According to the coexistence view, the original information is still accessible with the right retrieval cues. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 27, 14-33. The British psychologist Frederic C. Bartlett (1932) conducted one of the first systematic investigations of memory accuracy. (1995). According to most reconstructive theories of memory, the process of reconstructing a memory is based on a variety of different types of information. Rather, our past experiences, beliefs, interpretations of the moment, and even events that happen afterward shape our memory of what actually occurred. In fact, unless there is another, more likely, reason or source to explain why a memory or experience currently feels familiar, people will typically attribute feelings of familiarity to past experience (Jacoby, Kelley, and Dywan, 1989; Whittlesea and Williams, 2001). RECONSTRUCTIVE MEMORY. Reconstructive memory is the type of memory involved when the information is passed from person to person, often by word of mouth as in spreading rumours or gossip. The other-race effect is a studied effect in which eyewitnesses are not as good at facially identifying individuals from races different from their own. However, evidence from neuroscience studies and psychological research demonstrate that memory embodies a reconstructive process which is vulnerable to distortion. Furthermore, those who falsely recalled the word were very confident that the word appeared on the list. By the tenth retelling, one subject explained that this Indian refused because his elderly mother was dependent on him, a revision that manifests Western concepts of a son's responsibilities in general and perhaps that subject's family ties in particular. According to Neissers analogy, paleontologists begin their reconstruction based on fragments of bone found in the fossil record. - Definition & Examples, What Is Moral Development? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory, and Cognition 12, 171-181. When tested 1 week later, participants who had been asked the smashed version of the question were more likely to remember seeing broken glass, when in fact no broken glass had been shown in the film. Another common change was that subjects tended to add a moral, possibly because stories in Western culture often have morals. These conditions are not ideal for perfect recall; memories can be affected by a number of variables. Even though memory and the process of reconstruction can be fragile, police officers, prosecutors, and the courts often rely on eyewitness identification and testimony in the prosecution of criminals. It is clear that memory can fail in a variety of ways. Bartlett concluded, "Remembering is an imaginative reconstruction, or construction, built out of the relation of our attitude towards a whole mass of organized past reactions or experiences" (p. 213).