False Memories In Different Settings. A guest post by Kyle Luke.

                Eye witness testimony is commonly used in court cases, and they often play a major role in the verdicts.   Whether it is the witness picking someone out of a lineup or stating under oath what they witnessed, memory plays a major role.  With all the emphasis placed on eye witness testimony it is surprising how inaccurate most of the testimonies and statements are.  This is not because the witnesses are purposely lying but because at how horribly unreliable a person’s memory is.  For almost everyone once a memory is encoded it almost instantly starts deteriorating,  it also does not help that each time a memory is recalled it is re-encoded which means the original memory changes a little.  It also is not uncommon for a person to develop false memories especially while being interrogated.  In fact false memories are actually much more common than most people think. 

                A good number of memories that a person has are actually false memories.  Now the difficulty with false memories is that the person who has them strongly believes that they are true.  Actually when Professor Weinstein mentioned how most of our childhood memories were likely to be false memories I was upset as she said we likely would be.  I believe that I have a pretty good memory and I think that all the memories from my childhood actually occurred yet, I know that it is unlikely to be true.  It also may have to do with my source confusion.  For example in my previous blog I mentioned how I was two or three and running around ToonTown, however it is very possible that I remember doing that when I was four or five and the reason that I believe I was younger is that I know I went to Florida every year when I was little.   The event may also be based on a photo that I have seen of myself with my parents in ToonTown.  A strong reason for why I even remember the event is the constant reinforcement I had from continually visiting the same location every year.

                Another memory that I have which is very vivid is my memory of the morning of September 11^th.  I remember sitting at my desk in fourth grade and having my principal walk in go straight to my teacher and whisper something in her ear.  My teacher than grabbed her purse and bolted out of the room.  My principal stayed and took over teaching the class.  I remember wondering what was going on and why several students were getting picked up early.  It was only after my mother picked me up after school ended and turned on the television that I realized something bad had happened.  Being a young fourth grader I could not grasp the situation but I remember just thinking to myself that they could just fix the building or rebuild it and everything would be all right because the police, firefighters, and paramedics were at the scene.  I find it interesting that even though I was young and did not fully grasp the situation I was able to encode what I had seen and my feelings.  I think the reason I was able to encode this was because of how startling it was to see a teacher run and how odd it was.  Another reason may be the guilt I feel that my first thought was not about all the lives that were lost in the event but of the buildings themselves.  Looking back now I feel guilty for even thinking about the building.  Finally possibly the biggest reason I am able to remember this event was because of how many times that I have recalled and discussed this memory.  By doing this I was practicing rehearsal of the event and it is extremely likely that because of this the details about the memory have changed substantially from the actual event.  Yet, whether it happened this way or not I know that this memory will always be with me.