memories. They found new factors on how our memories are formed and how they change as times pass.” (The science of memory, 2015).

Memory distortions were when something went wrong in the mind, and it can happen without the knowledge of the person. Some studies attach memory distortion to a less IQ, and it can result after posttraumatic stress or traumas.

Based on the text, “Some processes that contribute to adaptive responding also result in an error. In this article, I call them constructive adaptive processes, which I define as processes that play a functional role in memory and cognition but produce distortions, errors, or illusions because of doing so. Adaptive constructive methods are not uniquely characteristic of memory. “Schacter, D. L. (2012).

A person can forget something without meaning to it. In the text it states “Gist-based memory errors occur when people falsely remember a novel item that is similar to an issue that they encountered previously, making their memory decision based on the gist of what happened (Brainerd & Reyna, 2005; Koutstaal & Schacter, 1997). “Schacter, D. L. (2012).

At times a person can imagine that something happened, and the person does not check to make sure that he or she thinks is accurate. The area in the brain which deal with adaptive interpretation are active during both associative/gist-base false understanding and correct or precise recognition.

Within the reading, it states “The third kind of memory distortion that Schacter, Guerin, and St. Jacques (2011) discussed within an adaptive framework is known as imagination inflation: Imagining events can lead to false memories that the event actually occurred (e.g., Garry, Manning, Loftus, & Sherman,1996; Loftus, 2003).” Schacter, D. L. (2012).

According to the Neisser’s challenge, you can remember a certain amount of words from a list of 48 concrete and abstract concepts when you see them for four seconds, and people cannot remember things that happened from your life before age 3. They also explained autobiographical memory and autobiographical facts. “”

Brian Williams might have deal with autobiographical memory forgetting because of the severity of the event. Also, according to Wang & Ross (2007), Euro-American cultures are more likely to recall specific episodes (autobiographical memories).

“One way in which the effects of stress can manifest themselves in an eyewitness scenario is through a phenomenon termed weapon focus. The presence of a weapon can serve to focus one’s attention quite narrowly, resulting in a lack of peripheral detail(e.g., the features of the perpetrator) in the memory representation, although the central aspect (e.g., the weapon) is remembered quite well (Cutler, Penrod, & Martens, 1987; Kramer, Buckhout, & Eugenio, 1989). “Robinson-Riegler, B., & Robinson-Riegler, G. L. (2012).

Memories errors can be prevented or lessened by keeping our mind healthy keep in touch with people and activities which can help you with what you need to remember. “In the case of the DRM memory illusion, fuzzy trace theory would propose that when the critical (but nonpresented) lure is presented at retrieval, it strongly activates the gist traces that were encoded as a result of presentation of the other list items. This activation is so strong that the lure is mistakenly experienced as a recalled item. Similarly, the other memory illusions discussed, such as imagination inflation, occur because misleading or suggestive information increases the strength of gist information related to the target event. At retrieval, activation of these gist traces can lead to a strong (but false) subjective experience of recollection.”Robinsonn-Riegler, B., & Robinson-Riegler, G. L. (2012).

Reference

Madill, A., & Holch, P. (2004). A Range of Memory Possibilities: The Challenge of the false Memory Debate for Clinicians and Researchers. Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy, 11(5), 299–310. doi:10.1002/cpp.378

Schacter, D. L. (2012). Adaptive constructive processes and the future of memory. American Psychologist, 67(8), 603–613. doi:10.1037/a0029869

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