ABSTRACT
Ah, memories . . . they comfort us, inform us, disturb us, and yes, even define us. Memory is often taken for granted and really only reflected upon when it fails us. In general, our memory is an amazing entity with the ability to provide us with the continuous sense of self described by William James. Memory operates in an extremely efficient manner, allowing us to recall more pleasant than unpleasant memories and enough detail to reconstruct past experiences with reasonable accuracy. It is, however, subject to distortion, the study of which has historically been rooted in interference theory. Interference theory, a theory of forgetting, states that the reason we forget is that other memories in long-term memory impair our ability to retrieve the target memory. Memory involves a reconstructive process: It is vulnerable to interference from other experiences, especially from experiences that occur after a to-be-remembered event.
