Childhood Memory

Introduction

Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist noted for his studies of childhood development, believed for many years that he remembered something that had happened when he was just two years old. He wrote, "I can still see, most clearly, the following scene, which I believed until I was about fifteen. I was sitting in my pram, which my nurse was pushing in the Champs Elysees, when a man tried to kidnap me. I was held in by the strap fastened around me while my nurse bravely tried to stand between me and the thief. She received various scratches, and I can still see vaguely those on her face. Then a crowd gathered, a policeman with a short cloak and a white baton came up, and the man took to his heels. I can still see the whole scene, and can even place it near the tube station."

Discussion

A vivid memory of a traumatic event, right? Well, not exactly. Piaget goes on: "When I was about fifteen, my parents received a letter from my former nurse saying that she had been converted to the Salvation Army. She wanted to confess her past faults, and in particular to return the watch she had been given on this occasion. She had made up the whole story, faking the scratches. I, therefore, must have heard, as a child, the account of this story, which my parents believed, and projected it into my memory."

Piaget was remembering something he'd been told about, but never experienced. Memory researcher Elizabeth Loftus has experimented extensively in the laboratory with how memories can be changed by things that you are told. Your memories are vulnerable to what she calls "post-event information"--facts, ideas, and suggestions that come along after the event has happened. You can, unknowingly, integrate this information into your memory, modifying what you believe you saw, you heard, you experienced. Over time, you can integrate post-event information with information you gathered at the time of the event in such a way that you can't tell which details came from where, combining all this into one seamless memory.

The information that you integrate can come from something as subtle as a leading question. In laboratory situations, Loftus has documented such memory modifications. After showing a group of college students a film of an automobile accident, she asked a number of questions about the event. Among other questions, one group of students was asked, "About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?" Another group was asked, "About how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?" A third group was not asked about the cars' speed.

The students who were asked about the cars' speed when they "hit" estimated speeds significantly lower than the students who were asked about the cars' speed when they "smashed into" each other. A week later, Loftus asked the students another series of questions about the accident, including "Did you see any broken glass?" The film had shown no broken glass, but the ...