Total [Bogus] Recall

The 2007 Symbolic Systems Distinguished Speaker is Prof. Elizabeth Loftus. Her talk will be entitled, “What’s the Matter with Memory?” on May 15th, at 5pm in room 420-040. Attendance is open for anyone in the Stanford community. That is, if you can REMEMBER to join us. :)<blockquote>For at least a century, scientists have demonstrated the tricks memory can play. More recently they have shown that people can be led to develop entire memories for events that never happened - “Rich false memories.” In recent work, people have been led to remember nonexistent events from the recent past as well as non-existent events from their childhood. People [of any age] can be led to falsely believe that they have had familiar experiences, but also rather bizarre or implausible ones. They can be led to believe that they did things that would have been impossible (e.g., shaking hands with Bugs Bunny during a trip to Disneyland). They can be led to falsely believe that they had experiences that would have been rather traumatic had they actually happened. False memories, like true ones, also have consequences for people, affecting later thoughts, intentions, and behaviors. For example, people who are led to believe that as children they got sick eating particular foods show avoidance of those foods later on. If false memories can be so readily planted in the mind, what does it say about the nature of memory?</blockquote>