Memory is Often a Reconstruction

Today there’s another activity in class that shows us about how memories could be reconstructed. The teacher showed us a set of pictures, in which we were told to remember, and later we were given a sheet that describes each of those pictures, and we have to draw the images we have seen.

We found out that there’re two different sets of words given to students. And those words influenced how we draw the images. For example, one of the pictures that looks like a crescent moon, on one paper, it says that it is a “crescent moon” and on another one it says that it’s a “C”. Therefore people would reconstruct the images according to what are used to describe them. Those who received the paper that said it’s a letter “C” would draw a big letter “C” while those who got the paper that said it’s a moon, would draw an image that is more similar to the original one.

This experiment demonstrates that memories are often reconstructed to what we already knew. We know how a “C” is written therefore we assume that the picture that was shown before is more like a letter “C”.