In over a fifth of cases, people wrongly remembered whether they actually witnessed an event or just imagined it…
“In our tests volunteers either thought they had imagined words which they had actually been shown or said they had seen words which in fact they had just imagined – in over 20 per cent of cases. That is quite a lot of mistakes to be making, and shows how fallible our memory is – or perhaps, how slim our grip on reality is!
“Our work has implications for the validity of witness statements and agrees with other studies that show that our mind sometimes fills in memory gaps for us, and we confuse what we imagined occurred in a situation – which is related to what we expect to happen or what usually happens – with what actually happened.
“Most of us, though, have a critical reality monitoring function so that we are able to distinguish well enough between what is real and what is imagined and our imagination does not have too great an impact on our lives – unless the reality check system breaks down such as after stroke or in cases of schizophrenia.”
The study found that the areas that were activated while remembering whether an event really happened or was imagined in healthy subjects are the very same areas that are dysfunctional in people who experience hallucinations.
Dr Jon Simons and Dr Paul Burgess led the study at the University College London Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience via Science Blog