Memory And False Memories Essay

John walks into a room and forgets what he was planning on doing there. Maria is unable to recall how she hit her head. Sarah couldn’t remember her new co-workers name, even though they just met. Jacob does not remember that he experienced childhood abuse. Susan is unable to recall her sister’s phone number. Each and every person has experienced some degree of brief memory failure in their lifetime. Being quite an inconvenience, memory failure can span from a few seconds to multiple years. Memory is a key component of everyday life and would be near impossible to live without. Unfortunately, many problems can interfere with even the sharpest of memories. There are many potential consequences of memory failure that can affect not only ourselves, but others as well. The human memory has no limited capacity; how does it decide what is to be remembered and what is to be forgotten?
Memory is extremely complex and multi-faceted. On the surface, there is sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory. When memories are falsely fabricated or become prominent in one’s mind, they can cause a great range of issues. Specifically, one problem that can be faced is …show more content…
It is difficult to estimate the validity of recovered memories because of this indistinction. Memories can be changed through misinformation, imagination inflation, and suggestion. When memories are retrieved, our brain rebuilds them to the best of it’s ability. Yet what is remembered changes slightly each time the event is recalled. The altered memory is now re-encoded as “the real one,” only to be reconstructed with more fabrications during the next recall. (Schiller, 2013) So while memories are based, in part, on what actually happened they are also influenced by current thoughts and emotions. Due to this evidence, many people have built up a skeptical awareness of all memory