Have I done it?

October, 2010

Watching another person do something can leave you with the memory of having done it yourself.

I’m not at all sure why the researcher says they were “stunned” by these findings, since it doesn’t surprise me in the least, but a series of experiments into the role of imagination in creating false memories has revealed that people who had watched a video of someone else doing a simple action often remembered doing the action themselves two weeks later. In fact in my book on remembering intentions, which includes a chapter on remembering whether you’ve done something, I mention the risk of imagining yourself doing something (that you then go on to believe you have actually done it), and given all the research on mirror neurons, it’s no big step to go from watching someone doing something to remembering that you did it. Nevertheless, it’s nice to get the confirmation.

The experiments involved participants performing several simple actions, such as shaking a bottle or shuffling a deck of cards. Then they watched videos of someone else doing simple actions—some of which they had performed themselves and some of which they hadn’t. Two weeks later, they were asked which actions they had done. They were much more likely to falsely remember doing an action if they had watched someone else do it — even when they had been warned about the effect.

It seems likely that this is an unfortunate side-effect of a very useful ability — namely our ability to learn motor skills by observing others (using the aforesaid mirror neurons) — and there’s probably not a great deal we can do to prevent it happening. It’s just a reminder of how easy it is to form false memories.

Reference: 

[1839] Lindner, I., Echterhoff G., Davidson P. S. R., & Brand M.
(2010).  Observation Inflation.
Psychological Science. 21(9), 1291 - 1299.

Related News

Laparoscopic surgery makes intense demands on cognitive, perceptual and visuospatial abilities, rendering it particularly vulnerable to the effects of alcohol (and also making it a sensitive indicator).

The mental differences between a novice and an expert are only beginning to be understood, but two factors thought to be of importance are automaticity (the process by which a procedure becomes so practiced that it no longer requires conscious thought) and chunking (the unitizing of related bits

What makes one person so much better than another in picking up a new motor skill, like playing the piano or driving or typing?

Two experiments involving a total of 191 volunteers have investigated the parameters of sleep’s effect on learning.

In a recent study, volunteers were asked to solve a problem known as the Tower of Hanoi, a game in which you have to move stacked disks from one peg to another.

There are a number of ways experts think differently from novices (in their area of expertise).

A new study explains why variable practice improves your memory of most skills better than practice focused on a single task.

A new study challenges the popular theory that expertise is simply a product of tens of thousands of hours of deliberate practice. Not that anyone is claiming that this practice isn’t necessary — but it may not be sufficient.

A number of studies have shown the benefits of sleep for consolidating motor learning. A new study extends this research to a more complex motor task: "Guitar Hero III", a popular video game.

A rat study has revealed that as the rats slowly learned a new rule, groups of neurons in the medial frontal cortex switched quite abruptly to a new pattern corresponding directly to the shift in behavior, rather than showing signs of gradual transition.

Pages

Subscribe to Latest newsSubscribe to Latest newsSubscribe to Latest health newsSubscribe to Latest news
Error | About memory

Error

The website encountered an unexpected error. Please try again later.