Episodic Memory: The Seven Sins Of Memory

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

time the memory is recalled it gets tweaked or altered when re-encoding in the hippocampus (Schacter 2001). We use transience to remember and forget things that will contribute to how we think of ourselves. A great example of this was when former President Bill Clinton's experienced convenient lapses of memory during the Monica Lewinsky investigation.
The next sin is absentmindedness and this deals with when you lose your car keys or misplace something. Absentmindedness is a lapse in attention or lack of attention. People are susceptible to becoming absentminded when their attention is divided. When a person is encoding information the left frontal lobe is activated but when attention is divided there is less activity in this region leading to the information not being encoded normally (Murray 2003). The next sin is especially frustrating for all people.
Have you ever tried to remember something but you can’t get it off the tip of your tongue? Then you have experienced the third sin known as blocking. Blocking is a breakdown in the retrieval of information. Blocking can be very frustrating because the information has not faded and you aren’t forgetting to retrieve the information, you are just experiencing full-blown retrieval failure (Schacter 2001). This sin can be found in everyday life especially when dealing with places and people’s names.
Memory misattribution is when information is assigned to the wrong source.

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

2003).
The next sin bias deals with the idea that current beliefs, feelings, and knowledge can distort your recollection of prior events. Current moods can affect how you interprete and remember past experiences. So if you are currently really happy your memory of a past event can be biased into making it happier than it actually was. In relationships couples that have been dating for a long time generally say they are happier and love each other more than the previous years (Schacter 2001). When in reality the feelings and beliefs that they have now distort their previous memories.
Persistence is the final sin of memory and this is when we experience intrusive recollections of memories that we wish we could erase and forget. When involved in a tramatic experience most people are overwhelmed by the vivid details they remember. This can take a toll on a person emotionally and is an unwelcomed burden. Flashbulb memories happen when we recall detailed experiences about shocking events (Schacter 2001). The details include where and when you heard the news about a specific event. People are able to recall where they were at and when they heard about a tragic event such as the World Trade attacks on 9/11 or the Apollo moon landings.
All people are affected by the seven sins of memory and all can be experienced in everyday life. When are memory system fails we understand how valuable it actually is to us. The seven sins of memory each have their own pros and cons and are not necessarily a burden to humans.