“I don’t know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft from the other,” said by Brian Williams, a 55-year-old veteran.
He has told people a story about how his helicopter was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade when covering the war in Iraq. However, the fact is that the helicopter he was in was not the one got hit. Also, when the strike happened, his helicopter was an hour away from the strike location. His experience shows a part of the unreliability of human memory.
Elizabeth Loftus, a professor the at the University of California who experted in human memory, calls William’s story a “teaching mement,” which is a typical example of false memory. According to her, false memory happens when a person “remembers” something happened that actually did not. There are many experiments show the effect of false memory, and one of them is made by Wade, Garry, Read, and Lindsay. In 2002, they digitized a group of people’s childhood pictures and modified the picture to appear that the participants was taking a hot air ballon ride when they was a child(Pennsylvania State University, Lesson 9, pp9). The result showed that over fifty percent of participants believed that they had taken a hot air ballon ride when they was a child just by being showed doctored photographic “evidence” (Hogenboom, 2013).

Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-24286258

Kimberley Wade, one of the creator of the ballon ride experiment, explained that the reason our memories are such melleable is because there is too much information to take in. What happens when a false memory is built is that the perceptual system cannot notice everything in the environment, so there would be gaps when the information is taken through senses.
“So when we remember an event, what our memory ultimately does is fills in those gaps by thinking about what we know about the world,” illustrated by Wade (Hogenboom, 2013).
Although the existence of false memory questions the reliability of our memory, some researchers believe that the errors made by human brain could help people as well.
Sergio Della Sala, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Edinburgh, UK, believes that the errors in memory could help people be away from danger. He presented an instance that if a person walks in a jungle and sees some grass moving, he would likely be panic and run away, assuming that there would be a tiger lurking. In contrast, in the view of a computer, the grass moving would be believed to be simply the wind in 99 percent of the time. In that case, if a person thinks like a computer, he might be eaten if there is truely a tiger.

Retrieved from http://www.imgneed.com/image/white-tiger-in-jungle-wallpaper/tiger-white-tiger-jungle-water

According to Della Sala, the brain would make 99 errors to save people from the tiger. Unlike a computer, the brain works with irrational assumptions. It’s prone to errors and it needs shortcuts.
In addition, Della sala also belives that the fact that brain would make false memory is a sigh that the brain is healthy.
“They are a by-product of a memory system that works well. You can make inferences very fast.”

References

Hogenboom, M. (2013). Why does the human brain create false memories?. BBC News. Retrieved from: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-24286258

Firger, J. (2015). Brian Williams and the false memory phenomenon. CBS News. Retrieved from: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/brian-williams-and-the-false-memory-phenomenon/

The Pennsylvania State University. (2015). False Memories. Lesson 9: Everyday Memory and Memory Errors . PSYCH256: Introduction to Cognitive Psychology. pp9. Retrieved from: https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/fa15/psych256/001/content/10_lesson/09_page.html

Amnesia is a disease which is known for memory loss. Although there are different types of amnesia, the pain of losing memory is the same for amnesia patients. Claire Robertson, a 49-year-old nurse, suffered brain damage because of viral infection. Her hippocampi, where memories are formed, is destructed. She lost specific parts of memories, but still could retrieve procedural memory. She could drive a car or even take a piano lesson, but she could not remember of receiving a lesson. Also, she has the memory of previous learned facts such as Paris is the capital of France. However, she could not remember the sensations of her experience such as her sights and feels (Harrell, 2010).

image source is retrieved from http://www.minddisorders.com/Del-Fi/Dissociative-amnesia.html

Claire’s symptoms conform to what we learned in lesson 6 about long-term memory. Generally, there are two types of long-term memory: explicit memory and implicit memory. The explicit memory is usually declarative and conscious, and it could be divided into two categories: episodic and semantic. In contrast, the implicit memory is often nondeclarative and unconscious. The implicit memory could be divided into three catagories of “priming,” “procedural,” and “conditioning” (Lesson 6, 2015, pp.7). The fact that Claire could not remember her experience of taking a lesson and her feeling of the experience is the loss of episodic memories. Episodic memory is the memory for experience and events which people participated (Lesson 6, 2015, pp.8). Also, the fact that Claire could remember the things she learned (Paris is the capital of France) showed that she still has semantic memory. Semantic memory refers to the facts and knowledge people have about the world. It is the memory about familiar things (Lesson 6, 2015, pp.9). In addition, since Claire still knows how to drive a car, her procedural memory is intact. This kind of memory is the memory of skills, such as how to ride a bike (Lesson 6, 2015, pp.11).

Although Claire still has intact semantic and procedural memories, her life is influenced by the lack of episodic memories. She does not remember her friends’ faces or her speical life events. Luckily, a new device called “Sensecam” could help her. This device is a mini-camera which could hang around Claire’s neck and automatically shots every 30 seconds. By the way, 30 seconds is the maximum time for short-term memory (Lesson 5, 2015, pp.4). Because Claire does not have episodic long-term memories, she could simply see the taken photos to find her experience. Her neuropsychologists, Catherine Loveday, stated that “Claire’s memory can’t store most of the pictures in any lasting way, but her ability to retain facts (her semantic memory) at least allows her to know she has experienced something. (Harrell, 2010)”

image is retrieved from http://sensecam.ucsd.edu/studies.php

While Sensecam could help people with amnesia find their previous experience, it could help them know what happened. However, this device depends on its users. For example, if the patient has intact episodic memories but lack of semantic memories, Sensecam would not be very helpful.  Furthermore, it does not mean the patients could store episodic memories. They simply store some information in semantic memories through Sensecam.  A leading amnesia expert in The University of Cambridge’s Barbara Wilson stated that “There’s no evidence Sensecam can restore episodic memory,” she says, “rehabilitation is not synonymous with recovery (Harrell, 2010).”

References

Harrell, E. (2010). Recovering Memory: Can a New Device Help Amnesia Patients?. TIME. Retrieved from http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2022652,00.html

The Pennsylvania State University. (2015). Modal Model of Memory. Lesson 5 : Short-Term and Working Memory. pp4. Retrieved from https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/fa15/psych256/001/content/06_lesson/04_page.html

The Pennsylvania State University. (2015). Different Types of Long-Term Memories. Lesson 6 : Long-Term Memory: Structure. pp7. Retrieved from https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/fa15/psych256/001/content/07_lesson/07_page.html

The Pennsylvania State University. (2015). Episodic Memories. Lesson 6 : Long-Term Memory: Structure. pp8. Retrieved from https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/fa15/psych256/001/content/07_lesson/08_page.html

The Pennsylvania State University. (2015). Semantic Memories. Lesson 6 : Long-Term Memory: Structure. pp9. Retrieved from https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/fa15/psych256/001/content/07_lesson/09_page.html

The Pennsylvania State University. (2015). Implicit Memories—Procedural. Lesson 6 : Long-Term Memory: Structure. pp11. Retrieved from https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/fa15/psych256/001/content/07_lesson/11_page.html

The two images are retrieved from http://www.minddisorders.com/Del-Fi/Dissociative-amnesia.html and http://sensecam.ucsd.edu/studies.php

The way people percept the information around in environment could be useful but tricky. Through the two perception ways of top-down and bottom-up, people could collect information around them as well as represent the information according to gained knowledge and memory (Lesson 3 Commentary, Penn State, 2015). However, the top-down and bottom-up perception ways could also mislead people. A typical instance could be my experience yesterday with a cricket.

Yesterday had a great weather in my city. I was relaxing in a park and sitting on a bench on grass. I sat there for a while, and suddenly I found there seemed to be something moved a little in the grass. There was no wind, so I was kind of sure there could be something. Therefore I moved closer slowly as well as stared at the spot, trying to figure out the thing. As I held my breath a little and moved closer, I found there was a cricket in the grass. It was not far from the bench and had the length about half of my thumb. It was totally green and hardly moved so I did not notice at all even though I sat on the bench for a long time.

referred from http://www.redbubble.com/people/jknowles/works/7098859-cri-cri-oil-painting-of-a-cricket-in-the-grass

However, it was when the cricket moved that I found its existence. That was the hint from the common fate law. According to the commentary (Penn State, 2015), common fate states that people “group objects based on movement.” During the period the cricket stayed quiet, I did not notice it. But afterward when it moved I noticed there was something in the grass and tried to figure it out. Furthermore, to me Gestalt Grouping was not the only misleading part. Top-down perception way misled me a little as well.

I have been to the park to relax for many times. Every time I sat on that bench for a while since the scene there was pretty. Therefore I was quite familiar with the place in my memory. Hence that could be a possibility that I was misled by my memory during top-down perception. It could be possible that when I perceived the environment around, I represented things base on previous memory instead of re-representing things on a new cycle. Therefore I thought there was nothing in the grass just as it was before, failed to find the existence of the cricket.

Although sometimes our perception could be tricky, it is also useful and essential to every-day life. According to top-down perception, bottom-up perception and Gestalt Grouping laws, perception helps us to live in a simpler life. Just to notice it could be tricky sometimes and be more careful every day!

Reference

The Pennsylvania State University. (2015). Lesson 3: Perception. PSYCH 256: Introduction to Cognitive Psychology. Retrieved from:

https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/fa15/psych256/001/content/04_lesson/04_page.html

https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/fa15/psych256/001/content/04_lesson/05_page.html

The cricket photo is from http://www.redbubble.com/people/jknowles/works/7098859-cri-cri-oil-painting-of-a-cricket-in-the-grass