So again, the claim is by cleverly setting up these words, you can actually
make people remember things that were never presented.
And not only do they remember those things, but their confidence in the
memory is very high. So, sometimes we remember things that
never occurred with high confidence. Now, in the real world, you've run into
this. You, you've had an argument with a
friend, or a spouse, about something silly usually.
maybe you'll say something like, what did you think of the green paint that that
guy had on his wall when we were visiting last week.
And the other person might say, green, it wasn't green, it was red.
And you thought it was green, no it was red.
So now you have two people arguing about a memory of some of that.
Both extremely sure that they're correct, and obviously they cannot both be
correct. So at least one, if not both of those
people, is highly confident about something that didn't occur.
That's memory, okay? The reconstruction can produce a memory
that, that is false. And we can be very confident in it,
that's what makes memory simultaneously both so, both so fascinating, but also, a
little scary. Again, when it's used in things like
legal context to put somebody in jail. So it's fascinating.
a nice little demo. Okay., so a quick little lecture.
Okay, I just wanted you to feel that false memory, and I wanted to hopefully
produce a false memory in you. But here's some really great videos.
I, I went a little shorter on the lecture, because I really want you to
check out some of these. Loftus again talking about false
memories. Here's a, a video that, that goes into a
little bit more detail about how these false memories can be created.
And this last one, check this out, because it's really poignant.
there's, there was a time when a lot of people who had psychological issues of
some sort, we go to therapy. And the therapist would explore this
issues with them. And it was almost like a false memory
paradigm. They, the therapist might think maybe
this person was abused as a child. So they wouldn't actually say that,
because in therapy if you directly challenge somebody's traumatic memory
they often get defensive about it. So instead you talk around it, you know,
kind of like we never said the word thief.
But we said everything related to it and sometimes people in these therapeutic
situations have what's called a recovered memory.
They suddenly remember some, some very traumatic experiences like being sexually
abused as a child. which is already scary, but then
sometimes they will charge people, say uncle or something that did this.
And then subsequently find that the memory that they recovered was in fact
false. So, you know, it's one thing to falsely
remember a word. It's something else to falsely remember
sexual abuse. But there seems to be a lot of evidence
that even this level of memory can be false at times.
And so this an example one, one example, my lie, a true story of false memory, of
somebody recounting. An author recounting a situation where
she falsely accused a family member. of horrific things based on what she
later found to be a false memory. So a really poignant thing to check out
and, and to give you a sense of how big this can be.
here's the actual lists that, that I use to create those words.
So if you want to try this with your friends.
Plant some false memories just to show them it can.
And take what you've learned into the real world.
That's cool, this is a website where you can actually try some more experiments of
this sort. You can go through and do, and, and, do
them. You may need, Java installed or something
like that to make it work. but check it out if you want to
experiment more with your own memory or somebody else's, there's a good place to
do it, good tool to do it with. Alright, cool.
So, now you have the idea of how that reconstructive memory process works.
and so now in the last half of this week, we're going to talk about a number of
other issues related to memory. all stuff that's really cool, you'll find
fascinating, and I look forward to telling you about it.
Have a good night. Bye-bye.