‘If we can’t fix it, it ain’t broke.’ –Lieutenant Colonel Walt Weir
Human memory systems are subject to many imperfections, including memory distortions and the creation of false memories. Here, we demonstrate a case where memory distortion is adaptive, increasing the overall accuracy of memories. […]
Although participants’ memories were systematically distorted, they were distorted in a way that is consistent with minimizing their average error […]
Thus, memory distortion may not always be maladaptive: in some cases, distortion can result from a memory system that optimally combines information in the service of the broader goals of the person. Furthermore, this framework for thinking about memory distortion suggests that false memory can be thought of on a continuum with true memory: the greater uncertainty participants have about an individual item memory, the more they weight their gist memory [Gist traces are fuzzy representations of a past event]; with no item information, they weight only their gist memory.
photo { Ana Mendieta, Untitled, from Silueta Series, Iowa, 1978 }
