What affects the accuracy of memory?

Answer 1

Human memory is an amazing thing, but there are many ways memory can fail. Here is a brief explanation of Daniel Schacter's "seven sins of memory."

Three sins of forgetting:

1. Encoding failure from absent-mindedness. If we paid attention to every single detail it would be really overwhelming, so oftentimes certain information never enters our long-term memories and thus we cannot recall it later.
2. Storage decay over time, which is called transience. Oftentimes the memory we have successfully stored is just forgotten later on. This is usually caused by lack of rehearsal (e.g. using the Spanish vocabulary you learned three years ago) and a weakening of neural connections.
3. Blocking or retrieval failure. When we are given a lot of similar information, we may store everything but it can be difficult to recall one particular thing out of a large collection. We learn a lot of names in our lives but cannot always remember them all. New information can interfere with recalling old information, and vice versa. Retrieval cues, such as seeing the face of the person, may help.

Three sins of distortion:

1. Misattribution. If you've ever thought Sally disliked chocolate when it was really Hannah, you've misattributed your information. When we encode memories, different aspects are distributed to the part of the brain that deals with that type of info. In these cases, the source part of the memory hasn't been sent correctly.
2. False memories due to our suggestibility. Sometimes we are given or imagine misinformation and incorporate it into our memory, so later on we remember it as true.
3. Bias can also distort our recollections. If students are given cumbersome projects periodically throughout the year, they may remember the teacher as tough or unfair despite having a lot of fun in the class initially.

   One sin of intrusion:

4. Persistence of unwanted memories. If we are reliving memories constantly, the theory would be that they stay accurate and fresh in the mind. However there is a likelihood for our imaginations to get away with us and exaggerate/add details - particularly with unwanted or fear-inducing memories.