Episodic Memory: The Seven Sins Of Memory

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We are able to access information in our brain with the help of our memories. We take this ability for granted and when our memory fails us we see how truly valuable it really is. Psychologists have called these errors in memory the seven sins of memory. Each sin breaks down in a specific part of the memory system and all can be found in everyday life. The first sin is transience and it deals with the loss of information over a certain time. The breakdown in memory occurs in the storage phase after the information has been encoded but before it is retrieved. Certain information that isn’t as relevant to the person may be lost overtime, such as information you learned in a high school class. Recent memories are easier to recall than ones from a long time ago. During episodic memory each …show more content…

During criminal investigations memory misattribution can be a big problem when trying to identify suspects. When the federal building was bombed in 1995 Tom Kessinger identified another man with the actual suspect. When in reality Kessinger had actually confused two pieces of information and mixed them together and the other suspect never actually existed. Memory misattribution is also thought to be connected to the phenomenon we know as déjà vu. Déjà vu is when you suddenly feel as if you are in a situation that has already occurred even though you cannot recall any details.
Suggestibility is the tendency to incorporate false or misleading information into another individual’s personal recollections. Our brain does not store all the details from our everyday experiences so the brain can be susceptible to accepting suggestions about what actually occurred. Suggestibility is very prominent when dealing with childhood memories. Psychologists have used the idea of suggestibility to implant false information into people’s memories in order to make them believe that the experience actually occurred (Murray

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