Latest news with #falseMemories
RNZ News
4 days ago
- RNZ News
Do you really remember what you think you do?
Photo: 123RF How much can we trust our own memories? In 1990, Eileen Franklin-Lipsker suddenly knew who had killed her childhood best friend, 8-year-old Susan Nason, more than 20 years ago. She had been there, she said. A repressed memory, long buried, had revealed itself. She vividly recalled the details of the 1969 murder. The van. The remote spot. Her own abusive father lifting the rock. The crushed ring on her friend's hand. A jury believed her, and George Franklin was sentenced to life in prison. Five years later, the conviction was overturned. His daughter's testimony collapsed under scrutiny. Details, such as time of day and who was there, would change. She later accused her father of another murder, but DNA proved he couldn't have done it. Gabrielle Principe is a Professor of Psychology at the College of Charleston and the author of several books specialising on memory formation. She told Sunday Morning's Jim Mora the Franklin case is a cautionary tale, a lesson that our memories can feel true, and be totally wrong. "Eileen was recalling something that she had allegedly seen 20 years ago. "However, the memory was only a year old. "So the question is, you know, how could you have a one-year-old memory of something that happened twenty years ago?" Memory is not a video camera, she said, faithfully recording and storing events for later playback. Instead, it is malleable, fragmentary, and heavily influenced by attention, emotion, and suggestion. "Our memories are subject to distortions, modifications, additions, and deletions. "You can create richly detailed, vivid, compelling false memories that people truly, truly believe. "What may have happened to Eileen... Maybe a memory of something that didn't happen that was suggested to her, that she imagined over the course of, you know, years. And it became to feel familiar and it became to feel real." "You can be 100 percent confident in a memory... and 100 percent wrong." And while the idea that traumatic events can be completely locked away and then resurface decades later as pristine recollections remains a popular belief, Principe said it's not supported by the research. "We have no scientific evidence that memories can be locked away completely and then recovered intact," she said. And the legal system, she warns, must be extremely cautious. Like DNA or blood samples, memory can be contaminated through conversations with police, therapists, and even family members. Taken to its extreme, this can create entirely false memories. "The way that that procedure works... is to start with a kernel of something, that's familiar and to suggest things.... and get individuals to think about it and imagine it, and talk about it, and to do that repeatedly. "If you do that sort of thing to people... roughly a third of people will develop richly detailed false memories that range from a crime, engaging in a crime... even to things like witnessing a demonic possession." In 1993, Christchurch childcare worker Peter Ellis was convicted of abusing children in his care. The case was largely built on the testimony of children whose accounts had been shaped by repeated, highly suggestive interviews. Over time, their stories became more elaborate and fantastical, including claims of Satanic ritual abuse. Ellis spent seven years in prison and died in 2019, still fighting to clear his name. In 2022, the Supreme Court quashed his conviction. But while clinicians and courtrooms must remain sceptical, Principe argues, the fact that memory shifts over time is not a flaw but an evolutionary advantage. "We wouldn't have the room in our brain to store memories of every single thing we experience. We have a great mechanism that we sort of rebuild things, and it usually works just fine, most of the time. "It's just that the legal situation or the legal arena demands the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Sometimes, we even rewrite memories to make ourselves feel better - to soften heartbreak, to boost confidence, to forget pain. Understanding the dynamic, reconstructive nature of memory can not only prevent miscarriages of justice but also improve our relationships. "If you're in a relationship with someone and you're disagreeing over who said what or who said they would do what. "You can all be right because your memories are based on what you paid attention to, and your memories change. "So, fighting over the details of who said what or what wasn't said, it doesn't make sense if you know about and understand how fluid, constructive attention and memory can be." By understanding our memory, she said, we can stop pretending that it's perfect. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
Daily Mail
26-05-2025
- Science
- Daily Mail
The slightest change in your eyes could reveal just how accurate your memories are, according to scientists
Have you ever ended up arguing with someone because you remember an event differently? Many of us will have had times when we're certain our recollection is the correct one. But 'false memories' are surprisingly common – from misremembered childhood moments or mistakenly 'recalling' that you locked the door. Now, experts have come up with a way to settle any argument about memories once and for all. And it's all to do with your eyes. In a new study, researchers from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics set out to test a theory that first arose more than 50 years ago. A discovery in the 1970s revealed that people's pupils dilate when they recognise something they have seen before. This phenomenon, called the 'pupil old/new effect', has been confirmed in multiple experiments. But now, experts wanted to find out whether pupil dilation might also reflect how clearly and precisely something is remembered. The team recruited 28 participants in Hungary and asked them to study 80 two or three-syllable uncommon words that appeared around a circle on a screen. Later, they were shown a mix of old and new words. For each word they recognised, they were asked to try and recall when it had originally appeared. Throughout the experiment, their pupil size was tracked. Analysis revealed that when people recognised a word they had seen earlier, their pupils dilated. Most importantly, the effect was more pronounced when they could accurately remember the word's original location The findings suggest that our eyes reflect two layers of memory – a general sense of familiarity and the precision of specific details, researcher Ádám Albi told Popular Science. 'To date, there is no consensus on the precise cognitive and neurobiological mechanisms that drive pupil responses during different forms of memory retrieval, such as recognition,' he said. The team suggest that a vivid memory demands our attention, triggering activity in a region of the brain called the locus coeruleus–noradrenergic system. This system also causes pupils to dilate, recent research has found. The findings could have practical implications for clinical assessment or even legal testimony, experts say. Writing in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition they said: 'This pattern of results suggests that the pupil old/new effect might originate from two distinct components: The first is related to the mere recognition of a word, whereas the second reflects the quality of recollected source information.' TRAINING YOUR BRAIN TO BANISH BAD MEMORIES A 2020 study led by researchers from Dartmouth and Princeton has shown that people can intentionally forget past experiences by changing how they think about the context of those memories. The researchers showed participants images of outdoor scenes, such as forests, mountains and beaches, as they studied two lists of random words. The volunteers deliberately manipulated whether the participants were told to forget or remember the first list prior to studying the second list. Right after they were told to forget, the scans showed they 'flushed out' the scene-related activity from their brains. But when the participants were told to remember the studied list rather than forget it, this flushing out of scene-related thoughts didn't occur. The amount people flushed out scene-related thoughts predicted how many of the studied words they would later remember, which shows the process is effective at facilitating forgetting. To forget those negative thoughts coming back to haunt you, researchers suggest trying to push out the context of the memory. For example, if you associate a song with a break-up, listen to the song in a new environment. Try listening to it as you exercise at the gym, or add to a playlist you listen to before a night out. This way, your brain will associate with a positive feeling. If a memory of a scene from a horror film haunts you, watch the same scene during the daytime.
