The Speed of 'False Memory'

A great article in Scientific American on how fast we remember things differently to reality.

"This study, published in the November 2008 issue of the journal Psychological Science, asked how quickly this boundary extension happens. The researchers showed subjects a picture, erased it for a very short period of time by overlaying a new image, and then showed a new picture that was either the same as the first image or a slightly zoomed-out view of the same place.

They found that when people saw the exact same picture again, they thought the second picture was more zoomed-in than the first one they had seen. When they saw a slightly zoomed-out version of the picture they had seen before, however, they thought this picture matched the first one. This experience is the classic boundary extension effect.

So what was the shocking part? The gap between the first and second picture was less than 1/20th of a second. In less than the blink of an eye, people remembered a systematically modified version of pictures they had seen. This modification is, by far, the fastest 'false memory' ever found."

My own visual explanation:

 

Amazing eh? We misremember certain things basically as soon as we see them. What are some personal anecdotes or research you've seen that shows how people misremember or systematically forget stuff?

 

UPDATE: The always-knowledgeable Aza Raskin pointed me towards the work of Elizabeth Loftus who has a series of articles on the malleability of memory. Thanks Aza.

Comments

[Jonathan Dann]

Hi Keith,

I've always found, when doing the live sound for bands, that may guitarists will turn up their distortion as high as they can to replicate the sound they think they hear on their favourite track. This causes that problem that the guitar often loses all mid-range and is then impossible to bring out in the mix.

In reality when you get them to listen and replicate the sound at the same time the majority turn down their distortion quite low.

I'm sure that many guitarist (an I've been guilty of it myself) will remember a guitar part being more distorted than it actually was.

Jonathan

[Keith Lang]

Hi Jonathan,

hmmm interesting. Your story about sound makes me think we might find the same effect in all senses. Perhaps weight, texture, taste?

[Vincent Gable]

Keith,

Very interesting!

It reminds me of http://viscog.beckman.uiuc.edu/flashmovie/12.php" rel="nofollow">this dramatic example of change blindness, where subjects did not notice that the person they were giving directions to had been switched.

[Keith Lang]

Hi Vincent,

Yes that's a great experiment...
I blogged about it a little while ago here:
http://www.uiandus.com/2008/08/24/announcements/the-art-of-expectations-and-attention-control/" rel="nofollow">The Art of Expectations

Which has inspired me to better organize this blog so people can find early stuff more easily!