False Memories! How Memory Fails Us

Danger! Danger! Danger! The knowledge in the linked article from New Scientist is dangerous! In the hands of the wrong people, it could cause significant harm. Here's the lowdown:

A new study was designed to "bring people into the laboratory and set up a circumstance in which they would remember something that did not happen," said Kenneth Paller of Northwestern University.

Like what? I've read books chock full of testimony from sincere people who "remember" being abducted by aliens, taken aboard alien spacecraft, and then being forced to donate eggs or sperm to create hybrid human/alien creatures. Could someone be brought into a lab and be convinced that they were so abducted? Better yet, could I convince Bill Gates that I loaned him the money to start Microsoft and that I'm thus entitled to half his wealth?

Let's see how false memories were induced in laboratory subjects:

They showed the participants pictures and asked them to imagine other images. Later, investigators asked whether certain objects were seen or imagined. Often, imagined images were recalled as real.

Now wait a minute, please. Could I show Pamela Anderson (or Jessica Simpson, etc.) a picture of two people having s*x, ask her to imagine an image of the two of us having s*x, and then expect her to believe that the two of us are a couple? This is dangerous, powerful stuff, folks :-)

Luckily for Pam Anderson, there is a key to separating out false memories from real ones.

The key to remembering that something was imagined when we recall it is the context surrounding a memory, the research showed. If you remember who told you to imagine something, where it was, what was going on around you, the separation between what really happened and what you imagined becomes more distinct.

When a person makes these external connections to the memory, he engages the parts of the brain that lead to true memories.

Brain research is intersting and useful. In this case, the message is simple. Not every memory is real. Some are false. Next we need an economist to study how false memories affect decision making and hence economic welfare.

Since I'd rather avoid the problems that false memories have the potential to create, perhaps the answer is to make sure to keep a written record of significant events. Unless I can back up my claim to Bill Gates' fortune with an IOU signed by him, then I guess it's just a false memory. And searching through my collection of s*x tapes, I see evidence of another false memory. It's not Pam and I that were an item. It was some guy named Tommy Lee. Darn it! Sometimes those false memories are better than the real ones!

Get in Touch with Your Inner Child (Who Just Happens to Be A Mathematician)

Economics students are often dismayed by the math in even a basic economics course. Computing an elasticity of demand, for example, seems to send a number of learners into panic.

Somewhere along the line, lots of students have developed the attitude (as one girl put it to me): "I am stupid in math."

The story linked by this post offers a surprising rejoinder to that girl. According to a recent study, five year olds have innate math abilities, even when they have not received any instruction in math. Heck, you don't even have to be human to have mathematical abilities. Studies have shown similar math abilities in monkeys.

Here's an example of the type of experiment the researchers performed with 5-year olds:

In one experiment, the children saw 13 blue dots on a computer screen; those were covered, and then they saw 17 blue dots and were forced to keep the running tally in their heads. Then they were shown 50 red dots and asked whether there were more blue dots or red dots.
Presented this way, the children answered correctly about two-thirds of the time that there were more red dots than blue dots.

This and similar mathematical abilities appear to be inborn:

"What's central about numbers for us as adults is that we can apply a number like 7 to a diverse number of things," said Elizabeth Spelke, a psychologist at Harvard University and the principal investigator of the study. "We can say that there are seven dots but also that a horn honks seven times. Although these are different in their sensory qualities, the numbers are the same."
Past studies performed on infants and non-human primates suggests that these abilities are present even before the age of 5.

"The experiments of the infants and the monkeys, I think, make it extremely likely that these abilities are inborn," Spelke said.

What are we to make of this insight? For one thing, somewhere between age 5 and age 18, something happens to many people that creates "math anxiety." What are the causes of math anxiety? How can people suffering from it be helped?

In terms of teaching economics using math, the best advice I can give learners is to practice, practice, practice, if you have trouble getting in touch with that inner child mathematician.