Believe It or Not?

If you have ever experienced recalling the last time you saw your keys were on a hook by the door when you left them on the table in the kitchen or you may remember an event that happened to you differently than someone else who experienced this same event.  These experiences are known as false memories.

As we learned in lesson 9, false memories are circumstances that are distorted or fabricated recollections of an event.   Memory researcher, Elizabeth Loftus has demonstrated this through her research that it is possible to induce false memories through suggestion. As demonstrated with the “Remember when…” experiment Loftus was able to implant false memories into 14-year Chris’s mind by discussing some true event by having his older brother Jim mix in some false memories. In just two weeks, Chris had gone from no memory of the event (because it never happened) to recall details about the people and place the event happened (Loftus et al., 1996).

Loftus has shown that these memories can become stronger and more vivid as time goes on. Over time, memories become distorted and begin to change. As mentioned above, the original memory may be changed to incorporate new information or experiences.

For instance, in a 1995 film, Captain Robert Daniell was interviewed about his experiences with the British army when he helped liberate the Belsen concentration camp. The details of the interview are documented in an edited volume about the Belson camp (Reilly et al, 1997):

Daniell recounted how he was the first British soldier to go into Belsen and how he saw the gas ovens, which had been cleaned out because there was no fuel to run them. This was why there were so many corpses lying around … It was pathetic. There were worn paths to each of the gas chambers and on the side a pile of spectacles at least 6ft high.’”

Daniell reported that “it is as clear to me now as it was then.” The only problem is that Belsen didn’t have gas chambers. Daniell’s memory was distorted by his personal experiences with later coverage of other extermination camps as well as inaccurate popular media coverage of Belsen.  You would think that most of us would assume that our memory for liberating a Nazi camp would be indelibly printed in our mind. It would be something we couldn’t forget.  This example drives home the fact that our memories are not to be trusted as factual depictions of historical fact. Our memories change, and new information can easily influence our memorable experiences. What we believe to be true, may not always be the case.

In conclusion, our memories are not infallible and what we remember is not necessarily what happened.  Our memory is vulnerable to misinformation and perhaps you cannot place as much trust in your memory as you might think.

References:

Chabris, C. F., & Simons, D. J. (2010). The Invisible Gorilla. New York: Random House.

Loftus, E. F. Creating False Memories. Scientific American. 1997; 277: 70-75

Loftus, E. F., Coan, J. A., & Pickrell, J. E. (1996). Manufacturing false memories using bits of reality. Implicit Memory and Metacognition, 195–220.

Reilly, J., Cesarani, D., Kushner, T., & Richmond, C. (1997). Belsen in history and memory. Frank Cass: London.

Have you ever been to a crowded stadium such as a sporting event, where you were able to carry on a conversation with someone among all the noise?  There is a reason for this. Your ability to focus on the one conversation you want to hear and tune out everything else is part of the selective attention, known as the cocktail party effect. The ability to focus on one stimulus while filtering out other stimuli (Goldstein, 88) was coined in 1953 by English cognitive scientist Colin Cherry. He said, “It takes our ears and brain time to process what the other person’s voice is saying against the background noise” (Cherry, 1953) This effect refers to our ability to focus intensely in on one conversation at the same time as you tune everything else out.

According to Melville J. Wohlgemuth,  the lead author and a postdoctoral fellow in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, states that, “With so many stimuli in the world, the brain needs a filter to determine what’s important,” Wohlgemuth along with Cynthia F. Moss,  a Johns Hopkins professor and neuroscientist, decided to figure out which sounds would be considered “important” enough to evoke responses from neurons that are involved in orienting behaviors, such as turning towards a sound.

To demonstrate the ability of selective attention, Wohlgemuth and Moss performed a research experiment using five brown bats.  They played a variety of sounds while monitoring their midbrain activity. Such sounds as recordings of natural chirps, which are the actual sounds bats make when they hunt. Along with artificial white noise and sounds between the two extremes. All the sounds were identical in amplitude, duration, and bandwidth.

In turn, the study showed bats could hear all the noises but certain neurons in their brains screened out everything except for the chirp echoes.  As a result, the bats were able to exclude all the extra noise and ignore the distractions and fly in the right direction to find food.

In conclusion, since all mammals share a basic brain organization, it’s likely that our brains work in the same way. With so many sounds in the world, the brain can decide which one gets your attention.

References:

Goldstein, E. Bruce (2017). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research, and Everyday Experience. Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning page, 88.

http://releases.jhu.edu/category/academic-disciplines/psychology/

February 23, 2016 Tags: attention, bats, brain science, Cynthia F. Moss, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences

Posted in Natural Sciences, Psychology

A few days ago, I came home from work, pulled up to my house. Got out of my car and stepped onto my driveway.  I immediately smelled a very strong and pungent odor which I quickly and clearly recognized as gas.  Instinctively I thought that I had a gas leak somewhere around my house.  I immediately conjured up wicked thoughts and numerous awful images, let’s just say they were rather ridiculous and horror movie type images that I won’t go into.

After calling the gas company, who I might add came quite quickly to my residence, insured me that yes, the innocuous smell was indeed gas however the source of the odor was not coming from my property but rather from the street. After I bombarded the gentlemen with all the obvious questions and of all the possible outcomes that could occur due to the perceived gas leak, the gentlemen gave me a quick science lesson on the workings of the gas lines.

They assured me I had nothing to worry and told me that when you smell gas in one location it’s not always the source since the odor will travel and hover in another location especially when it’s cold outside and when this occurs it will you think the source of the leak is in one spot rather than another.

This whole experience really drove home the top-down processing concept to me.  The basis for top-down processing as mentioned in our textbook, “Perception involves factors such as a person’s knowledge of their environment, the expectations people bring to the perceptual situation, and their attention to specific stimuli” (Goldstein, 2015, pp.59-60).  Because I relied on existing knowledge about gas, and the expectations that smelling gas may generate a dangerous response, I was able to make an educated guess as to what I was smelling and handle the situation.

In conclusion, we are constantly surrounded by sensory images some good and some bad. Without being consciously aware, my perception of the situation was influenced by what I knew.   This all stemming from information knowledge, expectations, and experience with gas and using past experiences to guide and interpret the information helped me to decipher what I was smelling and how to react.

References:

Goldstein, E. B. (2015). Cognitive psychology: connecting mind, research, and everyday experience (4th ed.). Wadsworth Cengage Learning.