I am fascinated by the concepts that are so collectively misunderstood by our society at large, memory being a main contender for first place. Memory is was more flexible and malleable than most of us consider it to be and it is understandable why we hold this idea. Memories can feel so impactful and secure, the idea that is isn’t as such can be jarring. However, there are many ways memories can be changed or distorted including experiences being incorrectly processed during encoding making them seem like past memories (looking at you déjà vu) or how the act of rehearsing or revisiting a memory can actually change it (known as retrieval-enhanced suggestibility). The most curious to me, however, is the idea of false memories. Imagine believing something happened to you with full conviction, only to later learn it didn’t. This is seemingly what happened the Brian Williams.

Brian Williams is a recognizable face to most Americans, being a trusted reporter, news correspondence, and tv host for decades on various networks. Having firmly established himself within the news reporting sphere, Williams assumed a heavy role in reporting during the Iraq war conflict, one of which reports caused a huge sensations and media backlash when it was discovered to be wildly inaccurate and essentially, false. In 2015, Williams recalled an event that had happened 12 years earlier, in which a helicopter he was traveling in was hit by a rocket propelled grenade during a visit to airfield in Bosnia. It turns out, after a reaction from the pilot of the helicopter that did get hit by grenade fire that day, Williams was not on his flight. In fact, he was miles away for the event at the time. So why did Williams remember himself being there that day?

It would be irresponsible to not suggest that Williams may have been fabricating the event for some kind of media clout. However, taking into account that this livelihood is based on the public perceiving that his new reports are accurate and truthful, this seems unlikely. What more likely occurred was a case of Williams remembering something that simply did not happen to him, an example of an everyday memory error. Instead of our memories being like a video camera, constantly capturing every experience accurately, memory has a much more constructive nature. This means that our memories are constructed by what we experience, but also our existing knowledge, experiences, and expectations, making it both a top-down and a bottom-up process. In the case of false memories, the constructive notions of memory are pushed to the extreme; Williams may have heard about the event of the bombing and overtime, incorrectly placed himself within the narrative. If the event was particularly impactful and significant for Williams, in might be considered a flashbulb memory, making it more vivid and highly detailed. However, through studies of common flashbulb memories like the 9/11 attacks and the JFK assassination, we now know that even these highly impactful and significant memories can be just as susceptible to being incorrect when recalled later.

After being confronted with the concept that he was remembering something that did not happen, Williams was stunned, mentioned that he was questioning all of his memories after the incident. This conviction around memories is common for all of us; the majority of us rely on the fact that what we remember is accurate. We use this information to form opinions, guide our actions, and even create future memories. It can feel wholly stabilizing to know that some of the memories that feel certain to you are in fact inaccurate, many even completely false. However, the ease in which false memories can be suggested or “planned” into a person’s mind has experimental research confirming the occurrence. One study of undergrad students by Hyman, Husband, and Billings in 1995 mixed real and false childhood memories together, in which, by the end of the study 25% of participants believed a false memory was actually their own. Seven years later Wade, Garry, Read, and Lindsay created a similar experiment, this time with photoshopped images to support the false memory. Over 50% of the subjects believed that the made-up event happened to them, demonstrating the ease in which false memories can be made.

While we can’t be sure what prompted the story from Brian Williams with certainty, it most definitely prompted a cultural conversation on how we understand and recall memories and may possibly be the most well-known case of false memory within our recent history.

Resources

Lesson 9: Everyday Memory and Memory Errors

Goldstein, E. B. (2015). Cognitive psychology: Connecting mind, research and everyday experience. Cengage Learning.

https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-memory-blame-brian-williams-20150206-story.html

The process of long-term memory may seem simple: we learn something via encoding, and we remember what we have learned later via retrieval. However, there are many variables that can affect our abilities within the encoding and retrieval process, one of which being the conditions. The conditions in which we are first exposed to a particular stimuli and eventually encode it into our long-term memory and how they match (or don’t match) the conditions we are in during our attempts at trying to retrieve this information can show up in two ways: encoding specificity and state-dependent learning. Encoding specificity refers to our encoding of information also including the context in which the information was received, while state-dependent learning associates a stimulus with a specific internal state (like a mood, emotion, or state of awareness). For this blog, I’ve chosen to focus on state-dependent learning as there has been a clear example of this present in my life, to which I didn’t have terminology until now.

My partner Nick was lucky enough to be enrolled in a public school with Massachusetts for a few years during his adolescence that offered language emergence courses. While none of his family members could speak anything but English and a little Armenian, after two years, Nick had a solid foundation in French by age 12. While his abilities certainly faded due to lack of use, Nick still had some French retained as he embarked on a Europe trip with his close friend at age 18. Spending most of their time in France, Nick and his friend paid for their room and board at local hostels by performing songs for the other guests during the evening. Being a teenager out in the world for the first time and able to in accordance to local laws, Nick spent most of this time, frankly, drunk. Plied with cheap beer and wine, Nick learnt a handful of songs in French which he sang consistently over the few months he was there.

Nick is now 35. He still plays his guitar and knows little bits of French, however, in the very rare occasions he gets drunk, Nick is able to sing and play whole concerts in French. I once asked him to play a song for me sober while I was studying French myself, but his fingers fumbled the cords and he couldn’t remember the words. A few glasses of wine later, and his Edith Pilaf is fluid and clear! I couldn’t put this occurrence down to stage fright or lack of skills – Nick regularly sings and plays his guitar with ease. But these few songs he learnt while drinking away his teenage years are linked to the state of being drunk during encoding within his LTM, making their retrieval more enhanced when he isn’t sober.

In a way, being drunk itself could be a retrieval cue to the time in his life when he was regular under the same conditions in Europe and the songs simply come to mind. Furthermore, since he grew used to playing song after song during a given evening, one song could act as a retrieval cue for the next, prompting the memories in succession. Either way, it is clear that the state of being a little tipsy helps Nick retrieve these songs he learned almost two decades ago, drunk in France.

References

Goldstein, E. B. (2015). Cognitive psychology: Connecting mind, research and everyday experience. Cengage Learning.

Impossible Trident

In a culture where the internet regularly revamps, reintroduces, and regurgitates illusions of all kinds for karma, likes and meme points, there are many different examples of media that demonstrate the Gastalt Principles of Organization and often where these guides of perception fall short. While there are many examples of illusions that I was able to pick from for this assignment, I felt drawn to talk about the impossible trident. If you’re unfamiliar with the impossible trident, it most likely is due to the name; this optical illusion has been a staple in psychology and neurology textbooks for eons, though sometimes with a different descriptor. The reason I selected the impossible trident for this week’s blog post is twofold. First off, no matter how much I stare at the image, no matter how many times I’ve revisited it over the years, the simple line drawing still feels hard to perceive. Simply put, it breaks my brain. Secondly, I believe the impossible trident is able to not only demonstrate multiple of Gastalt Principles of Organization, it also shows how they can compete as we try to perceive our environment.

Personally, I believe that the most recognizable Gastalt Principle within the impossible trident illusion is the law of pragnanz. This law states that “Every stimulus pattern is seen in such a way that the resulting structure is as simple as possible” (Goldstein, 65). In an effort for our brain to understand the impossible trident, it tries to format either end into simple geometric shapes. On one end there are 3 cylindrical tubes, while on the other end we see a rectangular prism shape. Simple enough. However, as our eyes try to connect the two ends, the principle of trying to keep structures simple as possible breaks down. Curved sides become flat sides and vice versa.

This moves nicely into another principle: that of good continuation, which states “Points that, when connected, result in straight or smooth curving lines are seen as belonging together, and the lines tend to be seen in such a way as to follow the smoothest path” (Goldstein, 65). This is another way of describing the visual confusion that one might experience when looking at the center of the impossible trident. Our brain wants to make sense of the smooth transition of the middle, yet it seems like a curved line is transforming into a straight line and back again.

Finally, it can also be suggested that the principle of similarity is at play when perceiving the impossible trident. Stating that “Similar things to appear to be grouped together” (Goldstein, 66), we want to understand the 3 cylindrical tubes as being equal, natural grouping them together. However, this is impossible. They must be different in their endings to create a shape that looks like it’s hinged on two ends.

While the impossible trident may seem like an illusion that demonstrates the failures of the Gastalt Principles of Organization to perceive things correctly, it does demonstrate the processes in which our minds are trying to make sense of the shape. Therefore, we can conclude that these processes are part of our brain’s strategies of organization, no matter how wrong they may be in the circumstance.

References

Goldstein, E. B. (2015). Chapter 3 – Perception. In Cognitive psychology: Connecting mind, research and everyday experience (pp. 51–83). essay, Cengage Learning.