Brain Can Generate False Memories Within a Blink of an Eye [Study]

Our brains can create false memories because what remains in our consciousness depends on what we expect to see. A new study revealed how fast our brains can create their recollection regardless of what we see.

How Brain Creates False Memories

According to a new study, people can create false memories in a split second. Researchers showed 534 participants letters from the Western alphabet in their actual and mirrored orientations in a series of four studies conducted at the University of Amsterdam.

All participants were then instructed to recall a target letter from the initial presentation after some participants saw an interference slide with illogical letters intended to confuse the original recollection.

Nearly 20% of participants had an illusory recall of the target letter after seeing the first slide. This number rose to 30% after another half-second.

Even milliseconds after seeing letters that were reversed (Ɔ instead of C), people were more likely to recognize them as authentic letters.

Short-Term Memory And Perception

According to the study, short-term memory does not always provide a reliable depiction of what was recently observed. Instead, memory is molded by what we anticipate seeing, even before the first memory trace is formed.

By rating the participants' confidence level in their memories on a scale from one to four, the researchers demonstrated that these were false memories rather than inaccurate assumptions.

According to the researchers, the participants consistently report seeing the genuine counterpart of a pseudo-letter target with a high degree of confidence.

People were more likely to mistake a pseudo-letter for a real letter than the other way around, which suggests that memory illusions are mediated by worldly knowledge of how things typically appear.

The researchers used measures at two separate times to distinguish between these false memories and mistakes in initial perception. The 0.25 seconds when the letters flashed provided the only window of chance.

The error rate would be the same 500 milliseconds and 3 seconds later if perception flaws were to blame for the mistakes. The fact that the error rate rose with time indicated the formation of erroneous memories.

We know the ease with which false long-term memories can be created due to experiments led by psychologist Elizabeth Loftus and others.

Adults, for instance, can be persuaded to recall in great detail a fictitious account of a little child weeping and becoming lost in a mall. In another study, participants conjured up vivid, false memories of committing crimes like theft or violence.

What Is a Fuzzy Trace Theory?

According to the "fuzzy trace theory," memory is divided into two distinct parts: the verbatim piece, which recalls the event's details as they happened, and the gist section, which includes the person's interpretation of the event's importance based on semantic analysis. This idea claims that false verbatim chunks are the root of false long-term memories.

The independent verbatim and gist memory processes proposed by fuzzy-trace theory have consequences for practical issues like eyewitness testimony. Memory paradoxes such as dissociations between true and false memory, false memories outlasting real memories, and developmental improvements in false memory are all explained by this contrast between precise, literal verbatim memory and meaning-based, intuitive gist.

A prior study showed that when participants were shown a photo of a face and a profession, they were more likely to associate criminal labels, like "drug dealer," with faces with Black features, suggesting that subconscious prejudices were influencing recollections.

A list of three or four related words (such as nap, doze, bed, and awake) was presented to participants in a different study. Participants remembered words not on the first list but semantically related, such as sleep, more readily when given the second list.

The fuzzy trace theory "cannot entirely explain the current findings," according to the researchers write. However, it may also be responsible for short-term memory illusions.

These studies imply that verbatim memory input is instantly combined with prior knowledge and expectations.

This study was published in PLOS One.

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