The seven sins of memory: Insights from psychology and cognitive neuroscience.

Abstract

Though often reliable, human memory is also fallible. This article examines how and why memory can get us into trouble. It is suggested that memory's misdeeds can be classified into 7 basic "sins": transience, absentmindedness, blocking, misattribution, suggestibility, bias, and persistence. The first three sins involve different types of forgetting, the next three refer to different types of distortions, and the final sin concerns intrusive recollections that are difficult to forget. Evidence is reviewed concerning each of the 7 sins from relevant sectors of psychology (cognitive, social, and clinical) and from cognitive neuroscience studies that include patients with focal brain damage or make use of recently developed neuroimaging techniques. Although the 7 sins may appear to reflect flaws in system design, it is argued instead that they are by-products of otherwise adaptive features of memory. Question: If Vernon Jordan has told us that you have an extraordinary memory, one of the greatest memories he has ever seen in a politician, would that be something you would care to dispute? Clinton: No. I do have a good memory. At least I have had a good memory in my life. .. It's also-if I could say one thing about my memory-I have been blessed and advantaged in my life with a good memory. I have been shocked and so have members of my family and friends of mine at how many things that I have forgotten in the last six years-I think because of the pressure and the pace and the volume of events in a president's life, compounded by the pressure of your four-year inquiry, and all the other things that have happened.

Implementation intentions: Strong effects of simple plans.

“…The elderly have problems with prospective memories that are time based (e.g., "Take medication at 5 p.m.") as well as event based ("Take medication at breakfast"). Failure in prospective memory is due to a neglect of specifying situational cues ahead of time and to absent-mindedness at the time when the critical action has to be performed (Schacter, 1999). Moreover, the automatic components of memory are age invariant, whereas young adults show substantial superiority to old adults on the controlled components of memory (Jacoby, Jennings, & Hay, 1996).…”

False memory susceptibility is correlated with categorisation ability in humans

“…The adaptive nature of the human memory system as a potential reason for the occurrence false memories has been suggested ( Schacter, 1999; Schacter, 2001), yet the ultimate reasons for their existence has been infrequently explored empirically. More recently, however, evidence has grown for links between individuals’ differing susceptibilities to false memories and their variations in a range of cognitive features.…”

“…Clearly false memories cannot in themselves be useful, but like other memory inaccuracies (such as forgetting) they might be by-products of the otherwise adaptive nature of memory processes ( Schacter, 1999; Schacter & Dodson, 2001; Schacter et al , 2011). But what cognitive processes might facilitate the generation of false memories as a by-product?…”

Developing “Personality” Taxonomies: Metatheoretical and Methodological Rationales Underlying Selection Approaches, Methods of Data Generation and Reduction Principles

“…Suitable methods are, for example, subjective evidence-based ethnography (SEBE; Lahlou 2011) and microgenetic methods (Diriwächter & Valsiner 2008;Wagoner 2009). As retrieval is susceptible to various fallacies of memory (Schacter 1999), temporal proximity enabling short-term memory retrieval is essential for retro-introquestive methods. Necessarily, all methods of introquestion inherently rely on the studied individuals' memorisations and reconstructions of their psychical phenomena.…”