Friday March 8, 10:20 - 11:20

Douglas Herrmann
(Indiana State University, U.S.A)

Michael M. Gruneberg
(University of Wales at Swansea, U.K.)

Steve Fiore
(University of Pittsburgh, U.S.A)

Jonathan Schooler
(L.R.D.C. and University of Pittsburgh, U.S.A)

Tania Torres
(Indiana State University, U.S.A)

Memory failures happen to everyone. Sometimes we are called on to provide an explanation of the causes of these memory failures. For example, a person who forgets to pick up a much needed gallon of milk will be asked by a spouse or significant other why this failure occurred. The purpose of this paper is to examine the accuracy of the memory failures and their causes.

If it were shown that the memory failure report is not accurate, then the causes cannot be accurate as well because the causes would be based on fallacious data. On the other hand, an accurate recall of a memory failure at its causes does not guarantee an accurate report of the causes of the failure. Inaccurate recall of causes for accurately recalled memory failures may occur because people might have difficulty in making judgments about their cognitive processes. If both memory failures and the causes reported by people were shown to be accurate, then investigations into the nature of these reports would be useful to guide future research about memory in everyday life.

This paper presents the findings of several investigations into the accuracy of the recall of memory failures and of the causes of such failures. These findings indicate that the both reports of memory failures and of causes are accurate but that the reports of the memory failures appear to be more accurate than the reports of causes.