The Memory Illusion: Remembering, Forgetting, and the Science of False Memory

by Julia Shaw

It’s not only outside sources that can dramatically alter our recollections of emotional events; we are also prone to distortion from internal influences. One way this can happen is through sharing our memories with others, something that most of us are likely do after important life events – whether it’s calling our family to impart some exciting news, reporting back to our boss about a big problem at work, or even giving a statement to police. In these kinds of situations we are transferring information that was originally encoded visually (or indeed through other senses) into verbal information. We are turning sensory inputs into words. But this process is not flawless; every time we take images, sounds or smells and verbalise them we potentially alter or lose information. There is a limit to the amount of detail we are able to communicate through language, so we have to cut corners. We simplify. This is a process known as verbal overshadowing, a term coined by psychological scientist Jonathan Schooler.