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Ulric Neisser: 2 ideas worth knowing

2 ideas from Ulric Neisser, each explained in a minute and credited to the original work. Free on Savvy.

• People are dead certain about memories that are provably wrong

  The day after the Challenger shuttle disaster, psychologist Ulric Neisser had students write down exactly where they were when they heard the news. Resurveyed two and a half years …

  — Ulric Neisser and Nicole Harsch, Phantom flashbulbs: False recollections of hearing the news about Challenger

• You have almost no memories from before you were about three or four years old

  Adults can recall almost nothing about their first few years of life, a gap known as childhood amnesia. It isn't that nothing happened — infants do form memories — but the hippocam…

  — JoNell A. Usher, Ulric Neisser, Childhood Amnesia and the Beginnings of Memory for Four Early Life Events

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