Favorite Research Articles: "The Ecological Study of Memory"
Ulric Neisser, 1997, "The Ecological Study of Memory" *
http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/content/ua8eb5gtpgtjum6q/fulltext.pdf
Summary:
With "flashbulb memories"- memories made at moments of "great stress and surprise"- the stronger the memory feels, the weaker the accuracy of the memory, down to the point where people are very confident of memories where they have none of the key details correct.
Why I like this study:
1. The results of this paper apply to most people. And (or Yet) most people will insist that they aren't possibly affected. Not me- I know I have one of the most common bad flashbulb memories**. But then that is another annoyance: knowing about flashbulb memory's weaknesses doesn't keep me from experiencing them.
2. Neisser also tests if personal involvement- experiencing rather than just watching the event- changes the quality of memory. It does, for the better, in his study of people who felt the '89 Loma Prieta quake. He hypothesizes that talking about it [to the point where folks had 'no, I don't want to hear about the earthquake' shirts. I think I remember those] keeps people from mixing up imagination and video with reality.
Key sections:
Sections 5 "flashbulb memories" and 6 "the earthquake study"
Key paragraphs:
"[People who wrote their Challenger memories immediately after and then 3 years after the explosion.] The results were surprising. I myself would have been satisfied to find occasional small errors, enough to show that such memories are not infallible. But many of the errors were not small: instead, the subjects were dead wrong."
"Harsch later interviewed most of these subjects personally. They all stuck to their stories despite fairly strong hints that they might be wrong. At the end of the interview, each of them was shown his or her original 1986 questionnaire. Most of them were astonished: they recognized their handwriting and admitted that the earlier account 'must be right', but insisted that they 'still remember it this other way'. Mistaken memories may be very permanent, and they can be invested with seriously misplaced confidence."
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* Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Science 352(1362):1697-1791
** I've got the annoying and common flashbulb memory from 9/11 of "having seen the video of the 1st plane hitting on 9/11 itself." This is, of course, impossible***. I know it to be impossible. But it feels like a true memory.
***The documentarian who caught it on film had spent that day looking to see if his brother was still alive. He didn't release the tape to the media until the next day.
http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/content/ua8eb5gtpgtjum6q/fulltext.pdf
Summary:
With "flashbulb memories"- memories made at moments of "great stress and surprise"- the stronger the memory feels, the weaker the accuracy of the memory, down to the point where people are very confident of memories where they have none of the key details correct.
Why I like this study:
1. The results of this paper apply to most people. And (or Yet) most people will insist that they aren't possibly affected. Not me- I know I have one of the most common bad flashbulb memories**. But then that is another annoyance: knowing about flashbulb memory's weaknesses doesn't keep me from experiencing them.
2. Neisser also tests if personal involvement- experiencing rather than just watching the event- changes the quality of memory. It does, for the better, in his study of people who felt the '89 Loma Prieta quake. He hypothesizes that talking about it [to the point where folks had 'no, I don't want to hear about the earthquake' shirts. I think I remember those] keeps people from mixing up imagination and video with reality.
Key sections:
Sections 5 "flashbulb memories" and 6 "the earthquake study"
Key paragraphs:
"[People who wrote their Challenger memories immediately after and then 3 years after the explosion.] The results were surprising. I myself would have been satisfied to find occasional small errors, enough to show that such memories are not infallible. But many of the errors were not small: instead, the subjects were dead wrong."
"Harsch later interviewed most of these subjects personally. They all stuck to their stories despite fairly strong hints that they might be wrong. At the end of the interview, each of them was shown his or her original 1986 questionnaire. Most of them were astonished: they recognized their handwriting and admitted that the earlier account 'must be right', but insisted that they 'still remember it this other way'. Mistaken memories may be very permanent, and they can be invested with seriously misplaced confidence."
-------
* Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Science 352(1362):1697-1791
** I've got the annoying and common flashbulb memory from 9/11 of "having seen the video of the 1st plane hitting on 9/11 itself." This is, of course, impossible***. I know it to be impossible. But it feels like a true memory.
***The documentarian who caught it on film had spent that day looking to see if his brother was still alive. He didn't release the tape to the media until the next day.