Are your memories really yours?

[Mike Covell]

Nice work by Hull Uni.

http://www2.hull.ac.uk/news_and_events-1/news_archive/2010_news_archive/aug/isyourmemory.aspx

[Robert Linford]

Interesting. Could part of the explanation be that we are exposed to so much fiction via TV, the brain starts to get confused?

[Chris G.]

Nice work by Hull Uni.

http://www2.hull.ac.uk/news_and_events-1/news_archive/2010_news_archive/aug/isyourmemory.aspx

Interesting indeed. A couple of thoughts. An adult could easily brainwash a child into thinking something has happened, and then have the child tell people later that something actually occurred. And related to this, there are the child abuse cases in which a child says they were abused but they are actually just telling the counsellor or police about abuse because they think that is what the adults want to hear. Another example is the Salem witch trials where scores of people, some of them children or teenagers, were convinced they witnessed witchcraft. And getting back to the Ripper case, closer to home as it were, the supposed witness testimonies of the likes of Mathew Packer and Mrs Mortimer might have become over-elaborated because they were encouraged by the press, to the extent that they began to believe their own exaggerations.

Chris

[Robert Linford]

I believe that knowledge in the child is retained by associations. At first the associations are very irrational indeed, because the child doesn't have much to work on. Later on in adulthood the knowledge is all in place and arranged more or less logically. Later on again, as the brain ages, irrational associations can take over once more, simply because the brain must make associations. So people begin to forget things, assigning the wrong actions to the wrong people. Sometimes they get things wildly wrong.

When I first heard the name Jack the Ripper, at about 5 years old, my grandmother told me it was some man who used to be nasty to women (or something like that - the bowdlerised version). Because I didn't know any Jacks, except for Jack Walker in Coronation Street, I always pictured Jack Walker's face if I thought of Jack the Ripper. I knew he wasn't Jack the Ripper - it was just an involuntary association.