How do human memories work? a psychologist provides insight into "metacognitive illusions," and how our "perceptions and memories" work. There is a contention that people are unduly confident in their ability to understand and remember. Allegedly, "our intuitions about our own cognitive systems can be surprisingly unreliable."
Most will be familiar with the name Arthur Conan Doyle, the author who brought the world Sherlock Holmes. In addition to his literary pursuits, he "was also an illustrious paranormal investigator." In a recent article, the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) highlighted the success some had with deceiving him, contending Doyle "often failed to see the frauds in front of his eyes." The entire article is interesting, but particularly on how our brains process and store information.
The author describes two instances in which Doyle was "hoaxed." The first is a somewhat famous instance in which he was deceived by some fake photographs, and later by a photographer who similarly produced fake photos before his very eyes. A second instance involved Doyle being engaged to witness a seance, at which he was misled by sleight of hand perpetrated by two magicians. In each instance, Doyle's acceptance of his perceptions was highlighted.
The BBC author contends that some of Doyle's acceptance was attributable to a "will to believe." In the instance of the seance, Doyle reportedly even refused to believe he had been misled and fooled when the magicians repeated the trick demonstrating how it was perpetrated. He reportedly contended that the "reveal," which was afterward staged to demonstrate how the hoax was played, was the trick and that the first seance he witnessed had been real.
The BBC author cautions us against our memory, noting that many of us believe "memory works like a video camera accurately recording the events that we see and hear." Though he concedes that we are wired for such a belief, it is instead more realistic to view our memory as "processes of reconstruction, rather than one of reproduction." When we "remember an event," the process is "more like composing a story" than "replaying a video." And, since it is a "reproduction" the brain may "erroneously integrate imagined elements" into the reconstruction.
Another point stressed is what the author refers to as "change blindness blindness." After reading the story, this reference reminded me of Luke 23:34 "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." But, as I reflected upon the foundation of "blindness blindness," I sought out a long-remembered but less-known quote "He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool," Omar Khayam. That is also attributed by some to Confucious. The upshot is that being ignorant is one thing, but not knowing that you are ignorant is worse.
The term "change blindness" is illustrated by the difficulty we experience in spotting differences in "a visual scene." Years ago, daily newspapers (the news was actually printed with ink on paper and delivered daily much in the way stories are now uploaded to the Internet) would print side-by-side frames of very similar pictures, and the entertainment value was striving to identify some set quantity of differences between the two.
The BBC author contends that our human perception skills render the detection of differences difficult. It has been demonstrated scientifically, leading to the author's conclusion that "detecting changes" is difficult. When the scientific research was initially published, peer review was critical, concluding that the results of the research were "impossible." That "people could be change blind was so counter-intuitive that even visual scientists were inclined to doubt the reality of the phenomenon." But, in the roughly two decades since that initial reaction, "change blindness is an established part of cognitive psychology."
But, that science has accepted it does not mean that you or I either recognize or accept it. In fact, the author contends that many of us are "ignorant of their change blindness." And, because we are, some magicians and illusionists are successful with tricks and deceptions. The author contends that despite the reasonably recent scientific acceptance of "change blindness," it is an essential underlying part of the history of illusionists. Our "blindness" to our own "change blindness" is thus referred to as "change blindness blindness," a label for our self-denial, conscious or not.
This does not mean that we are "broken" or that our "memory is 'flawed.'" What it means is that even the most sophisticated students of human psychology do not fully understand the functions and processes of our brains. The contention is that our brains are confronted with "complex and confusing information every day," and our "cognitive system" has aptly adapted to interpret this information for us. The author encourages us to "appreciate the intricacies of human memory and perception while considering the systems' limits and eccentricities."
This recognition may help us to understand how multiple people can perceive some event or action and yet disagree with one another regarding details of what happened, how, or to whom. Perceptions might be different based upon the perspective or view of the person later relating their recollection. But, it is possible the person's description in recounting could be different from someone else's merely because of the phenomenon of "change blindness." And, because of "blindness blindness, they may not even be aware they are engaging in a "process of reconstruction, rather than one of reproduction."
