Response to Jockers, Criddle, et al., Now Available

[_GlennThigpen]

Here is how I envision the scenario:

In the tradition of those times, people often read aloud to each other or to small groups of people. They then had the opportunity to discuss the text at the time. Remembering a text was much easier, given visual, oral, and kinesthetic sensory input. This is much a much more effective learning technique than today's solitary silent reader. In addition, the material was interesting to the listeners, because speculation on the origins of local archaeological finds and the natives of the Americas was rampant at the time. In order for an experience to be permanently encoded as meaningful information, the learner must be able to relate it to previously learned information.
For these reasons, given the lack of quality reading materials, with no television or radio, entertainment as mediocre as Solomon Spalding's Conneaut Manuscript Found would be valued. It is also reasonable to assume that some of the witnesses were exposed to the manuscript more than once, for the benefit of those who had missed a session. It is sufficient to say that the repeated exposure to names such as Nephi, Mormon, Laman, and Lehi would permanently encode those names.
One should not be surprised with the number of details, especially among those who had recently become acquainted with the Book of Mormon. Erroneous associations may happen upon retrieval of old memories. Thus, we see statements of a landing at the Straits of Darien, the lost tribes, or the military efforts of Joshua in the Promised land, as inaccurate retrieval cues. They were approximate, and imperfect, based on similarities and previous knowledge, rather than what they had actually heard. One of the most interesting inaccurate retrievals was that of Redick McKee, who heard the military accounts of later parts of the book. Before he had compared memories with Spalding's daughter, his encoding of the story as similar to Maccabees had generalized to the conquest of the land of Canaan.

Given that none of the non-Hurlbut witnesses named names such as Nephi, Lehi, Lamanites and Nephites in any of their initial statements, that only one person is sort of on record as saying that the manuscript he saw once was not the one that Hurlbut showed him (Aron Wright), with all of the lost tribes, Canaan, straits of Darien, stuff that has been thrown in, the odds that there ever was a second manuscript are vanishingly small.

Glenn

[_MCB]

LOL. Whatever.

[_marg]

We’ve gone over this several times. All Loftus established was that false memories can be implanted through suggestion. This is just one study. You are aware that stories of ritual abuse and rape have been unintentionally implanted by therapists. 25% is high given the fact that there were no real memories to begin with. With the Conneaut witnesses, we are dealing with real but vague memories, the positive statement of Nehemiah King, and a similar book based on the same Mound Builder Myth and strange names, one can expect a higher success rate. We don’t know the total of potential Spalding witnesses, so we don’t know the success rate. It doesn’t have to be childhood memories either, but that is the way Loftus chose to test vague memories. Memory is never complete, but as it fades it has a tendency to fill in gaps and adopt plausible suggestions.

Dan you say “25% is high given the fact that there were no real memories to begin with.” But Dan it is precisely when there are no real memories to begin with that individuals are highly susceptible to false memories. When people have source memories of an event their memories are strengthened. And by the way contrary to what you think, it doesn’t matter that we don’t know the potential of all Spalding witnesses. That’s irrelevant. What we do know is that even in a study in which participants had no source memory and despite they were asked to try to remember something which happened to them at the age of five a time most people don’t have clear memories and the participants were told false information from extremely trustworthy sources …despite all that ….the success of implanting false memories was only 25%.

What you are not appreciating is that a key ingredient for the results in this study is that the subjects had no clear source memory. That’s a vital component. And in fact practically all the studies mentioned in this thread done so to illustrate how easy false memories occur are situations in which "source memories" are weak at best.

Here are some notes which are quotes from the book called “Searching for Memory: The Brain, the Mind, And the Past” by Daniel Schacter. Its’s from Chapter 4 which deals with “memory distortions”. I think it makes more sense to post from an authority on memory than for me to try to explain in my words. At this point I’m simply showing that the studies you have been using to apply to the Conneaut witnesses don’t apply. They do remember where and when they heard Spalding tell his work in progress story to them. That means they have a good source memory and in addition I think pretty much all of them, explained that the story connected to their lives personally. In the beginning chapters of this book Daniel Schacter explains necessary ingredients to encode events elaborately. He later gets into retrieval cues and then explains that with elaborately encoded memories and the right retrieval cues…individuals remember events.

by the way I haven’t read the rest of your post, once again I’m focusing on one issue at a time.

I do appreciate that memory fades, but I also appreciate that with so many witnesses remembering and appreciating that they saw parts of Spalding's work in the Book of Mormon, and given that the sorts of memories they described were realistic given the passage of time and with the aid of a retrieval cue of the Book of Mormon ..that false memories doesn't apply to them. There are just too many of them, for that to be a reasonable explanation. And the notion that Hurlbut deviously tried to convince them to remember something they didn't doesn;t make sense given that he brought back the very manuscript which didn't match up with the Book of Mormon. Witnesses were shown this manuscript and said that it wasn't the one they had talked about in their statements.

If you wish to say they were lying ..fine, but false memories,implanted memories doesn't apply to them. There are just too many of them for that to be the case.

p 106 These concerns are amplified when we consider that in psychoanalysis (and other forms of intensive psychotherapy), patients struggle to recover lost experiences that are typically not accessible to conscious recollection. The retrieval environment likely plays an especially important role in molding recollected experience when one is attempting to retrieve hazy or degraded engrams, and so it is particularly important in the therapeutic context. And therapists themselves are powerful figures for the patient’s; the intricate relationship between the two (the transference) is a fundamental principle of psychoanalysis. These are probably some of the reasons why as we will see, people who come to believe during therapy that they have recovered “real” memories of sexual abuse almost invariably point to the powerful influence of the therapists in generating and maintaining the distorted recollection. A therapist is a major part of a retrieval environment that helps to shape what the patient believes about the past.

P 108 When experimental participants feel strong social pressure to produce memories, they tend to recall events that never occurred. Fewer illusory memories are reported when the rapport between hypnotist and subject is poor, when people are provided incentives to distinguish carefully between real and imaginary events, or when they are led to believe that they will remain able to make such distinctions even when hypnotized.

Page 110 In both the “lost of the shopping mall” study (Loftus) and Hyman’s experiments, the retrieval environment consists of information from normally trustworthy sources who have provided specific information about a seemingly credible experience. Under these conditions, some rememberers may interpret any subjective sensations elicited by the cue – vague feelings of familiarity, fragments of other possibly relevant experiences, perhaps even dreams or fantasies that are not recognized as such–as signs of an awakening engram. Once the process is initiated, it is just a short step for these rememberers to do what I suggested that all rememberers normally do: knit together the relevant fragments of feelings into a coherent narrative or story. It is also noteworthy that false recollections emerged most clearly after several interviews and retrieval attempts, implying that repeatedly thinking about the event increased participant confidence that it actually happened.

P 114 Each time, witnesses offered erroneous identifications of perpetrators because they had encountered the accused outside the context of the crime. They later failed to remember when and where they had seen the person, while retaining a strong sense of familiarity toward him.

P114 These dramatic instances of distorted remembering demonstrate that accurate recollection often depends critically on our ability to recall precisely when and where an event occurred, a process I will refer to a “source memory”. The rape victim correctly remembered that she had seen Thompson’s face before, but was mistaken regarding the source of her recollection. Recent research shows clearly that “source memory” is extremely fallible, and that failures to remember the correct source of acquired information are responsible for various kinds of errors and distortions in eyewitness recollections and other aspects of everyday memory.

p. 115 In classic studies on eyewitness memory by Elizabeth Loftus and her colleagues, people viewed slides which a car is involved in an accident after coming to a halt at a stop sign. After witnessing the event, some people were asked “what happened to the car after it stopped at the stop sign?” And others were asked the question containing a misleading suggestion: “what happened to the car after it stopped at the yield sign?” Later, everyone was asked whether the car had come to a halt at a stop sign or a yield sign. People who have been asked a misleading question tended to remember having seen the yield sign. Loftus argued that the misleading suggestion had effected actively wiped out these individuals memories of the stop sign.

Important scientific results tend to generate a flurry of subsequent research that helps refine and alter our understanding of the initial outcome, and Loftus’s finding was no exception. Various studies have shown that misleading information does not eliminate the original memory; when people are given appropriate tests, it is possible to demonstrate that the original memory still exists. But there is mounting evidence that participants in such experiments often suffer serious “source memory” problems: they have difficulty recollecting whether they actually saw the yield sign I just heard about it later.



P 115 In one particular striking experiment, participants were specifically informed that all the information in the post event narrative was bogus–yet when tested a week later, some of them insisted that this information had been part of the original event. Their source memories had failed: they no longer remembered what was in the post event narrative and what was in the original scene.

Page 115 The ability to recollect source information lies at the heart of our ability to distinguish memory from fantasies and other products of our imagination. Have you ever planned to carry out a simple activity, such as mailing a letter, and later had difficulty recollecting whether you had actually done it or simply thought about it? In an attempt to convince yourself that you indeed put the letter in the mail, you may desperately try to remember some aspect of the context in which you carried out the activity. If for example you can specifically recall the mailbox was stuffed full of letters when you opened it, you can comfortably conclude you did mail the letter. If however, you are unable to recall any source information whatsoever then you are likely to continue to fret over what you did or did not do.

P116 Laboratory studies conducted by the cognitive psychologists Marcia Johnson and her colleagues have shown that our ability to distinguish memory from imagination hinges on the recall of source information. Memories of external occurrences typically contain perceptual details about the context or setting of an event, whereas memories of internal events (such as thoughts and fantasies) typically contain little contextual information. When we cannot recall anything specific about context or setting, we lose an important basis for determining whether a “real” external event occurred, and hence we are quite susceptible to memory distortions.

Conversely, if an imagined or fantasized event does contain a wealth of details about the context and setting of an event, we will be inclined to believe that it is a real memory of an actual event.

Page 116 The relative fragility of source memory may have important social implications in everyday life. We live in a media–saturated environment in which we are constantly encountering news, gossip and rumors from sources that vary widely in credibility. If for instance, you were waiting in a checkout line in the supermarket and notice a tabloid containing an ugly story that impeaches honesty or fidelity of a public figure, you may be inclined to dismiss it because you maintain little faith in the reliability of the source. But what if several months later you are engaging conversation about the honesty of public figures, and you remember the negative story but no longer recall the exact source? You may be inclined to stake more belief in the story than is warranted because you fail to remember that your information was acquired from a dubious source.

Page 126. Recent research has shown convincingly that young children often have great difficulty remembering source information, which in turn renders them vulnerable to false recollections.

P 132 But, as I emphasized at the outset of this chapter, we must keep in mind that errors and distortions in remembering, though startling when they occur, are far from the norm in our mnemonic lives. Most of the time our memories reliably handle the staggering variety of demands of that our our day to day activities place on them.

[_GlennThigpen]

What you are not appreciating is that a key ingredient for the results in this study is that the subjects had no clear source memory. That’s a vital component. And in fact practically all the studies mentioned in this thread done so to illustrate how easy false memories occur are situations in which "source memories" are weak at best.

Here are some notes which are quotes from the book called “Searching for Memory: The Brain, the Mind, And the Past” by Daniel Schacter. Its’s from Chapter 4 which deals with “memory distortions”. I think it makes more sense to post from an authority on memory than for me to try to explain in my words. At this point I’m simply showing that the studies you have been using to apply to the Conneaut witnesses don’t apply. They do remember where and when they heard Spalding tell his work in progress story to them. That means they have a good source memory and in addition I think pretty much all of them, explained that the story connected to their lives personally. In the beginning chapters of this book Daniel Schacter explains necessary ingredients to encode events elaborately. He later gets into retrieval cues and then explains that with elaborately encoded memories and the right retrieval cues…individuals remember events.

by the way I haven’t read the rest of your post, once again I’m focusing on one issue at a time.

I do appreciate that memory fades, but I also appreciate that with so many witnesses remembering and appreciating that they saw parts of Spalding's work in the Book of Mormon, and given that the sorts of memories they described were realistic given the passage of time and with the aid of a retrieval cue of the Book of Mormon ..that false memories doesn't apply to them. There are just too many of them, for that to be a reasonable explanation. And the notion that Hurlbut deviously tried to convince them to remember something they didn't doesn;t make sense given that he brought back the very manuscript which didn't match up with the Book of Mormon. Witnesses were shown this manuscript and said that it wasn't the one they had talked about in their statements.

If you wish to say they were lying ..fine, but false memories,implanted memories doesn't apply to them. There are just too many of them for that to be the case.

P114 These dramatic instances of distorted remembering demonstrate that accurate recollection often depends critically on our ability to recall precisely when and where an event occurred, a process I will refer to a “source memory”. The rape victim correctly remembered that she had seen Thompson’s face before, but was mistaken regarding the source of her recollection. Recent research shows clearly that “source memory” is extremely fallible, and that failures to remember the correct source of acquired information are responsible for various kinds of errors and distortions in eyewitness recollections and other aspects of everyday memory.

P 115 In one particular striking experiment, participants were specifically informed that all the information in the post event narrative was bogus–yet when tested a week later, some of them insisted that this information had been part of the original event. Their source memories had failed: they no longer remembered what was in the post event narrative and what was in the original scene.

P116 Laboratory studies conducted by the cognitive psychologists Marcia Johnson and her colleagues have shown that our ability to distinguish memory from imagination hinges on the recall of source information. Memories of external occurrences typically contain perceptual details about the context or setting of an event, whereas memories of internal events (such as thoughts and fantasies) typically contain little contextual information. When we cannot recall anything specific about context or setting, we lose an important basis for determining whether a “real” external event occurred, and hence we are quite susceptible to memory distortions.

Conversely, if an imagined or fantasized event does contain a wealth of details about the context and setting of an event, we will be inclined to believe that it is a real memory of an actual event.

P 132 But, as I emphasized at the outset of this chapter, we must keep in mind that errors and distortions in remembering, though startling when they occur, are far from the norm in our mnemonic lives. Most of the time our memories reliably handle the staggering variety of demands of that our our day to day activities place on them.

Source memory confabulation is what we have been talking about all along. Dan's points, and mine, taken from the Loftus studies, were not that the Conneaut witnesses had totally false memories implanted, but rather that their source memories had been contaminated by intervening events and suggestions. In the false memory studies, it was suggestions by others that helped trigger those memories. It was easy to mislead people when their source encoding was poor.
You have not made a case for good source encoding for any of the Conneaut witnesses. I have detailed that in another post.

There is a case for source contamination, as in the lost tribes scenario, and the straits of Darien report. John Spalding's 1851 statement is further evidence of source contamination. The Book of Mormon names are another item that can be attributed to source contamination. The contamination would have come from Hurlbut. The reason that can be posited is because non of the other witnesses, Josiah Spalding, Matilda Spalding Davison, Matilda McKinstry, Redick McKee, nor Joseph Miller in their initial statements, mentioned those names, or lost tribes, or travel "by land and sea", etc. All of the witnesses solicited by Hurlbut showed a close conformity in their statements, as opposed to those who were solicited by other entities. That, in and of itself, gives rise to the suspicion of source contamination.

We remember most things by constant retrieval and visual reinforcement. I don't think that you would disagree that when we do not retrieve a memory for many years, the details do fade. Some of the more important may stand out. The ones with the most personal meaning. The case has not been made that Solomon's story had any special meaning in the life of those Conneaut witnesses. It was a source of light entertainment for most. It had nothing to do with their families, making a living, putting clothes on their backs, etc. Nothing to provide constant retrieval and review, or even occasional retrieval and review, once Solomon moved away. Yoy would need more evidence than what we currently have to make any substantial case for deep encoding rather than casual encoding.

Glenn

[_Dan Vogel]

Marg,

Loftus’ studies (as well as the examples of unintentional implanting of false memories by therapists) involve implanting of entire life episodes, something much harder than what I’m suggestion for the Conneaut witnesses. The Conneaut witnesses weren’t falsely imagining Spalding reading to them, they were only inserting into their memories details of things they believed should have happened and in time became convinced that it did happen. The event of Spalding reading and general information would have been encoded easily, but details like names wouldn’t have like remained, unless they connected it to some other mnemonic memory like Lehi/Lehigh. They give us no information about why they remember certain things, just their overstated assertion.

There is another possible problem--for the witnesses that heard Spalding read his MS, did they hear him say Nephi with a long or short “i”?

[_marg]

Source memory confabulation is what we have been talking about all along. Dan's points, and mine, taken from the Loftus studies, were not that the Conneaut witnesses had totally false memories implanted, but rather that their source memories had been contaminated by intervening events and suggestions. In the false memory studies, it was suggestions by others that helped trigger those memories. It was easy to mislead people when their source encoding was poor.
You have not made a case for good source encoding for any of the Conneaut witnesses. I have detailed that in another post.

Glenn, what false memory studies are you talking about which correlate to the witnesses experiences? Every single one of them that I’ve come across is very different to the situation that they experienced. So it is you who hasn’t made a case which is backed up b y studies to show false memories in Conneaut witnesses.

Source memory is memory of the source or contextual information surrounding facts. When,where and/or from whom facts are learned is source memory. Yes details of memory fades in time but it is extremely improbable that all the witnesses source memory, that is memory of where they were, and from whom they heard of or from what they learned from…the factual memory of the spalding manuscript.

These witnesses heard on multiple occasions over periods of time Spalding read to them. They have memories of those experiences, that is seeing, hearing, reading themselves on multiple occasions and have memories of the context in which those experiences occurred. They had discussions with him about what he was writing. They had discussions with him about the local mounds in the area. Of the studies cited so far in this thread for false memories, the situations involved in the tests were ones in which source memory was problematic. Either there was no source memory..as in the Loftus “lost in the mall” study or even in therapy abuse cases in which abuse was only recalled during therapy but was not known before therapy, or in situations of extreme stress as in a rape situation and source memory recall was affected by information present at the same time as the rape, or individuals in some studies who were only exposed briefly to a test and source memory confusion ensued… as in a study involving recreation of eyewitness situation of a crime scene.

These Conneaut witnesses do have source memory. They remembered the context of hearing and seeing the Spalding’ manuscript which occurred on numerous different occasions. This is not something for them to be easily confused about via other memories as you guys are conjecturing. If you think this happens easily cite a study to illustrate it.

This is how memory works. The brain doesn’t store a memory into one location in the brain. Quoting Daniel Shafter, “most important, we’ve now come to believe that memory is not a single unitary faculty of the mind, as was long assumed. Instead, it is composed of a variety of distinct and the dissociable processes and systems. Each system depends on a particular constellation of networks in the brain that involves different neural structures each of which plays a highly specialized role within the system.

Here is another quote from Daniel Schacter
“As I elaborate in the next chapter, Damasio and others have argued that there is no single location or area in the brain that contains the engram of a particular past experience. Posterior regions of the cortex that are concerned with perceptual analysis hold onto fragments of sensory experience- bits and pieces of sights and sounds from everyday episodes. Various other regions of the brain which Damasio calls convergence zones, contain codes that bind sensory fragments to one another and to pre-existing knowledge, thereby constituting complex records of past encodings. Damasio suggests that remembering occurs when signals from convergence zones trigger the simultaneous activation of sensory fragments that were once linked together.


So looking at the witnesses statements, their source memories were a result of hearing, seeing, discussing, and they had perceptual memories of where, when and who said what. These experiences occurred for most of them over many days and months. They would have visual memories of where they were at the time when these occasions occurred, perceptual memories of hearing, visual memories of reading of seeing Spalding talk, the room they were in etc. and all that would help them link their memories to the actual story they heard and read. They had all the source memories before Hurlbut came along, he didn’t create the source memories for them.

If you will notice Glenn..all the studies in which memory was problematic…source memory was an issue. Not having clear source memory meant individuals were unable to link components of memory accurately together. Confusion of memory was not an issue for the Conneaut witnesses fading of memory was…however everyone’s memory fades we all know that but we also know that with good retrieval cues one can appreciate when they are able to recall accurately. That another concept discussed in the book. People know when they remember something as opposed to just knowing they are familiar with something. On some facts the witnesses said they clearly remembered such as certain names, certain phrase, style of writing (biblical) which they acknowledged was brought fresh to their memory be the Book of Mormon.

There is a case for source contamination, as in the lost tribes scenario, and the straits of Darien report.

That’s your conjecture. Darien is one small part of one of the witness’ statement and he says Spalding told him about Darien being Zarahemla, that’s also just as high if not a higher probability of how he came to that knowledge than what you are suggesting. As far as the lost tribes…well it may not be in the Book of Mormon, but it may have been what the witnesses learned via discussion with spalding. If the few lines in the Book of Mormon were not there specifically mentioning lost tribes being elsewhere than America..the Book of Mormon characters could have come from the lost tribes.

John Spalding's 1851 statement is further evidence of source contamination.

John Spalding could have put little effort into his statement for Hurlbut he could have after giving more thought remembered some things differently. I’m not arguing their memories were perfect, I’m argung that their recognition of names in the Book of Mormon, the phrase “old came to pass”, biblical language and recognition of some historical parts..which matched Spalding’ manuscript were not false memories.

The Book of Mormon names are another item that can be attributed to source contamination. The contamination would have come from Hurlbut. The reason that can be posited is because non of the other witnesses, Josiah Spalding, Matilda Spalding Davison, Matilda McKinstry, Redick McKee, nor Joseph Miller in their initial statements, mentioned those names, or lost tribes, or travel "by land and sea", etc. All of the witnesses solicited by Hurlbut showed a close conformity in their statements, as opposed to those who were solicited by other entities. That, in and of itself, gives rise to the suspicion of source contamination.

The ones who mentioned names say they clearly remembered them as a result of the Book of Mormon jogging their memories. People do know when they “remember” something versus when they simply “just know “or have some faimiliarity. Here are some quotes on this.

Page 23. Sometimes we recall our personal pass by recollecting a wealth of information about a person or place, other times by just knowing that someone or something is familiar. Psychologists have begun to explore these two forms of subjective experience, which are referred to as remembering and knowing the past. Several studies have shown that recall of visual information about the physical setting or context of an event is crucial to having a “remember” experience.

The subjective sense of remembering almost invariably involve some sort of visual reexperiencing of an event.


P 24 We are also likely to feel that we are remembering something from the past when we can recall associations and ideas that occur to us injuring the initial episode.

It should be evident, then, that whether we “remember” a past incident or just “know” that it happened depends on how we attend to the event in the first place and what kinds of information we can bring to mind when recalling it.

Page 35. In experiments I have mentioned, for example, when a person says that she either “remembers” an item or simply “knows” it, the experimenter is willing to take the statements as reflections of the quality of correct collective experience.

]We remember most things by constant retrieval and visual reinforcement. I don't think that you would disagree that when we do not retrieve a memory for many years, the details do fade.

It’s more involved than that. Here are pile of quotes from Daniel Schacter on what is involved in memory:

Our experience of remembering an event does of course, partly depend on information about the event that is been stored in our brains. But there are other contributors to the subjective sense of remembering, and to appreciate memories fragile power we will need to understand them.


Page 17. In order to be experienced as a memory, the retrieved information must be recollected in the context of a particular time and place and with some reference to one's self as a participant in the episode. The psychologist Endel Tulving has argued that this kind of remembering depends on a special system called episodic memory, which allows us explicitly to recall the personal incidents that uniquely define our lives. Any analysis of episodic memory must consider the subjective experience of the person who does the remembering, referred to by Tulving as the rememberer.

Page 23. Sometimes we recall our personal pass by recollecting a wealth of information about a person or place, other times by just knowing that someone or something is familiar. Psychologists have begun to explore these two forms of subjective experience, which are referred to as remembering and knowing the past. Several studies have shown that recall of visual information about the physical setting or context of an event is crucial to having a “remember” experience

In one, college students were given a beeper that sounded unpredictably several times a day. Each time the beeper went off, they recorded what was happening (except when it sounded at in opportune times). When the students were later asked remember these events, the episodes they recalled most accurately and confidently included visual images of what had occurred during the episode. The subjective sense of remembering almost invariably involve some sort of visual reexperiencing of an event.

These observations have important implication: creating visual images may lead us to believe that we are remembering an event even when the incident never happened. These observations have an important implication: creating visual images may lead us to believe that we are remembering an event even when the incident never happened. By appreciating that subjective experiences of remembering are enhanced when we conjure up visual images, we can better understand incidents in which people appear to be recalling horrific events that never occurred.

We are also likely to feel that we are remembering something from the past when we can recall associations and ideas that occur to us injuring the initial episode.

It should be evident, then, that whether we “remember” a past incident or just “know” that it happened depends on how we attend to the event in the first place and what kinds of information we can bring to mind when recalling it.

I'll continue in a follow up post...

[_marg]

cont'd

Page 35. In experiments I have mentioned, for example, when a person says that she either “remembers” an item or simply “knows” it, the experimenter is willing to take the statements as reflections of the quality of correct collective experience.
>

Psychologists refer to it as an encoding process–a procedure for transforming something a person sees, hears, thinks, or feels into a memory. Encoding can be thought of as a special way of paying attention to ongoing events that has a major impact on subsequent memory for them
>
This finding may not seem particularly surprising; everyday experience suggests that something that is meaningful will be more easily remembered than something that is not. But it turns out that only a certain kind of semantic coding promotes high levels of memory performance–an elaborative encoding operation that allows you to integrate new information with what you already know.
>
In our everyday lives, memory is a natural, perhaps automatic, byproduct of the manner in which we think about an unfolding episode. If we want to prove our chances of remembering an incident or attorney-in-fact, we need to make sure that we carry out elaborative encoding by reflecting on the information and relating it to other things we already know.
>
Carrying out a deep, collaborative encoding influences not only the quantity of what can be remembered but also the quality of our recollective experience. As I noted in chapter 1 when we meet a new person and encode information elaboratively, we are more likely to “remember” the episode; if we do not elaborate, we are more likely to “just know” that the person seems familiar.
>
Elaborative encoding is a critical and perhaps necessary ingredient of our ability to remember in rich and vivid detail what has happened to us in the past.
>
But the dependence of explicit memory on elaboration has a downside, too: if we do not carry out elaborative encoding, we will be left with impoverished recollections. Experiments have shown that people are surprisingly poor at remembering what is on the front and back of the penny, despite seeing and handling pennies all the time. It is likely, however, that we encode the features of the penny quite superficially, because using pennies in everyday life requires only that we notice the general shape and color of the coin. The encoding process can halt once we have extracted the necessary information; there is no need to carry out a more elaborate analysis of the coin. In this example, we are behaving like experimental volunteers who perform shallow or superficial orienting task, and later recall little or nothing of what they have seen. If we operate on automatic pilot much of the time and do not reflect on our environment and our experiences, we may pay a price by retaining only sketchy memories of where we have been and what we’ve done.

Encoding and remembering are virtually inseparable. But the close relationship between the two can sometimes cause problems in our everyday lives. We remember only what we have encoded, and what we encode depends on who we are–our past experiences, knowledge, and needs all have a powerful influence on what we retain. This is one reason why two different people can sometimes have radically divergent recollections the same event.

Page 58. Engrams are the transient or enduring changes in our brains that result from encoding and experience. Neuroscientists believe that the brain records an event by strengthening the connections between groups of neurons that participate in encoding the experience. A typical incident in our everyday lives consists of numerous sights, sounds, actions, and words. Different areas of the brain analyze these varied aspects of an event. As a result, neurons in the different regions become more strongly connected to one another. The new pattern of connections constitutes the brains record of the event: the engram.

P 59 Engrams are important contributors to what we subjectively experience as a memory of something that has happened to us. But, as we have seen, they are not the only source of the subjective experience of remembering. As you read these words, there are thousands, maybe millions, of engrams in some form in your brain. These patterns of connections have the potential to enter awareness, to contribute to explicit remembering under the right circumstances, but at any one instant most of them lie dormant. If I cue you by asking you to remember the most exciting high school sports event you ever attended, a variety of engrams that only seconds ago were in a quiescent state become active as you sift through candidate experiences; if I ask you to remember what you ate the last time you had dinner at an Italian restaurant, a very different set of engrams enters into awareness. Had I not posed those queries to you, the relevant engrams might have remained dormant for years.
>
What properties of a cue allow it to “awaken” a dormant engram?

Semon argued that any given memory could be elicited by just a few select cues–parts of the original experience that a person focused on at the time the experience occurred. Thus only a fraction of the original event need be present in order to trigger recall of the entire episode.
>
To recollect the most exciting high school sports event you ever attended, you need not reinstate all the cues that were present initially. Only a subset must be available, those that are closely related to your encoding of the event. Your original encoding and elaboration of the event–say, a football game in which the quarterback made a series of miraculous plays to pull off an unexpected victory–focus heavily on the role of the quarterback. Years later, the mere mention of the quarterbacks name, or even a glance at his face, may bring to your mind the game, the participants, and how your team one.

But if you do not encounter the critical cues, you will not recall the experience.

Thus, if encoding conditions are not adequately reinstated at the time of attempted recall, retrieval will fail–even if an event has received extensive collaborative encoding.

One of Tulving’s most influential ideas is known as the encoding "specificity principle", which is similar many respects to Semon’s theory. According to this principle, first advanced in the 1970s, the specific way a person thinks about, or encodes, an event determines what “gets into” the engram, and the likelihood of later recalling the event depends on the extent to which a retrieval cue reinstates or matches the original encoding. Explicit remembering always depends on the similarity or affinity between encoding and retrieval processes.

These considerations suggest that the way we perceive and think about an event plays a major role in determining what cues will later elicit recollection of the experience. But it is not the literal similarity between encoding and retrieval conditions that is a crucial determinant of explicit memory. Rather what matters most is whether a retrieval cue reinstates a person’s subjective perception of an event, including whatever thoughts, fantasies, or inferences occurred at the time of encoding.

P 62 The exquisite interdependence between encoding and retrieval suggest some important qualification to points I made earlier concerning elaborative encoding and explicit remembering. Recall the fundamental finding from depth of processing studies: when we engage in deep, elaborative encoding of an event, we are later likely to remember that event well; when we engage in shallow, superficial encoding, we will later remembered the incident much less well. It turns out, however, that superficially encoded events can be remembered more accurately than deeply encoded events when people are given retrieval cues that match exactly a shallow encoding. Suppose I ask you to think of a word that rhymes with brain. You have carried out a shallow encoding, and you will later have a hard time remembering that I showed you the word brain. You would be much more likely to recall that I showed you brain if you had carried out a deep encoding (such as, think of three important functions that a the brain performs). But if I ask you to remember a word that rhymes with train you will be more likely to remember brain after shallow than deep encoding!

All else being equal, elaborative encoding yields higher levels of explicit memory than non-elaborative encoding, probably because a rich and elaborate encoding is accessible to a broad range of retrieval cues, whereas a shallow, more impoverished encoding can be elicited only by a few perfectly matched cues.

Similarly, an elaborative encoding affords many more opportunities to “meet” the right retrieval cue than a shallow encoding, and thus increases the chances of successful retrieval; but if the right queue is encountered, a shallow encoding can yield comparable or even higher levels of recall.

Page 63. One happy implication of this analysis is that when elaborative encoding has been carried out, and the right cue is available at the time of attempted retrieval, memory can achieve extremely high levels of accuracy.

Because our understanding of ourselves is so dependent on what we can remember of the past, it is troubling to realize that successful recall depends heavily on the availability of appropriate retrieval cues. Such dependence implies that we may be oblivious to parts of our past because we fail to encounter hints for cues that trigger dormant memories.

Well-controlled research has demonstrated over and over that cues and reminders can lead to recall of experiences that have seemingly disappeared, it does not necessarily follow that all experiences are preserved and potentially recallable. Sometimes we forget because the right cues are not available, but it is also likely that sometimes we forget because the relevant engrams have weakened or become blurred.

Page 66. We do not understand precisely how the retrieval process works, but some clues are beginning to emerge.

One critically important idea is that the brain engages in an act of “construction” during the retrieval process.

Similarly, for the rememberer, the engram (the stored distorted fragments of an episode) and the memory (the subjective experience of recollecting a past event) are not the same thing. The stored fragments contribute to the conscious experience of remembering, but they are only part of it. Another important component is the retrieval cue itself. Although it is often assumed that a retrieval cue merely arouses or activates a memory that is slumbering in the recesses of the brain, I’ve hinted at an alternative: the cue combines with the engram to yield a new, emergent entity–the recollective experience of the rememberer–that differs from either of its constituents.

P 70 If all a retrieval cue did was to activate a dormant memory, some findings I have considered would not make much sense: recalling an event from an “observer” perspective after recalling the same event from a “field” perspective leads people to say that the event seems less emotional than when they first recalled it; the feeling of knowing that an unrecalled bit of information is on the tip of the tongue is often an illusion produced by a familiar retrieval cue; and the experience of “remembering” a past event, as opposed to “just knowing” that it occurred, is lessened when memory is prompted with certain kinds of retrieval cues.
Once we acknowledge that a retrieval cue combines with the engram in order to yield a subjective experience that we call memory, we can begin to make sense of these apparent puzzles.

P 71 For example, one of the most influential approaches to thinking about memory in recent years, known as connectionism, has abandoned the idea that memory is an activated picture of a past event. Connectionist or neural network models are based on the principle that the brain stores engrams by increasing the strength of connections between different neurons that participate in encoding and experience. When we encode an experience, connections between active neurons become stronger, and this specific pattern of brain activity constitutes the engram.

Later as we try to remember the experience, a retrieval cue will induce another pattern of activity in the brain. If this pattern is similar enough to a previously encoded pattern remembering will occur. The “memory” in a neural network model is not simply an activated engram, however. It is a unique pattern that emerges from the pooled contributions of the cue and the engram. The neural network combines information in the present environment with patterns that have been stored in the past, and the resulting mixture of the two is what the network remembers. The same conclusion applies to people. When we remember, we complete a pattern with the best match available to memory; we do not shine a spotlight on the stored picture. The idea that a memory is an emergent property of the cue and the engram is difficult to accept. We must leave our familiar preconceptions if we are to understand how we are to convert the fragmentary remains of experience into the autobiographical narratives that endure over over time and constitute the story of our lives.

The case has not been made that Solomon's story had any special meaning in the life of those Conneaut witnesses. It was a source of light entertainment for most. It had nothing to do with their families, making a living, putting clothes on their backs, etc. Nothing to provide constant retrieval and review, or even occasional retrieval and review, once Solomon moved away. Yoy would need more evidence than what we currently have to make any substantial case for deep encoding rather than casual encoding.

They related the story to the local mounds… that alone made it stand out to them personally ..since it was a local interest. They knew the author personally and he read to them personally..seeing and hearing him read would stand out from other experiences in their lives. That there was no known history of the Indians and people were curious about it, would make a historical account potentially interesting and memorable.

Deep encoding involves the context of the event, how one relates the event to ones life and knowledge, the visual and other perceptual senses involving, sight, taste, smells, feelings contribute to memory.

[_marg]

Marg,

Loftus’ studies (as well as the examples of unintentional implanting of false memories by therapists) involve implanting of entire life episodes, something much harder than what I’m suggestion for the Conneaut witnesses.

No Dan those examples are not harder. There are a number of factors why implanting memories happened under some therapy and in 25% of the cases in Loftus's lost in the mall.

- Source memory was nonexistant. These leaves open the possibility of confusing memories visually imagines as being true memories. there is no link to the source and context from where those memories originated.
- Individuals trusted therapists and trusted those conducting study in Loftus's case who were representative of parents of subjects

Page 110 In both the “lost of the shopping mall” study (Loftus) and Hyman’s experiments, the retrieval environment consists of information from normally trustworthy sources who have provided specific information about a seemingly credible experience. Under these conditions, some rememberers may interpret any subjective sensations elicited by the cue – vague feelings of familiarity, fragments of other possibly relevant experiences, perhaps even dreams or fantasies that are not recognized as such–as signs of an awakening engram. Once the process is initiated, it is just a short step for these rememberers to do what I suggested that all rememberers normally do: knit together the relevant fragments of feelings into a coherent narrative or story. It is also noteworthy that false recollections emerged most clearly after several interviews and retrieval attempts, implying that repeatedly thinking about the event increased participant confidence that it actually happened.

The Conneaut witnesses weren’t falsely imagining Spalding reading to them, they were only inserting into their memories details of things they believed should have happened and in time became convinced that it did happen.

If it was one person or maybe even 2 but all the witnesses other than Josiah described a Spalding manuscript in line with the Book of Mormon. On some items they mentioned the clearly remembered and as I quoted from Daniel Schacter in my previous post, people do appreciate the difference between "remembering" versus having some familiarity or just knowing.Yes there are exceptions, when memories have been implanted such as with therapists and in these cases patients had no memory of abuse before therapy but gained a memory during therapy indicating they had no source memory for the event. Hence they were susceptible to implanting of memory and their visualizing as guided by their therapist gave them the feeling they really remembered...but that's not the situation with the conneaut witnesses. They were not susceptible to memory distortions. If the Spalding's book had no connection to the Book of Mormon , none of the same names, no phrase "and it came to pass", no biblical language there is no reason they should all be confused and think it did have similarities. And as my notes from D.Schacter's book points out with good retrieval cues memory can be very good.

While the witnesses memories surely faded and they acknowledged that, there is no reason to suspect they wouldn't appreciate whether or not they remembered some key aspects. Their feeling is they "clearly remembered" after their memory was jogged and there is no reason why that shouldn't have occurred..as they did experience elaborate encoding of the event..hearing seeing Spalding's book ...along with the Book of Mormon ..which they expressed was an excellent retrieval cue.

The event of Spalding reading and general information would have been encoded easily, but details like names wouldn’t have like remained, unless they connected it to some other mnemonic memory like Lehi/Lehigh. They give us no information about why they remember certain things, just their overstated assertion.

If they had heard Nephi many times..it is in the Book of Mormon over 3,000 times then from frequent reading they would have been exposed a lot. Couple that with a retrieval cue and there is good reason why they would say they clearly remembered certain names. Memory is a function of the right retreival cue along with an engram. In my quotes this is addressed.

And once again Dan, people do know when they remember things clearly versus when they have a hazy recollection. As I pointed out there are exceptions which you will find in study illustrating distorting memories but invariably those studies are not applicable to the situation involved with the witnesses.

There is another possible problem--for the witnesses that heard Spalding read his MS, did they hear him say Nephi with a long or short “i”?

Well if they were still alive you could ask them.

[_marg]

When the witnesses stated Spalding’s manuscript was a historical novel or romance, that’s a “gist” item which doesn’t require frequency to encode. And the same with when they talk of the book being about first settlers arriving in America that too is a “gist” item which they could have picked up from conversations with Spalding and/or reading or hearing the book itself.

Long-term memory for meaningless information is much poorer than encoded memory. If the individual can peg the new information into previously existing information, memory of that new information can last. Thus, Redick McKee was able to relate Spalding's tale to Maccabees. He knew that it was not set in the same era as Maccabees, but a similar situation. Therefore, his mind erroneously set it in Joshua's era. Not being as familiar with the beginning of the book, he set it in Israel, because of its Maccabean character. Therefore, he erroneously reset it in a more believable context. Just as the other erroneous memories.

I agree with what you say above that meaningless information will be poorly remembered unless one can peg it to information already existing..that's how mnemonic systems work. One can take meaningless words and associate them with meaningful objects or knowledge one has and have good recall due to the associations. But just memorizing meaningless words with no associations with preexisting knowledge is not nearly as successful.

I quoted a pile of quotes from Daniel Schacter because there is a lot involved as to what is involved with memory and pertinent ones I'll post again here.

Page 58. Engrams are the transient or enduring changes in our brains that result from encoding and experience. Neuroscientists believe that the brain records an event by strengthening the connections between groups of neurons that participate in encoding the experience. A typical incident in our everyday lives consists of numerous sights, sounds, actions, and words. Different areas of the brain analyze these varied aspects of an event. As a result, neurons in the different regions become more strongly connected to one another. The new pattern of connections constitutes the brains record of the event: the engram.
>
These considerations suggest that the way we perceive and think about an event plays a major role in determining what cues will later elicit recollection of the experience. But it is not the literal similarity between encoding and retrieval conditions that is a crucial determinant of explicit memory. Rather what matters most is whether a retrieval cue reinstates a person’s subjective perception of an event, including whatever thoughts, fantasies, or inferences occurred at the time of encoding.
>

All else being equal, elaborative encoding yields higher levels of explicit memory than non-elaborative encoding, probably because a rich and elaborate encoding is accessible to a broad range of retrieval cues, whereas a shallow, more impoverished encoding can be elicited only by a few perfectly matched cues.
>
Similarly, an elaborative encoding affords many more opportunities to “meet” the right retrieval cue than a shallow encoding, and thus increases the chances of successful retrieval; but if the right cue is encountered, a shallow encoding can yield comparable or even higher levels of recall.
>
We are also likely to feel that we are remembering something from the past when we can recall associations and ideas that occur to us during the initial episode.

I disagree with you, Marg. I think there was some repetition, as in a radio serial. Spalding's readings may have been a hi-light of their recreational life. Mighty poor, but better than knitting by the fireplace.

I didn't say there was no repetition, but rather memories such as "the book was a historical novel" doesn't require repetition. Knowing what the book was about at the outset via explanation or explained during discussions would have been reinforced through listening to the story as it developed. But those readings of the book by spalding did not likely contain him repeating to them each time what exactly the book was about. That's sort of the gist of what they picked up and understood and each time they'd hear him read and if it coincided with their understanding the essence of what it was about would be reinforced.

As well they linked the book and what it was about to the mounds in the area and that knowledge was reinforced with readings and discussion from spalding. So that helped their memory of what it was about.

So this sort of memory, the essence of what spalding's book was about, for example didn't necessarily require repeated direct verbal explanation. So the gist is the central idea or main substance of the story, but a name is not a gist of a story, it's very particular. One couldn't give a general description in one's own words what the name of a character is. And reading a number of passages would not serve as a reminder of a name if the passages didn't contain the name. So a memory for a name would be more difficult to encode elaboratively, however even if a name is forgotten if for some reason it was well encoded i.e. through repetition and even if the memory had significantly faded it could still be retrieved with the right cue. As D. Schacter explained : "whereas a shallow, more impoverished encoding can be elicited only by a few perfectly matched cues." If the Book of Mormon matched perfectly with the names of lead characters in spaldings book, then the Book of Mormon would be a perfectly matched cue and could elicit clear memory of names...which is what some of the witnesses said happened.

And when people retrieve memories and they have good source memories associated with those memories..they do appreciate whether the memory is being remembered or whether they have only a vague memory. So when Aron Wright was shown MSCC he said in the draft letter:

" Esq. SD Hurlbut is now at my store I have
examined the writings which he has obtained
from SD Spaldings widowe I recognize them to
be the writings handwriting of SD Spalding but not
the Manuscript I had refferance to in my statement
before alluded to as he informed me he wrote in the
first place he wrote for his own amusement and
then altered his plan and commenced writing a
history of the first Settlement of America"

he remembered spalding telling him that he had altered his plans of writing and commenced a history of the first settlement of america. That is a source memory he has..of Spalding informing him of a change of plans in writing. There is no problem with Aron Wright's source memory..he is not confusing memories of one manuscript with the other.

[_GlennThigpen]

The case has not been made that Solomon's story had any special meaning in the life of those Conneaut witnesses. It was a source of light entertainment for most. It had nothing to do with their families, making a living, putting clothes on their backs, etc. Nothing to provide constant retrieval and review, or even occasional retrieval and review, once Solomon moved away. Yoy would need more evidence than what we currently have to make any substantial case for deep encoding rather than casual encoding.

They related the story to the local mounds… that alone made it stand out to them personally ..since it was a local interest. They knew the author personally and he read to them personally..seeing and hearing him read would stand out from other experiences in their lives. That there was no known history of the Indians and people were curious about it, would make a historical account potentially interesting and memorable.

Deep encoding involves the context of the event, how one relates the event to ones life and knowledge, the visual and other perceptual senses involving, sight, taste, smells, feelings contribute to memory.

marge, they had not been around Solomon for twenty years. There were other books being written about the mounds and the American Indians in the intervening years. There were fictional books written about the Amrican Indians as descendants of the lost tribes, according to Dale. There was The View of the Hebrews by Ethan Smith, which was very popular. It was released in 1823 and again in 1825. Four of the Conneaut witnesses said that Spalding's story was about the lost tribes coming to the Americas and becoming the ancestors of the American Indians. If that was the case, it should be in the Book of Mormon because just about all of the Conneaut witnesses said that the historical parts of the Book of Mormon read almost identical to Solomon's story, with the word verbatim used by a couple of the witnesses.
If Spalding's story was about the lost tribes, then the Book of Mormon could not read almost identical to that story in the historical parts. If Solomon's story was not about the Lost tribes, then four of those witnesses were absolutely wrong.

If this was supposed to be so meaningful to those people, why didn't Josiah Spalding, Matilda Spalding Davison (the widow), Matilda McKinstry (the daughter), Redick McKee, and Joseph Miller have those same recollections? You cannot argue that Josiah was exposed to a different manuscript. His report was from the same time period as that of the Conneaut witnesses. Just about all of the witnesses put the time frame sometime in 1812. Solomon's wife was there more than any of theose witnesses. Redick McKee and Joseph Miller were probably exsposed to the manuscript even more than the Conneaut witnesses in 1814, 1815, and part of 1816. The one common thread to the Conneaut witnesses and their retrieval cues is Hurlbut.

The discrepancies between the Hurlbut witnesses and the other witnesses plus the lost tribes no show, plus the straits of Darien by only one witness, who just happened to live in an area where that subject had been fairly recently discussed in a newspaper, are supportive of memory confabulation.

Glenn