Bugs Bunny at Disney World

It is recognised that people can honestly believe memories that are false. False memories are a challenge to the criminal justice system. They can even develop into a syndrome affecting relationships if particularly traumatic.

I want to avoid settling for "must have been" memories in this process of remembering every day of my life. One approach is to recognise that a false memory sometimes presents a niggling doubt: I feel like I'm trying to force a square peg into a round hole.

Experiencing this feeling earlier this week and thinking about false memories reminded me of a study which I read when a teenager. The subjects in the study were shown a brochure for Disney World and then asked if they remembered visiting as a child.

Those that had were questioned in more detail about what they had seen and done. Either voluntarily or when prompted a large number remembered seeing Bugs Bunny. Although Bugs Bunny is not a Disney character, he appeared in one of the photos in the brochure and this had been incorporated into the subjects' recall of their own trip.

They created a false memory incorporating something they thought must have been true. Meeting Bugs Bunny became as real as any other memory.

I remember the report was published in New Scientist magazine, which I read regularly when at school and again when working in Africa in the 1990s.

I know the study involved Bugs Bunny and Disney World.

However, the detail about the brochure is something I have invented, because it sounds feasible; it is not a genuine memory of my own, but a false memory I've created to fill a gap in my story. I recognise this at the moment. Perhaps in the future I will recall my plausible invention as a fact. It could become a false memory.

There is a curious footnote to this posting.

I thought I'd search our great collective memory of the internet to see if there is a reference to this study, even though it predates widespread use of the internet.

I found page after page of search results referring exactly to the Bugs Bunny at Disney World story. Here's one http://www.rickross.com/reference/false_memories/fsm49.html 

The only thing is, these reports date from 2001 and I am convinced I read about this study in the late 1970s. Possibly it was when I was in Africa in the 1990s and also reading New Scientist, but it feels longer ago.

I know where I was in 2001 and placing the memory of reading about the study then feels like trying to force a square peg into a round hole.

Can I trust this feeling and conclude the study reported in 2001 was a repeat of something from years before? Am I a reliable witness?

If anyone knows for sure, that will help me know whether I can trust this feeling or not.

I will keep looking.

Avoiding false memories

I can remember every one of the days of the last two months, since beginning this process.

The fact the past does not change certainly makes it easier.

However, buzzing back through three months of Thursdays yesterday to reconsolidate those memory tags, I hit a blank when it came to 12 January.

As it was a Thursday, my wife would have been attending a college course. Taking and/or collecting her from college figures in every Thursday, even if this is not involved in the specific memory tag.

So somehow that must have been part of the day. But using that as a prompt to recall my memory tag felt like trying to squeeze a square peg into a round hole. I just knew there had been a radically different image for the day.

I don't worry anymore when I hit these blanks.

I have learned that remembering will give me a buzz so rather than panicing, I tell myself relax 'cos there's a buzz coming.

It was the conviction that it was a very different sort of Thursday that reminded me in the end.

It was the one time I hadn't been in town to take my wife. I had gone to the Capital for a meeting. My memory tag for that day was riding a hire bike across town to the train station to make my way home. I was back in time to drive to pick up my wife, but the bike ride was my memory tag, now reconsolidated on my mental calendar.

It would have been easy to just drop in a generic sort of trip to my wife's college and create a false memory.

I have learned from this that I should trust the feeling that a memory is not fitting and not invent must have beens.