Incorrect Memories, Essay Example

Lost memories exist because of many factors that cause misremembering and even repression of difficult events.  For instance, many memories are forgotten due to a large amount of duress and painful truth about actual events.  Depression, stress, and other psychological problems can cause the human brain to intentionally protect the body from further damage by repressing the painful memories.  As this process occurs throughout the body, people begin to fill in the blanks of the misremembered events during the recall process of the brain with information that would make logical sense.  This is referred to as incorrect memories.  These incorrect memories occur within the brain whenever something is repressed by the brain and is later recalled to connect what is remembered and what is left out.  In other words, the reason that incorrect memories exist is to fill in the incomplete portions of what the memory retrieves during the recollection of past events.

Within the book The Science of False Memory, incorrect memory is defined as not just forgetting, but it can also refer to circumstances where a person has clear, definite memories of an event that did not happen, or may have happened differently than the reflected by memory (Wallace, 2009, p. 53).  Incorrect memory occurs for a number of different reasons as previously mentioned, but it is unclear of the exact mental process that occurs within the cognitive functions of individuals in order to create logical connections.  In most cases, individuals attempt to create a logical explanation for events that are being misremembered.  This is often seen with individuals who have recently experienced a traumatic event or a difficult period of time, such as a car accident or a death of a family member.  The event literally causes damage to the individual’s psyche and forced unhealthy stress upon the body, which is repressed by the brain for protection (Drivdahl et al., 2009, p. 15).  As individuals experience trauma or highly stressful situations, the brain intentionally eliminates portions of the painful memories to protect the body from further damage.  At the scene of a car accident, it may be difficult to remember everything exactly as it happened because of human error behind the wheel.  For this same reason, incorrect memories are often a cause of misunderstanding or improper recollection of events within eyewitness testimony (Devilly et al., 2007, p. 1246).  Misperceptions or misremembering can occur in a split second, and this is why incorrect memories occur.

As the individual is forced to recall a painful memory, he or she attempts to recreate the event in a conscious manner that would make the most sense or logic based on previous knowledge or beliefs.  In 1932, a scientist created a theory surrounding incorrect memories that has continued to be the basis for modern research and has helped shape the understanding that researchers and scientists have for incorrect memories.  Sir Frederick Bartlett proposed that remembering was a matter of reconstructing the past, which was based largely on what he called “schemata”, and it was through these generic knowledge structures that “we tend to remember past events in ways that conform to our general beliefs and expectations” (Newman & Lindsay, 2009, p. 1110).  If the person’s belief is that he or she would never behave in a particular way or would play any negative role in a situation, the memory is recreated to place blame on others or eliminate guilt based on beliefs and personal expectations.  This theory has been supported by several modern studies, and it fully supports the previously mentioned hypothesis for the purpose of understanding incorrect memories.

In summary, incorrect memories are formulated within the human brain to fill in incomplete or illogical portions of memory that are not consistent with personal beliefs or expectations.  This process occurs during memory recall within the brain, and it helps individuals to overcome overly stressful or traumatic situations.  Many people believe that they have a poor memory, when in all reality, incorrect memories or misremembering can occur simply because of a natural cognitive process to protect the body from the emotional and physical damage that memories can cause.  Nevertheless, it is clear that incorrect memories are a direct result of this natural process.

References

Devilly, G., Varker, T., Hansen, K., & Gist, R. (2007). An analogue study of the effects of Psychological Debriefing on eyewitness memory. Behaviour Research & Therapy, 45(6), 1245-1254.

Drivdahl, S., Zaragoza, M., & Learned, D. (2009). The role of emotional elaboration in the creation of false memories. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 23(1), 13-35. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database.

Newman, E., & Lindsay, S. (2009). False memories: What the hell are they for?. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 23(8), 1105-1121. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database.

Wallace, S. (2009). The Science of False Memory. Florida Bar Journal, 83(4), 53-54. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database.