Looking the past in the eye: Distortion in memory and the costs and benefits of recalling from an observer perspective

How Third-Person Experiences in Immersive Virtual Reality Influence Memory

“…In both the first-person and third-person perspective conditions, the perspective experienced during encoding matched the perspective participants reported during retrieval. This finding lends support to the idea that memories can be formed from both first-person and third-person perspectives, leading support to theory suggesting the presence of "observer memories" (McCarroll, 2017;Nigro & Neisser, 1983). We also found that own eyes ratings increased following a delay, whereas observer perspective ratings decreased.…”

“…Across the two studies, we found no differences in the accuracy of visual information or subjective ratings of vividness, reliving, and emotional intensity memories for 1PP and 3PP experiences-even following a one-week delay. However, supporting theory that memories can be formed from multiple visual perspectives (McCarroll, 2017;Nigro & Neisser, 1983), we found that recent events experienced from a 3PP were later remembered more strongly from a 3PP than 1PP.…”

“…Supporting this idea, 3PPs are more frequent for remote than recent memories (for review see Rice, 2010). However, 3PP experiences can also naturally originate during the formation of memories that are highly negatively emotional or stressful, highly self-evaluative, and/or involve 3PP imagery during encoding (McCarroll, 2017;Nigro & Neisser, 1983), and contribute to the increased frequency of 3PP memories in people with social phobia or post-traumatic stress disorder (e.g., Cooper, Yuille, & Kennedy, 2002;McIsaac & Eich, 2004;Wells, Clark, & Ahmad, 1998). One challenge to empirical investigation of 3PP experiences and their impact on memory, is that by nature it is difficult to manipulate 3PPs during the formation of memories for events since people typically experience the world through their own eyes.…”

Epistemic innocence and the production of false memory beliefs

“…In contrast, an expanded and suitably modified notion of epistemic innocence can be used to tag the benefits of those mechanisms. We take this to show that the notion of epistemic innocence, that was previously deployed to capture the epistemic benefits associated with epistemically costly beliefs can also 2 In the case of McCarroll (2017) things are actually a little more complicated. McCarroll argues that a particular type of memory, observer memories, which are commonly classified as distorted memories are not truly distorted and have epistemic benefits.…”

Episodic memory and theory of mind: A connection reconsidered

“…Recent “generative” accounts of episodic memory (De Brigard, ; Michaelian, ) might also be read as involving an appeal to something like the idea of a memory image, but they stress in particular the constructive aspect in generating that memory image, and the ways in which it might fail to be faithful to one's original experience. Two points might therefore be worth clarifying: First, as I understand it, characterizing episodic memory as the retention of knowledge as to what it was like to experience past events is compatible with there often being distortions and inaccuracies in the way we remember those events (McCarroll, ; Robins, )—their presence might mean that we are less good at remembering the experience without this implying that we do not remember it at all. Second, what I do take the approach to episodic memory I have sketched in this section to be committed to is a rejection of the idea—sometimes put forward in the context of generative accounts of episodic memory (see especially De Brigard, )—that there is no difference in kind between episodic recollection and the experiential imagination of future events.…”