You are convinced that you have seen Bugs Bunny at Disneyland. Among the characters, of course. It’s just not possible, he’s from Warner Bros and he just can’t get into Disney. But if the experimenter was good at deceiving you and, believe me, he succeeds, you remember it. Because memory, on its own, is subject to deception. Admitting it is difficult, because it is the tool we rely on to define our identity, to orient ourselves in the world. But it is full of flaws and distortions, we often deceive ourselves about what we had seen and heard.
Daniele Gatti and Tomaso Vecchi in the book What is memory (edited by Carocci; the English version was released in the United States, Memory as Prediction, published by The Mit Press) use a classic experiment to explain it. Participants are told the story of a dictator who because of his ruthlessness sent his country into ruin. Essential, few details, easy to remember. Half of the participants were told that the dictator was called Gerald Martin – nonexistent – the other half Adolf Hitler. A week later the details of the story had to be remembered. Surprise: the participants added details that were not present in the same, but were consistent with their preconceptions. So they believed they had been told that Hitler hated Jews and persecuted them, which historically is very true, but in the story heard there was no mention of it.
Other variables corrupt the correctness of the memory. For example the exposure time. Observing something for 10 seconds or 20 minutes makes a difference in the amount and accuracy of detail remembered. Attention, emotions also play a complex role. Do you believe that if an event has an intense emotional value, you will remember it with more or less care? Think about it ten seconds. Done? Now answer.
Well, often the emotional intensity worsens the quality of recalling some details. The example of Gatti and Vecchi is powerful: you remember some emotionally strong details of a scene of aggression: there was a weapon or it wasn’t there, this remains imprinted on you. But other details will remain obscured in the tunnel of fear: the face of the attacker you remember worse. How important is it to know these studies, for example, in the field of legal testimony? How reliable, and under what conditions, is a witness? In other respects, memory can be exceptionally effective in the case of autobiographical memories with a strong emotional value. Remember where you were when Italy defeated France in the 2006 World Cup final? Who were you with? If they had asked you a year and a half after the game, you would have been very accurate. The writer remembers the friends with whom, in the garden of a house by the sea, he watched the matches of the 1982 World Cup.
Is this a contradiction? Emotions worsen the quality of memories or do they improve it? Gatti and Vecchi explain that their role is not one-sided. It is useful to know the Yerkes-Dodson law. It’s about the curve of thearousal, that is, the level of neurophysiological alertness and attention, the emotional temperature we experience at a given moment. The Yerkes-Dodson law says that at levels of arousal too low or too high it is more difficult to recall information. Just think about the performance of students in exams, if they are too anxious or too little anxious they work worse. The authors then show us recent exceptions to this law, sometimes under intense stress it remembers better.
And what about the fixation of memories? What events remain with us? This is an extremely important area for us psychotherapists and I imagine it is for many other professions. We want our patient to remember what he discovered, understood, learned in the session. Well, if you find it in arousal medium-low, it will stare at it a little and will not remember it. What happens in a state of arousal medium-high remains impressed. We remember the first kiss, the fight with a friend, not where we were shopping twelve years ago. So, if we want patients in therapy to bring home the results of a good session, we need to make sure they are alert, active.
Finally, the reenactment of an event takes place in the same brain areas in which we imagine what will happen in the future. It is the world of fantasy, of mental simulation, of action planning. Memory is a tool, recalling the past serves to predict and act accordingly. While we remember who we have been, without knowing it, we are already deciding who we will be tomorrow.
May 31, 2021 (change May 31, 2021 | 11:47 am)
© REPRODUCTION RESERVED
.