whew -- can't handle narrator's voice at ALL

Tú también podrías confesar un crimen que nunca cometiste. Los recuerdos son nuestras posesiones más preciadas. Confiamos en ellos para cada día de nuestras vidas, nos hacen quienes somos. Pero la realidad es que están lejos de ser un registro preciso del pasado: todos hemos vivido pequeños lapsos de memoria, hemos olvidado qué queríamos al entrar a una habitación o hemos sido incapaces de recordar el nombre de alguien a quien ya hemos visto decenas de veces. Nada de esto nos asusta, pero, ¿y si supiéramos que la mente es tan maleable como para permitir la manipulación e incluso la creación de recuerdos falsos? En este ensayo, la psicóloga e investigadora Julia Shaw demuestra la asombrosa variedad de formas en las que nuestras mentes pueden ser engañadas: cómo podemos acabar creyendo que los recuerdos de otras personas son los nuestros y cómo no estamos tan lejos de llegar a confesar un crimen que no hemos cometido. La ilusión de la memoria nos enseña a desconfiar de la mente humana a la vez que nos revela que solo asumiendo su inestabilidad podremos comprender sus virtudes.

I wanted to love this book, but it just didn't do it for me. Generally I enjoy a bit of popular science reading, but this one seemed to drag on and on. The basic premise was that our memories are extremely fallible and extremely vulnerable to the power of suggestion, but there was a huge amount of scientific test padding to stretch this out for a book. While that may be of interest to psychology / science purists, it left me skimming over the pages somewhat. I'd have preferred more case studies than endless test groups.

2.5 stars - I gleaned a few interesting snippets (if someone's relying on memory to pick you out of a line up there's a fair chance you're screwed), but beyond that I was delighted to get to the final page. ( )

Es handelt sich um ein Sachbuch. Die Autorin ist Gedächtnisforscherin. Ihr Schwerpunktgebiet ist es nachzuweisen, dass das Gedächtnis fehleranfällig ist. Vieles davon, woran wir uns zu erinnern glauben, haben wir gar nicht so erlebt. Wir speisen Erinnerungen anderer oder Informationen von Fotos, aus dem Internet und so weiter in unsere Erinnerungen ein. Kleinere andere Informationen fand ich auch interessant, beispielsweise, dass die Anwesenheit von Mobiltelefonen am Tisch die Kommunikation unglücklicher macht. Auch die Tatsache, dass wir uns selbst so sehr überschätzen, fand ich sehr interessant. Eigentlich ist es ja nicht überraschend, Niemand hält sich für Durchschnitt. Aber natürlich muss es den Durchschnitt geben. Wir alle denken aber, dass der Durchschnitt immer die anderen sind. Ein interessantes Buch, dass man durchaus auch leicht lesen kann. ( )

The science of false memory is the field of forensic psychologist Dr Julia Shaw’s research. As she discovers more about our unreliable memories, she also uncovers more about how our amazing memories work. Her work could be summarised by the statement that the very unreliability of our memories shows how adaptive the memory system is.

The Memory Illusion is written in an accessible style with many illustrative anecdotes and stories behind scientific discoveries.

Memories are made from networks of neurons. Strong pathways between neurons lay down the memory. Dr Shaw gives two reasons we should not, however, expect accuracy from our memories. The first is that our perception of the world in the first place is a kind of fiction, where we interpret some of the sense data received by our brain as a picture of the world. Secondly, every time we review our memory, we take the memory ‘out of storage’ and rework it, strengthening it with more detail or a slightly different story-line. The memories with which we do this strengthening become over time less and less accurate.

Dr Shaw reminds us of how childhood memories of the same event are remembered differently by family members. While we are sure we have remembered accurately, our siblings will often disagree. Research shows this dissonance to be the norm. At least one person’s memory has degraded over time!

From an opposite standpoint, some married couples reminisce over time and ‘construct’ a memory together, and so agree on its accuracy.

Chapters on false memory in child sexual abuse, in remembering where we were when 9/11 or other ‘flashbulb’ events are fascinating. I remember learning that JFK had been shot in 1964 in the Year 11 dormitory at my school. Someone heard it on an illegal transistor radio. I am sure that’s right; but after reading The Memory Illusion, I would now need to check whether others present remembered the same event to have confidence in the accuracy of my own memory.

The advantages of our memory system, which seems set up to fail, is that it gives our brains great flexibility without brain overload.
Researchers have shown that brain games do not improve memory. The improvement that participants note is improvement in playing the game. These gains are not transferable. However, mnemonic training like memory palaces and techniques involving WEIRD do help memory by maximising the associative nature of memory. Shaw uses the example of ‘Do not think about pink elephants’ as a good example of WEIRD techniques. We automatically do the opposite of what we are told, that is, we hold pink elephants in our mind. Moreover, ‘pink elephants’ itself becomes a good way of remembering the principle of WEIRD in memory.

What can my baby boomer students of Latin and French learn from The Memory Illusion? They can take comfort that it is harder to remember things as you get older. They can associate new things to learn with things they already know. They can use repetition to strengthen these networks of association. And they can console themselves that synaptic pruning is an important process in memory, always creating possibilities for new learning however aged the learner! ( )