ABSTRACT
For several decades, research on how people remember events has of fered growing evidence that memories are often less accurate than people believe them to be. The reconstructive nature of memory, first delineated by Bartiett (1932/1954) and confirmed by much contem porary literature, leaves mental traces of past experience vulnerable to distortion (Loftus & Palmer, 1974; Neisser & Harsch, 1992; Schacter, 1995; Wright, 1993).
