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

by Julia Shaw

Putting pictures into words always makes our memories for those pictures worse. Further research by Schooler and others has suggested that this effect may also transfer to other situations and senses. It seems that whenever something is difficult to put into words, verbalisation of it generally diminishes performance. Try to describe a colour, taste or music, and you make your memory of it worse. Try describing a map, a decision or an emotional judgement, and it becomes harder to remember all the details of the original situation. This is also true when others verbalise things for us. If we hear someone else’s description of a person’s face, a colour or a map, our memory of it is also impaired. Our friends may be trying to help us when they give their verbal account of something that happened, but they may instead be overshadowing our own original recollections.