The Memory Illusion

by Dr Julia Shaw

  But why does weirdness work at all? It has to do with our memory being associative by nature. If we think back to the conception of memory as a giant web of connected memory fragments in the brain, what mnemonics help us to do is make more associations than we otherwise would.

  For example, let’s imagine we need to remember COUCH, BLUE and KEVIN. We are most likely to remember this if we involve as many faculties as possible to make a good network of memory associations. In line with our associative memory networks, discussed in Chapter 3, trying to make a multisensory memory both increases the amount of effort we are putting into making it stick, and makes us create as far-reaching a network as possible. So, to make our memory we could imagine feeling the couch cushions, picture the colour as a vivid blue, and imagine hearing our friend Kevin yelling at us. If we want to add bizarreness to help it stick, we may picture Kevin with a supersized neon blue couch.

  By creating this kind of multisensory picture we are engaging many more parts of our brain than if we were to try to remember the words alone. Instead of just using the parts responsible for language, we are now actively making connections in the regions of our brain responsible for vision, touch and hearing. If we want to further improve this mnemonic, according to a review of the effect of imagery on memory recall in 2012 by cognitive psychologist Kristin Morrison and her team at Georgia Institute of Technology,8 ‘the more interacting and vivid a bizarre picture is, the more likely it will be recalled’. This means that we want our Kevin to be angrily painting his supersized neon blue couch. Interactivity matters, as it creates even more associations between concepts.

  The more potential pathways there are to a memory (the more associative links), the faster and more likely we are to get to where we need to when we try to recall it. This is really the core principle behind most memory aids; we want to make things vivid, bizarre, and part of a situation. That’s why the Never Eat Soggy Wieners acrostic from my childhood worked, it was weird and easy to remember and I could build on it to trigger my memory of North East South West.

  Another popular mnemonic is the ‘memory palace’. A memory palace, also known as the method of loci, is when we use a place for which we already have memories to build associations on. Typically this method involves forming a strong memory of a house, our palace, where we picture the exact layout and how each room is decorated. We then use that real memory as a place to store our memories. It’s a bit like having a virtual memory world where we can store real memories. When we picture ourselves going through that virtual world, we can then leave things in it, along the lines of ‘I’ll just put this memory here for now.’

  For example, we may need to remember to get eggs, yellow paint, and three spatulas from the store. To do this we might walk through our memory palace and ‘leave’ the eggs by the door on the mat, walk into the house and find the wall to our left dripping in paint, and then stumble over three spatulas attacking us as we go into the living room. When we then want to remember these items we just need to walk through our house again to find the items where we left them.

  According to author and mnemonics expert Joshua Foer, in order to remember our objects in the locations we ideally want to create a ‘comically surreal, and unforgettable, memory palace’. This works because it capitalises on the bizarreness effect, and it maximises the associations between concepts we already have in memory (our palace) with new things that we want to remember (our shopping list).

  You can see how these mnemonics, just like others that you will come across in books that propose to improve your memory, are all using associations and weirdness to their advantage. And now that you know, so can you. Go forth and be weird. Your memory will thank you.

  I prefer my version of the truth

  ‘How do you live with it?’ This is a question I get asked all the time. It seems to be asking how I can refrain from being in a state of constant despair, knowing that I cannot trust my memory. As one of my undergraduate students once said when I first began talking about this topic ‘I don’t even know what is real anymore!’

  Can we be happy knowing that our memories are highly questionable? Absolutely. Happier, I would argue. We are now less likely to be a victim of our own memories, and can assume at least some control over this elusive process. It can be distressing to think that all our memories are tainted in minor or even major ways. But this introduces a flexible creativity into reality. Memory is personal and subjective anyway, so when we are in the surprisingly common situation of being faced with multiple interpretations or versions of what happened and have no independent evidence to help us know what actually happened, we can pick the one we like best. We all prefer our versions of the truth, but when we understand memory processes we can actively weave the life we want in ways that maximise our happiness and the happiness of those around us. It allows us to treat life with a sense of magical realism, as a ‘paint by numbers’ of reality.

  Understanding the fallibility of memory also allows us to avoid the marketing policies that try to take advantage of our innate biases, like the ‘subscribe now, pay later’ models explored in an earlier chapter. It makes us less likely to be overconfident in our memory abilities. This allows us to be on our toes, so we can make decisions that are actually far more beneficial to ourselves, and less likely to be tainted by biases that we typically don’t even know are being activated. Being critical of our memories thus makes us better consumers of information and of actual goods.

  It also lets us better understand our everyday disputes with friends and family or, if they become public, with the media – à la Brian Williams. People we once may have assumed were lying are now critically approached with compassion. We know that people can get memories fundamentally wrong, believing things that never actually happened. And precisely when versions of memories fit well with who we think we are, or who we want to be, these memories may be extra likely to become part of our perceived personal past.

  Remember the story of Brian Williams, the disgraced newscaster we talked about in Chapter 7? He probably liked the idea that he was attacked by a WMD while in a helicopter, so when he began to misremember he was probably less critical of this memory than he could have been. While we can never be sure whether someone is lying to us or not, we at least now acknowledge that such situations could result from an act of misremembering.

  This knowledge also informs us about how those involved with the legal system, including victims, witnesses, suspects, and even the police themselves, can get their memories muddled. It makes us critical of accepting accounts as reliable and true when they are not corroborated with independent evidence. As the world’s single most influential false memory expert Elizabeth Loftus said in her fantastic TED talk in 2013,9 ‘Most people cherish their memories, know that they represent their identity, who they are, where they came from. And I appreciate that. I feel that way too. But I know from my work how much fiction is already in there. If I’ve learned anything from these decades of working on these problems, it’s this: just because somebody tells you something and they say it with confidence, just because they say it with lots of detail, just because they express emotion when they say it, it doesn’t mean that it really happened.’ This knowledge has the power to revolutionise the legal system and to help prevent miscarriages of justice.

  Knowing that our memories are unreliable also inspires us to seek out exactly how and when memory processes break down. For me it has proven an insanely fascinating ride, trying to figure out these memory illusions in the lab and to generate practical applications for the police, the military and the business world. I hope that for you this also proves true, as you can search for applications far and wide and open a Pandora’s box of potential fascination and intrigue, allowing you to see as amazing a process we too often take for granted. How and why we remember is a topic that never gets old.

  Finally, understanding all the shortcomings that our memory system presents allows us to adhere to a whole new ethos. Our past is a fict
ional representation, and the only thing we can be even somewhat sure of is what is happening now. It encourages us to live in the moment and not to place too much importance on our past. It forces us to accept that the best time of our lives, and our memory, is right now.

  And so I leave you. I hope you take all that you have learned from this book onwards and forwards. Spread the word about memory illusions and utilise your new-found insight into our memory processes to make your everyday life just a little bit better.

  Acknowledgements

  Fred. Without you I would not be the academic I am today. I would have dropped out in first year, run away to study fine art, and would have never written this book.

  Family made this book possible.

  Mom. Without you I would not be the woman I am today.

  Mark. Without you I would not be the artist I am today.

  Omi. Without you I would not be the lady I am today.

  Dad. Without you I would not be the intellectual I am today.

  Friends made this book possible.

  Noemi Dreksler, John Gaspar, Annelies Vredeveldt, Mara Toebbens, Sophie van der Zee, Jodie Perzan, Bianca Baker. Your support kept me going.

  Academic mentors made this book possible.

  Steve Hart. Without you I would have never studied forensic psychology.

  Steve Porter. Without you I would have never researched false memories.

  Ray Bull. Without you I would have never been so confident in my intelligence.

  Barry Beyerstein. Without you I would have never become a skeptic.

  Elizabeth Loftus. Without you there would be no applied false memory science.

  Those directly involved made this book possible.

  Kirsty McLachlan at DGA.

  Your fortuitous reading of the Evening Standard, and blind faith in me, made this book possible.

  Harry Scoble at Random House.

  Your belief in me as a writer, coupled with many months of editing, made this book possible.

  The team at DGA.

  Your belief in this book, and perseverance, sold this book ten times before it was even written.

  Christian Koth at Hanser.

  Your instant purchase of the book created a crazier storm of offers than I could have ever imagined.

  Endnotes

  Chapter 1

  1 http://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,,-2899,00.html

  2 Nahum, L., A. Bouzerda-Wahlen, A., A. Guggisberg, A., Ptak, R., & Schnider, A. (2012). Forms of confabulation: dissociations and associations. Neuropsychologia, 50 (10): 2524–34.

  3 Hyman Jr, I. E., & Pentland, J. (1996). The role of mental imagery in the creation of false childhood memories. Journal of Memory and Language, 35 (2): 101–17.

  4 Miller, G. A. (1956). The magical number seven, plus or minus two: some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychological Review, 63 (2): 81.

  5 Cowan, N. (2001). The magical number 4 in short-term memory: a reconsideration of mental storage capacity. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24: 87–185.

  6 Tamnes, C. K., Walhovd, K. B., Grydeland, H., Holland, D., Østby, Y., Dale, A. M., & Fjell, A. M. (2013). Longitudinal working memory development is related to structural maturation of frontal and parietal cortices. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 25 (10): 1611–23.

  7 http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1949/moniz-article.html

  8 Freeman, W. (1967). Multiple lobotomies. American Journal of Psychiatry, 123 (11): 1450–2.

  9 Miller, G. A. (1956). The magical number seven, plus or minus two: some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychological Review, 63 (2): 81.

  10 Wang, Q., & Peterson, C. (2014). Your earliest memory may be earlier than you think: prospective studies of children’s dating of earliest childhood memories. Developmental Psychology, 50 (6): 1680.

  11 Miles, C. (1895). A study of individual psychology. American Journal of Psychology, 6: 534–58.

  12 http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/2002/11.07/01-memory.html

  13 When Do Babies Develop Memories? http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=97848

  14 Lie, E., & Newcombe, N. S. (1999). Elementary school children’s explicit and implicit memory for faces of preschool classmates. Developmental Psychology, 35 (1): 102.

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  17 Abitz, M., Nielsen, R. D., Jones, E. G., Laursen, H., Graem, N., & Pakkenberg, B. (2007). Excess of neurons in the human newborn mediodorsal thalamus compared with that of the adult. Cerebral Cortex, 17 (11): 2573–8.

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  19 Chechik, G., Meilijson, I., & Ruppin, E. (1998). Synaptic pruning in development: a computational account. Neural Computation, 10 (7): 1759–77.

  20 Erdelyi, M. H. (1994). In Memoriam to Dr. Nicholas P. Spanos. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 42 (4).

  21 Spanos, N. P., Burgess, C. A., Burgess, M. F., Samuels, C., & Blois, W. O. (1999). Creating false memories of infancy with hypnotic and non-hypnotic procedures. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 13 (3): 201–18.

  22 Spanos, N. P., Burgess, C. A., & Burgess, M. F. (1994). Past-life identities, UFO abductions, and satanic ritual abuse: the social construction of memories. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 42 (4): 433–46.

  23 Braun, K. A., Ellis, R., & Loftus, E. F. (2002). Make my memory: How advertising can change our memories of the past. Psychology & Marketing, 19 (1): 1–23.

  24 Strange, D., Sutherland, R., & Garry, M. (2006). Event plausibility does not determine children’s false memories. Memory, 14 (8): 937–51.

  25 For more information visit arhopwood.com and falsememoryarchive.com.

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  Chapter 2

  1 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/remember-the-dress-brain-scientists-now-see-the-internet-meme-as-an-invaluable-research-tool-10251422.html

  2 Lafer-Sousa, R., Hermann, K. L., & Conway, B. R. (2015). Striking individual differences in color perception uncovered by ‘the dress’ photograph. Current Biology, 25 (13): R545 –R546.

  3 Gegenfurtner, K. R., Bloj, M., & Toscani, M. (2015). The many colours of ‘the dress’. Current Biology, 25 (13): R543 –R544.

  4 Winkler, A. D., Spillmann, L., Werner, J. S., & Webster, M. A. (2015). Asymmetries in blue–yellow color perception and in the color of ‘the dress’. Current Biology, 25 (13): R547 –R548.

  5 Gibson, J. J., & Gibson, E. J. (1955). Perceptual learning: differentiation or enrichment? Psychological Review, 62 (1): 32–41.

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  9 Cahill, L., & McGaugh, J. L. (1995). A novel demonstration of enhanced memory associated with emotional arousal. Consciousness and Cognition, 4 (4): 410–21.

  10 Schilling,
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  11 http://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2012/02/emotional-arousal.aspx

  12 Pearce, S. A., Isherwood, S., Hrouda, D., Richardson, P. H., Erskine, A., & Skinner, J. (1990). Memory and pain: tests of mood congruity and state dependent learning in experimentally induced and clinical pain. Pain, 43 (2): 187–93.

  13 Tulving, E. (2002). Chronesthesia: Conscious awareness of subjective time.

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  15 Buehler, R., Griffin, D., & Peetz, J. (2010). The planning fallacy: cognitive, motivational, and social origins. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 43, 1–62.

  16 Also important: Buehler, R., Griffin, D., & Ross, M. (1994). Exploring the ‘planning fallacy’: why people underestimate their task completion times. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67 (3): 366.

  17 Tobin, S., Bisson, N., & Grondin, S. (2010). An ecological approach to prospective and retrospective timing of long durations: a study involving gamers. PloS One, 5 (2): e9271.

  18 Gaskell, G. D., Wright, D. B., & O’Muircheartaigh, C. A. (2000). Telescoping of landmark events: implications for survey research. Public Opinion Quarterly, 64 (1): 77–89.