9. Learning language, an incredible feat

You're listening to memory booster, aHimalaya learning audio course. Be sure to check out all of the other exclusivecourses in the Himalayas app or on himalaya.com. Before we get started, thisepisode contains some references to violent crimes or assaults that may not besuitable for all listeners.

[00:00:26] If you're sensitive to hearingabout topics like that, it may be best to sit this one out. Thanks everyone.

[00:00:36] it's time for another memorytest. This will all make sense at the end of the episode, but by now I'm sureyou're used to little experiments on this podcast. Here's how it's going to go.I'll give you three lists of 12 words, pausing for a few seconds between eachlist. Don't write them down. Just listen to the words and I'll quiz you at theend of the episode to see how much of the list you remember.

[00:00:58] Does that sound good? Great.Here's the first list. Door, glass pane, shade ledge.

[00:01:16] House

[00:01:32] nurse sick lawyer. Medicinehealth hospital, dentist, physician, patient office stethoscope,

[00:01:58] fear, hate rage, temper fury.Wrath happy fight hatred mean? Okay. Those are the three lists. We'll revisitthat at the end of the episode.

[00:02:28] Hi, I'm ed Allard. And this ismemory booster show. You'll hear from memory experts at leading universities,from Harvard to Columbia and many more. I'll talk to them about different kindsof memory, along with some other fascinating topics. I'm curious about at theend of every episode, we'll review a trick technique or exercise you can use tomake your memory work for you.

[00:02:56] A few years ago, a viralinternet scandal blew up regarding one of my favorite children's book series.The Berenstain bears somewhere deep in bear country, less advanced in bed.

[00:03:12] It seemed trivial, but manymillennials who grew up with the series were floored to learn that the nameactually ended in a, I N rather than the widely remembered E I N. I fell rightinto this too. When I saw an article reporting the phenomenon, my first thoughtwas, wow, they're spelling the name wrong.

[00:03:30] Only to discover that thearticle was about the spelling of the name and that the article was spelling itcorrectly. I was just another shocked millennial who had fallen prey to whatsome call the Mandela effect.

[00:03:45] This term refers to when a largegroup of people misremember the same detail. The name is based on the fact, alarge group of people mistakenly remembered that Nelson Mandela died in prisonwhen he didn't conspiracy theorists, including the woman who coined the termMandela effect. Believe that these collective false memories are evidence ofalternate universes or widespread coverups today, we're operating on theassumption that there's a scientific explanation.

[00:04:12] Something about this strangephenomenon hits a visceral place. For me, it feels weird to doubt your ownmemory, no matter how trivial the details. And there are way more examples ofthis. Doesn't the monopoly man, have a monocle. No, he never had a monocle.Didn't Darth Vader. Say, Luke, I am your father. No, he actually said hi,

[00:04:40] what's going on here to learnmore about the science of false memories. I enlisted the help of one of thefields leading researchers. It turns out the implications of false memories goway, way further than some trivial internet details. I'm Elizabeth Loftus and Iam a professor at the university of California, Irvine.

[00:05:03] I have appointments in a numberof different departments. Psychological science is one of them. Uh, criminologylaw and society is another department. Uh, I'm also a professor in the lawschool. I have been doing research on the malleability of memory for decadesnow. And in my studies, I have shown that people can be led to remember eventsdifferently than they actually occurred.

[00:05:33] Uh, they can be led to remember,for example, that a car went through a stop sign instead of a yield sign. Um,but we have also shown that it's possible to plant entirely false memories intothe minds of otherwise ordinary healthy people. So what is a false memory? Afalse memory is simply an experience where you remember something differentlyfrom the way it actually happened, or you remember something that's completely false,uh, that never happened and saying that that's actually possible, but we havebeen learning a little bit earlier in the show about how memory.

[00:06:18] It's malleable. And it's alittle bit, it's a little bit creepy to hear about that. It makes me doubt myunexperienced. Well, it does make people feel a little uncomfortable to thinkthat, you know, their minds might be sprinkled with pieces of fiction. Uh, butI think it's important to recognize that that, that that is true.

[00:06:41] Uh, and that that memory ismalleable and is susceptible to being contaminated. Uh, because once werecognize it, then maybe we can figure out some things to do about it.Professor loft has started studying memory in grad school. At first, she wasfocused on semantic memory, our general knowledge of the world.

[00:07:02] At some point after I alreadyhad finished graduate school, I thought, gee, I really would like to studymemories that have. More obvious practical applicability. Uh, and I came to theidea of why not study eye, witness testimony, memory for crimes and accidentsand other kinds of complex events that can lead to legal cases that involvesomebody's memory.

[00:07:30] And so I set out to, uh, do somestudies of eye witness testimony, and that's how I. I got into the whole studyof memory distortion, and eventually the idea of false memories. The earlieststudies that I did usually involve a very simple procedure. Um, we would showour research subjects a, a video of, uh, an accident or maybe a video of a, ofa crime.

[00:07:59] And afterwards we would exposethem to some. Misinformation about the event that they had seen. So forexample, they might've seen an accident scenario where a car went through it, ayield sign before the accident. And later on, we would suggest to them that itwas a stop sign. And what we found is that many people, many of these researchwitnesses would pick up this misinformation incorporated into their memory.

[00:08:30] And it would cause an alterationor a change and the original memory. And this phenomenon, uh, became known asthe misinformation effect. And now there are probably thousands of studies ofthe misinformation effect showing that you can distort somebody's memory byexposing them to some kind of, of misinformation.

[00:08:56] And how would you quote unquote,suggest to someone that it was a stop sign instead of a yield sign in theoriginal study that we did? We would do it by asking a series of questions. Andone of them was a sneaky question that, um, mentioned the wrong sign. So aquestion like, um, did another car past the red dots and when it was at theintersection with a stop sign.

[00:09:22] So that's actually a very cleverquestion. It probably more clever than it, you know, it just appears on thesurface because the witness thinks. She's being asked about fit another carpass and well, thinking about that aspect of the question we slip in theinformation that it was a stop sign when it really was a yield sign and thatstop sign information, then it can kind of invade the mind sort of like aTrojan horse, because the witness doesn't even detect that it's coming.

[00:09:59] Uh, so, uh, that's one waythrough asking a leading question that mentioned some erroneous detail, youcould do it by exposing a witness to another witnesses version that is, issprinkled with misleading details. Mrs. Jones said the accident happened thisway, that the car came to the intersection, went through the stop sign and thenhit the pedestrian.

[00:10:22] Uh, did, what did you see. Um,that's another way of exposing people to misleading information and out therein the real world of that's how we get misinformation. We talked to otherpeople about some event we might've jointly experienced. We get asked leadingor suggestive questions by an interrogator who has an agenda or a hypothesisabout what might've happened and communicates, uh, details that areinadvertently wrong.

[00:10:55] Uh, we, we get media coverageabout high publicity events that we might've experienced ourselves. And these allprovide an opportunity for new information to. Uh, become available and to beintegrated into the original witness's memory. So professor Loftus and herfellow researchers conducted this original study, which found themisinformation effect people's answers or memories could be influenced by thesesneaky leading details.

[00:11:27] Where did their research go fromthere? We and others have asked a whole slew of questions about thisphenomenon. So for example, which kinds of people are more susceptible tohaving their memories be contaminated by misinformation. And some studiesshowed, for example, that young children and the elderly were more susceptibleto being influenced by misinformation them say, young adults.

[00:11:56] So that's one direction thatresearch went to the question of who is more susceptible, then you could ask,well, what are the conditions in which people in general are. More susceptibleor less susceptible to having their memories be contaminated. And we showed forexample, that if, uh, if a lot of time passes after the event is over and thememory has a chance to weaken, it becomes more susceptible to contamination.

[00:12:29] That's an example of acondition. In which people are, are more susceptible to misinformation then,uh, another, um, group of people were interested in, well, once you contaminatepeople with misinformation and they accepted and they're claiming it as theirown memory, what happened to the original memory?

[00:12:51] It is, it's still in there andthe human minds somewhere just kind of buried under a heap of garbage, uh, putyou potentially get, get at it again. Um, if you have the right retrieval cue,uh, and that was another issue that got explored. So these are our directionsthat different scientists went in expanding our knowledge of the misinformationeffect.

[00:13:16] Did people determined that, uh,you actually could uncover the original memory through all the misinformation?Or is that still unclear? Oh, uh, well, we, we duked it out in the, in thepages of the journal of experimental science, you know, I think, and then westopped arguing about it. I, I think the last paper I wrote on that particularissue, I said, you know, one thing we've learned through all this is there,there are a number of routes to getting a misinformation memory.

[00:13:47] Sometimes the original memory isso faded, um, that people adopt the misinformation and, and that becomes theirmemory. Um, sometimes people do have a conflict, uh, that they try to resolve.They say, gee, you know, I thought I saw a yield sign, but this, this person isquestioning me. Keeps talking about a stop sign on.

[00:14:09] Maybe it's a stop sign. I guessI'll go with stop sign. So there, you can see the person has both details inmind, but resolves the conflict in favor of the misinformation, you know, or,or might resolve it by rejecting the misinformation. If you just had a greatdeal of confidence in your original memory.

[00:14:30] Um, so. Sometimes it appears asif there is a bit of weakening of the original memory. When people go throughthis experience of exposure, to misinformation, adopting the misinformationmemory and reporting it as, as their own. And these are different routes tomiss information response. So there's the misinformation effect, but there arealso cases of memories that have been completely constructed.

[00:14:59] A lot of us can relate to that.Unsure. Did I make that up feeling when we're remembering our distantchildhoods? What does the research say about that? This is where the impact offalse memories becomes very, very serious. I started thinking about this afterI got involved in what was then a very famous court case.

[00:15:22] A man named George Franklin wasaccused of murdering a little eight year old girl raping and murdering her 20years earlier. And the only, the only evidence that was provided was thesupposedly repressed and recovered memory of George Franklins daughter, Eileen,who said that she saw her father do this rape and murder of little Suzy, herbest friend, 20 years earlier.

[00:15:50] That she repressed her memoryfor 20 years and now the memory was back and she had a whole detailed storyabout how she was in a van with her father and they saw Susie and Susie got inthe van and they drove up near a reservoir and the father raped Susie in thevan and then the father. And as soon as he got out of the van and the fathercracked Susie skull with a rock, all this detail and.

[00:16:18] Now George Franklin wasprosecuted based on this repressed memory claim. And he became, you know,virtually the first American citizen to be convicted a murder based on nothingother than a claim of massive repression. Eileen, the daughter also claimedthat she repressed her memory for lots and lots of sexual abuse and other murders.

[00:16:46] Something else is going on inthis story. If this didn't happen in 1990, George Franklin was sentenced tolife in prison, though. A number of issues with the process were uncoveredlater. One of them is that Eileen sister revealed that I liens memories hadbeen recovered through hypnosis that isn't normally admissible as evidence.

[00:17:09] Eileen also accused her fatherof two more murders, but DNA evidence actually proved these accusations, untruethis through her previous credibility into question in July of 1996, GeorgeFranklin was released without a retrial. This series of events inspiredprofessor Loftus to study how rich false memories can come to be something elseis going on.

[00:17:32] That's a little different thanturning a yield sign into a stop sign. If this is false, then she hasconstructed a giant, rich, false memory. And I wanted to study the process bywhich that could happen. How could you plant a seed in the mind of someone andout of this, a whole rich, false memory would grow.

[00:17:54] And the first challenge I hadwas, well, What should I try to plant in the minds of research subjects?Because it didn't seem likely that the human subjects review committees, theethics committees on college and university campuses would look too favorablyon a proposal that we're gonna, we're gonna make our subjects believe thattheir father raped and murdered somebody in front of them.

[00:18:21] Uh, so we needed an analog. Weneeded to an idea to plant something that would have been at least mildlytraumatic if it had happened. And ultimately, and this took actually a coupleof years to come to this. Uh, we came up with the idea why don't we try to plana memory that when you were five or six years old, You were lost in a shoppingmall, you were frightened, you were crying and eventually you were rescued byan elderly person and reunited with the family.

[00:18:53] And we succeeded in plantingthis kind of a false memory in about a quarter of ordinary healthy adults, uh,to whom we use. A a pretty strong suggestive procedure. So that was the firstof many studies that we and others did showing that you could plant rich falsememories. I mean, others planted a false memory that you were attacked by avicious animal, or you nearly drowned and had to be rescued by a lifeguard, oryou committed a crime as a teenager.

[00:19:27] And it was serious enough thatthe police came to to investigate it. All of these have been planted in theminds of otherwise a healthy adult subjects. What is the suggestive procedurethat can actually achieve that? Well, but we did in the last, in the mall studyis we contacted the parents of our subject.

[00:19:50] So if, if, if you were oursubject eating, I would come to you and say, we've talked to your mother. Uh,your mother told us that certain things happen to you when you were five or sixyears old. And then I present you with three true experience. So this thingsyour mother told me really did happen to you when you were about five or sixyears old.

[00:20:10] And then I'd give you thescenario of, of being lost in a mall, in a particular location with particularfamily members present ostensibly. A story that your mother told me happened toyou. And over about three suggestive interviews, we found that about a quarter,as I said, um, our, our sample, uh, remembered all or part of this, thisexperience that had been completely made up with the help of your mother.

[00:20:44] I had to ask professor Loftusabout the ethics of this process. How do they debrief subjects and deconstructthese scary memories afterward in all of these studies, people are debriefed.The debriefing takes somewhat different forms, depending on the composition ofthe ethics committee at the university at the time, different committees kindof want different ingredients.

[00:21:08] Sometimes we apologize forhaving to use. Uh, deception. We try to make them feel that their behavior isvery normal and we explain, you know, what we've done. We teach them a littlesomething about the malleability of memory. Uh, and we have never had an, uh,an adverse experience. And now this kind of work has gone on and many other,uh, Uh, scientific laboratories around the world.

[00:21:37] The effectiveness of professorLoftus, his process is clear, but the question still stands can false memorieslike this occur spontaneously. These researchers took great pains to constructthese memories, even looping family members into the deception. But I feel likeI have had the experience of constructing memories that might not be true allby myself.

[00:21:59] Where do memories like Eileen'scome from. Um, so we do apply the external suggestion, but out there, out therein the real world, people can draw inferences about what might've happened orcould've happened. And sometimes those inferences then solidified and in, andyou can alter your own memory that way.

[00:22:21] And sometimes we refer to thatas autosuggestion. So people can, um, distort their own memories. Um, and, andthat's why I have likened memory to not, not a recording device, like a videorecorder, but more like a Wikipedia page where, where you can go in there andedit it, but so can other people, well, any little suggestion can plant theseed for a false memory to grow.

[00:22:48] Who knows how much suggestionEileen injured while she was undergoing hypnosis. Hypnosis is all aboutsuggestion. People have falsely believed they were part of satanic rituals orthat they committed murders. They never committed. And then you've got a numberof people in our society who believe in, remember that they've been abducted byaliens.

[00:23:10] I have not studied this group,but I have, uh, I'm very familiar with the work of Richard McNally, Dr. McNallyfrom the Harvard psychology department. And these are individuals who trulybelieve in and remember that they were taken up on spaceships. They weresexually experimented upon. They were returned to their beds on earth.

[00:23:33] Um, and I think that, you know,most people would think that these are probably false memories and yet thepeople who, who believe them and have been studied by Dr. McNally show a greatdeal of emotion when they think about their abduction experience. It feels veryreal, very vivid and very emotional to them.

[00:23:55] Any of these folks could havehad a dream or seen a movie or endured a sickness or spoken to a friend in away that planted the seed of misinformation. What are the real worldimplications of this there in the real world, we probably make lots of memorymistakes that we never find out about when we don't get caught.

[00:24:16] You know, if I tell you I hadchicken last night, and instead of, instead of beef, you don't know if it'strue or not. I don't get caught in my mistake and it really doesn't matter verymuch. But when somebody's Liberty is at stake, When their freedom is at stake,when they're accused of something that perhaps they didn't do, then these very,very, even very small, false memories make a great deal of difference.

[00:24:46] And become exceedingly important.It's not just, it's not just my work. It's a collection of researchers whostudy this testimony, memory, distortion, and false memories. And there havebeen some changes in the legal system. As a result of this, this large body ofresearch, there have been some changes in the way police conduct theirinvestigations, the way they conduct lineups.

[00:25:14] For example, when they're tryingto see if a victim or a witness can identify a perpetrator, there have beenrecommendations by scientific bodies that triers of fact, judges and juriesought to be. Given accurate information about human memory when they aredeciding a particular case, they should be given that information eitherthrough expert testimony or through jury instructions that a judge might deliver,or some means of correcting some of the misconceptions that people particularlylay people have about the workings of memory.

[00:25:56] After learning about all theseintense examples of false memories returning to the Mandela effect feelsparticularly trivial. It's pretty clear that any small suggestion can play intothe malleability of memory explaining much of how the Mandela effect works. ButI was so curious if professor Loftus had ever heard the term or even fallen forat herself.

[00:26:16] I think they're probablydifferent reasons or different mechanisms behind variations of the Mandelaeffect. What, why would lots of people believe that Mandela died in prison whenhe didn't? Uh, it's possible that some prominent person said so in social mediaor the precursor of social media, uh, you know, and.

[00:26:41] And other people heard this, uh,person talk about this and began to believe it and share the information withothers. So it might just be the spread of misinformation, uh, through a largegroup of people, not just a single eye witness. She actually had experienced aMandela effect of her own involving George Burns and Gracie Allen.

[00:27:06] George Burns.

[00:27:19] and at the end of many of theirlittle shticks, George Burns would say, say, good night, Gracie and Graciewould respond. What did Gracie say? Okay. What people think Gracie said is goodnight, Gracie. I even fell for this one. I haven't fell for this one good nightracing, but it turns out that's not what she said.

[00:27:45] She just said goodnight. And yougo on YouTube and see clips of this. And you can see her over and over. Shesays, but, so I was so many people think that when George Burns said, saygoodnight, Gracie, she said, goodnight, Gracie, do you have a theory for somethinglike that? I think there's a connection between.

[00:28:05] Your example. And my goodnightGracie example, Gracie was kind of a ditzy type and would say ditzy things. Andso saying goodnight, Gracie is kind of a ditzy thing that fit with her ditzypersonality. And maybe that's why it caught on. Sarah names me with a fat,gravel voice to listen. Cause I have no choice.

[00:28:38] Let's apply. Ockham's razorhere. It's a combination of internet fervor and the way the information ispresented, if something is easy to misremember, or if someone asks you thequestion in a leading way, your memory can be impacted. Saying, Hey, didn't themonopoly guy have a monocle is more leading than saying, what did the monopolyguy look like when it comes to the Berenstain bears?

[00:29:02] E I N seems to be a moreexpected spelling based on the sound of the name. The name on the book is alsowritten in cursive, which many kids struggle to read. There are so many smallways these little seeds can grow into full on false memories. There are quite afew studies that show that if you warn people about the potential formisinformation, that they can use that warning and they can, can send off themisinformation to some extent, the problem is that as we go through life and youknow, our daily life, we are not walking around with this warning and in theforefront of our conscious awareness, that might make it helpful for us to.

[00:29:48] To resist a misinformation it'sso it's comforting to know that warnings can work to some extent, but I thinktheir effect is probably fairly short term. One of the things that I think I'velearned from decades of doing this kind of research and working on court caseswhere memory distortion is a critical issue, is that I've learned to be a littlemore tolerant of the, of the memory mistakes.

[00:30:17] That my friends and familymembers and others around me and even I myself might make, I don't immediatelyassume somebody is lying when they're mistaken or when they're wrong. They mayhonestly believe what they're saying. And I think it's a kinder, more gentleway, uh, to feel about each other. Professor loft has recommended pausingbefore we share any information to skeptically consider whether it's a goodidea to spread.

[00:30:44] Is this article recent relevant.True. So what have we learned so far? False memories are partially orcompletely constructed ideas about certain events. Professor Elizabeth Loftushas been studying this phenomenon for decades when it comes to how falsememories can be formed. And to what extent we've learned in previous episodesof the show.

[00:31:10] That memories are malleable.Some research suggests that any time you remember an event, it reenters aplastic stage where it can change before it's re encoded into your brain. Otherresearch has uncovered something called the misinformation effect in whichpeople can change small parts of their memory based on external factors, thingslike leading questions or suggestions about what other witnesses saw.

[00:31:36] Then there can be completelyconstructed memories. Researchers were able to plant false memories in theminds of test subjects with help from subjects, parents, and a lot of externalsuggestion, but this can and has happened spontaneously through what professorleft his calls. Autosuggestion we're always taking in information and thatinformation can alter our malleable memories.

[00:32:00] Now scientists have recommendedchanges to our legal system that include an emphasis on expert testimony andproviding juries information about the realities. Yeah.

[00:32:13] What about our memory exercise?Well, it's time for those three word lists. At the beginning of the episode tocome back, get a piece of paper and a pencil ready. I'm going to quiz you byasking whether I said certain words. When I say a word, write that word down,then write whether or not you think I said that word during that list.

[00:32:35] That way you can remember youranswers when we review them later. Okay. Here it goes. This is the quiz pertainingto the first list. Did I say the word door? Did I say the word bed? Did I saythe word open? Did I say the word window? Did I say the word frame? Write downwhether you remember me saying each of those words, now we'll move on to thenext list.

[00:33:09] Did I say the word nurse? Did Isay the word doctor? Did I say the word physician? Did I say the word nose? DidI say the word patient, finish writing down your answers. Now we'll move on tothe third and final list. Did I say the word mad? Did I say the word ref? Did Isay the word thimble? Did I say the word fight?

[00:33:47] Did I say the word angry? Okay,that concludes the quiz time to review your answers. Considering the topic oftoday's episode, you probably caught on to my little trickier. Some of thewords I just asked you about weren't in the original list. So I gave you, butwhich ones let's take a look at the set of answers for the first set of words,the words, door open and frame.

[00:34:14] We're all on the original list Igave you. Did you write down that you remembered those words, the word bedwasn't on that list. That was a complete misdirection, but the word windowwasn't on the list either. Do you remember hearing the word window in thatoriginal list for the second set of answers?

[00:34:35] The words nurse, physician, andpatient were all on the original list. I gave you the word nose was anothercomplete misdirection, but I never said the word doctor. And finally the thirdset of answers. I did say mad Raff and fight symbol. Wasn't on that list, butneither was the word angry. But did you remember hearing the word angry?

[00:35:04] Okay. What's going on here?There's a high probability that you accidentally remembered. One of thosesemantically related words in these lists, they were window doctor and angrythey're words that seem to be suggested by the rest of the list. But I neveractually said them. This test is based on a classic experiment called the DCERoediger McDermott or DRM task, which is a short and easy way of demonstratingand investigating false memories in a lab setting.

[00:35:36] The DRM calls, the semanticallyrelated, but never said words, critical lure words. Did you fall into this trapfor any of these lists? If so, I apologize for critically luring. You. If you didn'tfall for the influences of this test, there's a good chance that the nature ofthis episode clued you into the fact I'd be trying to trick you.

[00:35:58] I'm glad you listened toprofessor Loftus his advice to keep a critical ear. If you still fell for it,don't worry. It's scientifically designed to be tricky. By doing this test, I'mhoping to give you the feeling of being pretty sure you remembered somethingonly to realize it. Isn't true. It's easy to believe that only other people canfall into the trap of false memories, but it turns out we're all susceptible toit and being so sure we won't be affected can make the impacts of falsememories worse.

[00:36:26] However, the DRM has somelimitations. Since all of the words are semantically related. Some researchersargue it's a more accurate demonstration of how our brain links related termsrather than false memories. We've explored concepts like that in previousepisodes results from the DRM test, don't map perfectly onto completelymanufactured memories.

[00:36:48] Like we can find in falsewitness testimony, but it can clue us into the ways that misleading or just awording can influence you to think one way or another. We can't completelyerase this tendency of the brain, but we can reduce its effects by followingprofessor Loftus, his advice and listening to everything with a critical ear.

[00:37:10] This is just one way our braincan fail us, but there are actually plenty more. We'll dive deep into thosepitfalls with the returning guest expert next week for the finale of memorybooster, talk to you then.

[00:37:25] What you just heard was memorybooster, uh, Himalaya learning audio course. Be sure to check out all of theother exclusive courses in the Himalaya app or on himalaya.com.