Researchers Ponder Causes of Our Memories

We all know the phenomenon of discussing a mutual experience with a friend that occurred a long time ago. The first thought nudged from one's mind in connection with the event often strikes an entire chain of memory processes. On this basis, we gradually reconstruct the event.

A team of researchers from the University of Regensburg has found that selective memory has a conflicting effect on the reconstruction of past events. The team led by Karl-Heinz Bäuml from the Institute for Psychology at the University of Regensburg studied a group of 80 participants.

The researchers wanted to know if memory retrieval of a single experience was influenced by whether the incident was viewed positively or negatively. They sought to determine whether fragmented memory was part of a traumatic experience or if the observation of a negative event has an effect upon how we remember other events in connection with it.

Memory has "two faces"
 The researchers found that selective memory can both hinder and promote related memory processes. Selective memories have in a way "two faces". The subjectively experienced improvements in memory performance seem to be connected with old events, and the blocking effects were associated with more recent events.

To conduct their study, the team presented their subjects with a list of words to be learned in turn. After learning the words from the first list, the subjects were tasked either to remember or to forget the list, which was comprised of four target words and twelve nontarget words. In the second case, the subjects were told that the list was only shown for practice purposes and would not be asked about later. After this, they had to learn the second list of nontarget words and were eventually examined on the first list. The target words were either asked about right away or after the subjects were prodded along by the researchers with the nontarget words.

The experiment showed that the memory performance of the subjects when tasked to remember the second list was better when the target words were first asked for by the researchers. On the other hand, when the target words were asked for after the nontarget words, the subjects could remember the words that they were supposed to have forgotten.

These results indicate that memory depends on the recall status of particular information. In the case of old, seemingly irrelevant memories, the selective recall of memories improved when related materials were remembered. In the case of current, relevant memories, the selective recall of related events actually blocked memory retrieval.

The University of Regensburg study will be published in the renowned magazine "Psychological Science". The work is especially relative to memory recall in traumatized patients like former soldiers and war victims, as well as for criminologists. /"The week in Germany"

Avd. Förkovran i engelska.
* "Participant" = deltagare;  -ant är ett suffix som oftast anger den som utför något ("assistant" = "assistent", "attendant" = "skötare" [ "a flight attendant" = "en flygvärdinna"]. "Deltagare" på spanska = bl.a. "participante", på italienska "partecipante", på franska "participant" och på ett annat latinspråk, rumänska =  "participanţilor", varför jag, inte så fräckt, gissar att ordet kommer från latinet.
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