Memory Distortion: How Minds, Brains and Societies Reconstruct the Past - Tapa dura

This is a superb collection of chapters, which covers an impressive and wide range of topics related to memory distortion... E xploring this phenomenon at many levels is absolutely crucial... and I recommend the book to everyone with an interest in normal and pathological distortion. -- Lars Nyberg "European Journal of Cognitive Psychology" We owe much to Daniel Schacter for tackling head-on the question of the fallibility of memories. Schacter and colleagues have chosen a challenging interdisciplinary format to present essays on the increasingly controversial topic of memory distortion. This collection of essays emerged from a conference and subsequent discussion groups described as an 'interface between disciplines'. This description embodies the tone of "Memory Distortion," which takes on the format of a congenial but lively debate among colleagues. -- Mark W. Jacobson and Dean C. Delis "Contemporary Psychology" Human memory is not like a photograph album, a collection of cassettes, compact discs or videos or any other accumulative archive of the past. Rather, memories are fragmentary, condensed, often distorted and inaccurate representations of past experience. This point is made in impressive detail by all the contributors to this excellent collection of essays on memory distortion..."Memory Distortion" provides an outstanding multidisciplinary perspective on memory accuracy, ranging from cognitive psychology through psychiatry, neuropsychology and neurobiology, to sociocultural analyses. -- Martin A. Conway "Nature" This is a particularly timely book that compiles the presentations from a 1994 conference sponsored by the Harvard Center for the Study of Mind, Brain, and Behavior. The uniqueness of this volume comes from the diversity of its contributors. It brings together neurobiological, cognitive, psychiatric, neuropsychological, and sociocultural perspectives on the issue of memory distortion. The fundamental theme running through this book is that remembering is a process of reconstruction...The volume competently demonstrates that mind-brain sciences have progressed to a level where scientists of differing ilk may each proffer a different level of analysis...and yet have a meaningful dialogue. -- Shitij Kapur, M.D. "American Journal of Psychiatry" book to everyone with an interest in normal and pathological distortion. "Memory Distortion," which takes on the format of a congenial but lively debate among colleagues. an outstanding multidisciplinary perspective on memory accuracy, ranging from cognitive psychology through psychiatry, neuropsychology and neurobiology, to sociocultural analyses.

Hypnosis, confabulation, source amnesia, flash-bulb memories, repression - these and numerous additional topics are explored in this collection of essays by scholars in a range of disciplines. This book on memory distortion unites contributions from cognitive psychology, psychopathology, psychiatry, neurobiology, sociology, history and religious studies. It brings relevant groups of perspectives to bear on some key contemporary issues, including the value of eyewitness testimony and the accuracy of recovered memories of sexual abuse. The contributors to this volume explore the full range of biological phenomena and social ideas relevant to understanding memory distortion, including the reliability of children's recollections, the effects of hypnosis on memory, and confabulation in brain-injured patients. They also look into the activity and role of brain systems, cellular bases of memory distortion, and the effects of emotion and trauma on the accuracy of memory. In a section devoted to the social aspects of memory distortion, additional essays analyze the media's part in distorting social memory, factors influencing historical reconstruction of the collective past, and memory distortion in religion and other cultural constructs. Daniel Schacter launches the collection with a history of psychological memory distortions. Subsequent contributions include empirical findings on memory retrieval by a pioneer in the field, research on computational models, studies of the relationship between emotion and memory, new findings on amnesia by a premier neuroscientist, and reflections on the power of collective amnesia in US history, the Nazi Holocaust and ancient Egypt.