-Caveat Lector- National Post April 25, 2001 http://www.nationalpost.com/ Good news about your bad memory Try this simple test and it'll all be explained Norman Doidge National Post On May 16, John Doe #1 -- as Timothy McVeigh, the most notorious homegrown American terrorist was officially called before his capture -- is scheduled to be executed. But what about John Doe #2? He is all but forgotten. You may remember --vaguely -- that during the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, two composite pictures of likely suspects were posted. An FBI composite resembling the tall, fair-haired McVeigh was called John Doe #1. John Doe #2 was short, square-faced, dark-haired, with a tattoo beneath his left sleeve. The story of John Doe #2 is only one of the many fascinating tales in Daniel Schacter's just-released The Seven Sins of Memory. Schacter is chairman of the psychology department of Harvard University, but got his training and was on faculty at the University of Toronto in the '70s and '80s. It turned out there never was a John Doe #2. So how did he come about? The FBI tracked a van used in the bombing to Elliott's truck rental in Junction City, Kan. There, mechanic Tom Kessinger recalled that two men had rented the van. One fit the description of McVeigh, and the other, square-faced mug became John Doe #2. The FBI tracked down McVeigh, but never found John Doe #2. What actually happened was that a man fitting the description Kessinger gave of John Doe # 2 came into the shop a day after McVeigh rented his van. On that day, U.S. Army Sergeant Michael Hertig --who was tall and fair like McVeigh -- came to rent a van with his friend, Private Todd Bunting -- who was short, square-faced, dark-haired. Kessinger watched. Since Kessinger had correctly identified McVeigh, the FBI presumed at first he was right about John Doe #2. In essence, Kessinger's mind had associated the short, dark-haired man with a tall, fair-haired fellow. This kind of misattribution -- in which we confuse the source of a memory -- is not uncommon because our memory works by association. The implications are staggering for our legal system. Recent analyses of 40 cases in which DNA evidence established the innocence of wrongfully imprisoned people showed that 90% of those convictions had been based on mistaken eyewitness identification. Using a technique called the Desse/Roedinger-McDermott phenomenon, Schacter has experimentally created situations in which we think we have experienced things that haven't happened. (If you want to try it, don't read the next paragraph, but instead ask someone sitting next to you to read the following two lists of words at the rate of about one word per second. You try to remember them. Immediately after, your friend will ask you if you heard just some of the words.) The words in list one are thread, pin, eye, sewing, sharp, point, prick, thimble, haystack, thorn, hurt, injection, syringe, cloth, knotting. The words in list two are bed, rest, awake, tired, dream, wake, snooze, blanket, doze, slumber, snore, nap, peace, yeast, drowsy. Now, for some skill-testing questions. After each of the following words, vote yes if you are sure it was on the list, no if it wasn't or not sure: Sewing, door, needle, sleep, candy, awake. When these tests are conducted in large groups, most people remember that sewing and awake were on the lists and that door and candy were not. But what is most interesting is that people frequently claim with certainty that they heard needle and sleep. Clearly, many of the words on the first list activate associations to the abstract concept of sharpness and along with that an association to the word needle. The same for list two, only the associative network activated is to the concept of sleep. In misattribution, we mix up the source of a memory (as when we know a joke but forget who told it to us, then tell it back to that person). In the above experiment, the source is likely a mental association that was triggered by the list. Arguably, this is the kind of mistake Kessinger made in identifying John Doe #2 as the the accomplice of a tall, fair-haired man. Schacter shows how many of the "sins of memory" are arguably not simply defects (though these can occur) but actually make memory more efficient. So, while the list-of-words experiment shows a "mistake" is generated, it is a mistake that involves us getting the gist of the list. That, Schacter argues, is adaptive, from an evolutionary standpoint. We don't want our minds cluttered with details. Russian psychologist Alexandr Luria wrote a book on a savant named Shereshevsky who remembered virtually everything but could never function in life because that required the ability to abstract and separate the important from the trivial. Sometimes less is more. At times, remembering certain things makes it harder to remember others. This is seen in memory blocking. Imagine what life would be like if every time you had to remember a detail about something -- say, New York -- every related association to it poured suddenly into your consciousness. You'd be overwhelmed. Blocking prevents that chaos. Schacter describes experiments in which blocking is produced experimentally. In one, subjects were asked to memorize the word pairs red/blood and food/radish. Each time they were given red as a cue, the likelihood they would recall the word blood increased. But the more the subjects practised strengthening the tie between red and blood, the harder it became for them to remember the tie between food and radish. (Note to myself: Be careful what you choose to remember.) The world of memory is filled with paradoxes. We tend to think that memory is retrospective and relates to the past, but actually, it is easily understood as prospective, related to the future. That's what to-do lists and hand-held computers are all about. Interestingly, when a person has a bad retrospective memory, we tend to think of them as mentally defective, but when they forget to do something, we think them irresponsible, i.e., morally defective. But Schacter's main point is that each of our memory sins, including transience of memory, absent-mindedness (such as the time Yo-Yo Ma left his US$2.5-million cello in the trunk of a cab), suggestibility and bias, are not always "failures" of our memory systems, but the product of a system evolved to select what is most important. To have useful memories, we must be capable of forgetting. Dr. Doidge is a research psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. His column appears every other Wednesday. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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