People with exceptional autographical memory are still prone to false memories

It's only in the last few years that researchers have documented the existence of a select group of individuals who have memories like a diary. Give them a random date from the past and they can tell you what they were doing that day, they can name public events happening around the time, and they can say what day of the week it was. Indeed, their memory for a day a decade ago is typically better than yours or mine for a day last month. Does this mean that their memories are less prone to distortion than ours? Not according to a new study.Lawrence Patihis and his colleagues, including the doyenne of false memory research Elizabeth Loftus, tested 20 people with highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM; also referred to as hyperthymesia), and 38 age and sex-matched controls, on a range of established tests of susceptibility to memory distortion.One of these tests involved the participants studying a list of words on a particular theme, and then saying afterwards which of a series of further words were present in that original list or not. When an entirely new word fits the theme from the original list, people often make the mistake of thinking it was in the list. The HSAM participants made this error for 70.3 per cent of these so-called "lure" words compared with 70.8 per cent of control participants.Another test involved participants looking at 50 photos depicting a robbery, and then 40 minutes later reading 50 facts about that same crime, six of which contained misinform...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: Source Type: blogs