Why our memory fails, and how to improve it : NPR

Did That Really Happen? Perhaps the most pervasive false belief, held by about 60 percent of Americans, is that memory works like a video camera. Memory is not like a video camera; a better way to think of it is as an act of reconstruction, or what you might call "mental paleontology." More resources: The Cognitive Aging and Memory Lab at Tufts University "Reconstruction of automobile destruction: An example of the interaction between language and memory," by Elizabeth F. Loftus and John C. Palmer, 1974 "A picture is worth a thousand lies: Using false photographs to create false childhood memories," by Kimberley A. Don Read and D. Stephen Lindsay, 2002 "Creating bizarre false memories through imagination," by Ayanna K. Thomas and Elizabeth F. Loftus, 2002 Sponsor Message "Replication and Analysis of Ebbinghaus' Forgetting Curve," by Jaap M. J. Murre and Joeri Dros, 2015 "Retrieval practice protects memory against acute stress," by Amy M. Smith, Victoria A. Floerke and Ayanna K. Thomas, 2016