Word: neisser
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Consider the Challenger explosion. As with the assassination of John F. Kennedy, most people claim to remember where they were when they heard the news of the shuttle disaster. Ulric Neisser, a psychologist at Emory University, tested that assumption. The day after the 1986 accident he asked 106 students to write down how, when and where they learned the news. Three years later, he tracked down nearly half the group and asked them to describe their memories of the explosion. Though many claimed to recall it clearly, "often the memories were completely wrong," says Neisser. Many students said they...
...early recall. Most people's earliest clear recollections date back to around age 4 or 5. Before that, they believe, the mind holds at best primitive pictures but no coherent memory. "Under a year, a child doesn't have the mental structure to understand how events hang together," says Neisser. "I wouldn't give you a nickel for memory in the first year of life...