Beware! Rote learning may lead to false memories

The discovery posits that the details of a memory become more subjective the more they are recalled..

In what could highlight the limitations of learning by repetitions, researchers have found that while repetition enhances the factual content of memories, it can reduce the amount of detail stored with those memories, a recipe for forming false memories.

"For a more enriching and lasting learning experience through which nuance and detail are readily recalled, other memory techniques should be used to complement repetition," said Michael Yassa, neurobiologist at University of California - Irvine, US.

These findings do not discredit the practice of repetitive learning, but pure repetition alone has limitations, he noted.

In the study, student participants were asked to look at pictures either once or three times.

 

They were then tested on their memories of those images. The researchers found that multiple views increased factual recall but actually hindered the participants' ability to reject similar "impostor" pictures.

This suggests that the details of those memories may have been shaken loose by repetition.

This discovery supports Competitive Trace Theory which posits that the details of a memory become more subjective the more they are recalled and can compete with bits of other similar memories.

The scientists hypothesized that this may even lead to false memories, akin to a brain version of the telephone game where people take turns whispering a message into the ear of the next person in line and by the time the last person speaks it out loud, the message has radically changed.

The study appeared in the journal Learning & Memory.