According to studies by Brewer (1988) and Linton (1982), more memorable events are more likely to be recalled (PSWC, 2015).My mother has always been very overprotective when it comes to her three children (the youngest being our dog/brother Diesel). I can recall vividly when my older brother suffered from an asthma prompting my mother to spring into super overprotective mode. I was around age six and he was around 11. During school hours my brother had experienced chest tightness and severe shortness of breath. Oddly enough he also had forgotten his inhaler prompting the school nurse to call my mother at work. My mother works about twenty-five minutes away from my school but somehow magically appeared in ten minutes flat. As my brother and I were waiting in the main office for my mom to arrive we suddenly hear high heeled shoes running down the floor at high speeds. After she hurriedly completes the early dismissal for my brother and I, we begin to run towards the car. To enter the school there are flight of short steep concrete steps on the outside. As we near the stairs I warn her that she should stop running as kids often fall around the stairs. As my mom practically flies around the corner in a panic with my brother in tail her, she suddenly falls down the stairs. As all of the children within eyesight of the tumble die of laugher, my brother and I reach the bottom he asks “Mommy are you ok?” while I simply state “ Told ya so”.
Memory is an active process that is constructive in nature. A simple definition for a false memory is a memory or recollection of an event that did not actually occur. My mother recalls a very different memory compared to my own. According to my Mother she actually went to the school because I was having an allergic reaction to strawberries jelly and needed immunotherapy or an allergy shot. Please keep in mind that we didn’t find out I was allergic to strawberries until I was around 11 years old. However if you let my mother tell it she rolled down the stairs due to a faulty high heeled shoe. According to Lesson 9 Everyday memory and memory errors my mother’s false memory is due to the fact that memory is not a recording of an experience but rather is a moldable and malleable recollection (PSWC, 2015). The only recollection of the memory we could agree on is my comment at the end of the tumble “Told ya So!”.
*No one was harmed in this situation besides my Mom’s knee and pride
REFERENCES
Pennsylvania State University World Campus., (2015),. Lesson 9: Everyday Memory and Memory Errors., Retrieved from: https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/su15/psych256/001/content/10_lesson/04_page.html
