Experts struggle with false memories: Study

Knowing a lot about something doubles the risk of false memories, scientists in Ireland today said, giving insight into why experts sometimes make errors on their own specialist subjects.
People who were more knowledgeable about a subject were nearly twice as likely to remember incidents relating to that topic that never happened.
Researchers from University College Dublin asked 489 people to rank seven topics, including football, politics and science from most to least interesting.
They then asked if they remembered events described in four news items about the topic they selected as most interesting and four items about the topic they selected as least interesting.

The results showed that if someone was interested in a topic, this increased the frequency of accurate memories relating to that topic.
But it also increased the number of false memories too - 25 per cent of people experienced a false memory in relation to an interesting topic, compared with 10 per cent in relation to a less interesting topic.

"Increasing scientific and public understanding of the causes of false memory is an important goal, particularly in light of some of the more negative consequences associated with the phenomenon, including faulty eyewitness accounts and the controversies surrounding false memories of traumatic childhood events," said Dr Ciara Green, a lecturer in the school of psychology and lead author of the study.

"I hope that promotion of knowledge about false memories may provide some inoculation against their harmful effects," she said.
According to 'The Daily Telegraph', her team found that having a high level of knowledgeabout a topic - as measured by the number of true memories recorded - rather than just an interest, also increased the frequency of false memories.
The research will be presented at the annual conference of the British Psychological Society's Cognitive Psychology Section in Barcelona next week.