Yes, there’s a trick to this memory test.

No, seriously: Grab a pen and have a friend do this. It's cool because it's about your own brain.

(If you've already done it, try it again just for fun.)

[glenm]

I witnessed a moderately serious crime once, the sole witness as far as I know, and I was aware of the possibility of generating false memories after the fact. So before I spoke with the police, I made sure to write down everything I remembered. I got about 2000 words, pretty detailed, but I was annoyed that I couldn't be certain about some very basic things, order of events, where people were standing, even where exactly I was standing. I tried very hard to be honest with myself and identify where I made assumptions, and it was pretty tough to realize that my brain isn't as great as I want it to be.

Then they interviewed me, and the officer led off by saying that they'd arrested someone away from the scene, and they were sure it was the criminal. This guy had a prior record, really bad guy, should be open and shut. I could see right away that the questions he asked were not neutral, but were leading me to implicate this person. This was extremely uncomfortable, and there were many times that I wanted to just say "yes" to something I didn't know so I could finish the interview and get on with my life.

I then made notes about the questions that the police asked, because I wanted to be able to differentiate my real memories from the ones formed after the fact. When the trial came months later, I was glad that the judge let me consult all those notes. There were many times when the prosecutor said something along the lines of, "You told the officer that you saw the accused on the road side of the barrier." And I truly had an image in my head of seeing and saying that! But then I would check my notes and see, "No, I did not tell him that. He suggested it, and I said that I was only certain that I saw someone, the impression of a man slightly taller than me, but not for sure, near the barrier... but at the time I was unsure about which side." It was extremely intense questioning, and at one point the prosecutor yelled and threatened me with perjury charges (before the judge shut him down). It was all because I know that memory is malleable, and I didn't believe those present memories which were contradicted by my thoughts recorded at the time.

I don't actually know if anything I said in testimony was true, if the guy they charged really did it, or what the verdict was. This experience really tainted my confidence in the justice system. I assume that most jurors hold eyewitness accounts of incidents to be of high value. Most witnesses would not have notes, and I think would sit in the police interview and later the witness box feeling compelled to say something, and they'd say that the lists said sweet and angry.. no, anger. Anger, not angry. Definitely anger.

[scragar]

The first one got me to write sweet, but I think that's just because I'm from the UK, we call what the US calls "candy" "sweets". Whenever I hear the word candy I always mentally swap it out for sweet(s) because it just makes things easier to understand if it's using the words I'm expecting to be used rather than americanisms.

I did not write anger in the second list.

[Faith]

I got 9 from the first and 8 from the second, so what I've learnt from this is that 1. my short term memory isn't great, 2. I remember you saying the words better than just trying to memorise them from seeing it, and 3. my long term memory is great because I knew exactly which experiment this was and purposely knew what words to avoid lol

[heyitshollis]

10 on the first one, no sweet
7 on the second, no anger

[Scoots]

The movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is about a man who erases a failed relationship by carefully remembering it while his memory is set to not store anything.

When we remember things we have to re-store them after we remember. This read-erase-writeback process has in it our own brains altering our memories which are then written back like they actually happened.

Memory has always been terrible at specifics. We remember big things and big emotions but the details are all sanded away pretty much immediately, and they get worse every time you remember them.

[varialoustrael]

This is exactly why I don't argue with my boyfriend if he tells me I said something before. I don't really trust my memory for most things. I know I edit things all the time, even in experiences that happened 10 minutes ago. I try to just explain what I think happened and try to trust that maybe they know more than me. They might not, but we can figure it out together

[ConaRikan]

I'll be honest, as soon as I saw the connection in the first set of words, I set down my paper knowing I had already put wrong words into my memory. Helps that I saw you and Jason learning about this in an earlier video. But I'll engage another way. I'll see your video tape, and raise you an Betamax.

[Nico-pbsr]

13 on the first, plus sweet
11 on the second, plus anger

Thats insane

[FusionDeveloper]

This is why I tell people, don't rely on your memory if you don't have to.

[jonathanrose]

11 on the first one, added sweet. 8 on the second, added sad and sorrow.

[silopante]

Four and three, with the addition of anger, Brain stop messing with our Brians

[DeviantOllam]

First round: Honey sugar sour tooth tart cake soda candy heart pie bitter (I got 11 successfully and did not have "sweet" in the list)

Second round: Wrath hate fear fight ire emotion rage calm happy (I only got 9 successfully this time but again I did not have "anger" or "angry" in the list)

Although I will admit that I wasn't writing things out by hand, I was taking notes verbally via voice typing as soon as the timer started.

Maybe that is a different way of storing and recalling the information? I feel like I was doing so literally, trying to gather the words as unique tokens and not interact with their broader meaning

[redzaku]

8 in the first group but not the additional word.

6 in the second group and again no additional word.

Kinda realized you were priming my brain for some shenanigans by having all of the words related for some reason.

[EllieMoonHaven]

I always make fun of the fact that i have horrible memory. Calling it a memory shack rather than a memory palace.
So when you put this test forward i panicked the whole time. And in the second round i did worse. And then once the 2nd 90sec was over and you made a comment about hey now wasn't the second time easier i kept beating myself up for not being able to do a simple memory game.
But then i started looking into the comments and listened to the rest of the video and realized that i wasn't actually that bad and did pretty decently.
The 1st round i got 11 right and added sweet to my list and in my second round i got 9 right without adding anger to the list. Maybe because i questioned myself more the second time i made sure not to add any words i felt even slightly unsure about prevented me from adding it. Idk but doing this ending up making me feel better about my memory skills not.

sure if that was the point of the video but thats what i got from it. So thank you for this lol😂😂

[Liam-lsrn]

second comment, I will repeat some stuff, just in case if you haven't seen the first: I am self-diagnosed as plural, I am unsure if it's DID (you can be plural without DID), either way, it's not clinically diagnosed. However, i definitely have some amnesia when switching alters. I did this once before with a different alter, and this is to see how much i remember from the last test, and how my memory differs.
I ended up not doing this the next day, cause I switched early, so no test on the ADHD hypothesis.
current alter: ?
yep, that's my name: "?". I actually haven't fronted, like, at all, so this was a fun thing to do first thing.
remember test:
here I tried to remember my answers from the last test, not what was actually on the list.
group 1: 5/8
group 2: 7/8
as you can see, I still remember some, but I forget some. For context, this was done in the same day, with the stuff I'm trying to remember having already been given strategies to remember them, since I remembered them before. I think forgetting anything is not normal, especially since I remembered them all (except one) right before I switched.
the video again:
group 1: 9 with 6 old and 3 new
group 2: 10 with 5 old, 5 new, and one wrong (fire)
I overall did worse if you only count new words, but I think that's because I was looking for new words, aka the words that were hard to remember. If you count all, I did better, but also cheated because I got like 1 and 3/4's of a look instead of just 1.
conclusion: I probably have some amnesia, but not full, which is one of the reasons why I don't say that I have DID. I tend to remember general details, but the nitty-gritty is hard to remember.

[karumasaurus]

The fun thing is i got into a similar test when doing my ADHD assessment where there was a list of things- i couldnt write but I had to say it back. I knew the second this started i wouldn't do good- because my *working* memory is bad. I got 4 and 3 of each list and you can count on that I added sweet and anger! hahaha

[ronnovy]

Always fun -- I use this exercise regularly in my intro phil courses as part of a two-week series on the body and knowledge. It blows freshmen minds when they realize that their brain evolved for survival rather than truth. Even though I immediately recognizing what B was up to, I still only got 11/15 and 9/15 -- though I didn't write down either false memory term

[thearchivist]

Weirdly enough, I was worse at the second time. I didn't have any false memories at that either.
On the other hand, I actually remembered "happy" on the first list as well as "sweet". Funny how that works.
11 and 7 words, counting the 2 fake ones.

[AniWillow]

8 and 9 not counting the fake words. Funny thing is with both sweet and anger, they were both the last words I added on both lists. Almost like my mind knew they weren’t there but wanted more words and thought they might fit.

[lowdays]

8 in the first one counting "sweet" (added a question mark on it cause I didn't fully know if it was in there but assumed maybe it was) and 6 on the second one counting "Anger" (I didn't hesitate on writing it because it fully felt in line with the theme)