A new study suggests people with exceptional memory of past events are still susceptible to false memories.
The researchers performed memory manipulation tests on a trial group, and found people with "highly superior autobiographical memory" (HSAM) had similar scores to those that did not, a UC Irvine news release reported.
"Finding susceptibility to false memories even in people with very strong memory could be important for dissemination to people who are not memory experts. For example, it could help communicate how widespread our basic susceptibility to memory distortions is," Lawrence Patihis, a graduate student in psychology & social behavior at UC Irvine, said. "This dissemination could help prevent false memories in the legal and clinical psychology fields, where contamination of memory has had particularly important consequences in the past."
HSAM is characterized by the ability to remember even miniscule details from the "distant past." This includes "recalling daily activities of their life since mid-childhood with almost 100 percent accuracy."
Patihis and graduate student Aurora LePort asked 20 people with HSAM and 38 people with average memory to participate in word association exercises as well as tests that tested their ability to recall details of photos and videos. Some of these tests attempted to trick the participants into thinking they had remained something they had not actually seen.
"While they really do have super-autobiographical memory, it can be as malleable as anybody else's, depending on whether misinformation was introduced and how it was processed," Patihis said. "It's a fascinating paradox. In the absence of misinformation, they have what appears to be almost perfect, detailed autobiographical memory, but they are vulnerable to distortions, as anyone else is."
The team is working to better-understand how HSAM works.
"What I love about the study is how it communicates something that memory distortion researchers have suspected for some time: that perhaps no one is immune to memory distortion," Patihis said. "It will probably make some nonexperts realize, finally, that if even memory prodigies are susceptible, then they probably are too. This teachable moment is almost as important as the scientific merit of the study. It could help educate people - including those who deal with memory evidence, such as clinical psychologists and legal professionals - about false memories."
