The imperfection of human memory is well known to psychologists, and yet many of us persistently underestimate its ability to play tricks on us.
BBC Future has compiled a list of the most unusual quirks of our memory.
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1. It is impossible to remember the first few years of life
"I suppose that my readers do not remember at all, or very vaguely, that extremely important period of their existence which preceded their birth and was spent in their mother's womb," Salvador Dali wrote in his memoirs.
"But, yes, I remember that period as if it were yesterday."
He hoped that his own recollection of that "beautiful paradise" would help others regain the lost moments of their lives before birth.
In reality, Dali's memories were almost certainly the result of his vast imagination.
Scientists today believe that it is impossible to remember the first few years of your life, and the period before birth is certainly completely blank.
Many of the brain structures necessary for memory were not yet mature at that time, meaning that it is physiologically impossible in adulthood to recall personal events from the early neonatal period.
Instead, any memory of that time is an illusion or "false memory" - pieced together from other experiences or knowledge we acquired later in life.
2. Memory depends on your temperature
Psychologists say that human memory is "context dependent."
To understand exactly what this means, imagine an experiment in which some participants were asked to put their hand in a bucket of ice water, a rather unpleasant experience, and then to remember a list of certain words.
After more testing, the researchers found that participants' memory improved when they placed their hand in a second ice bath.
The study showed that we remember facts better if we reconstruct subtle psychological or other circumstances from the time when those memories were originally imprinted on us, even if they seem irrelevant.
That's one of the reasons why we easier to recall events from a drunken night kad let's drink a few beers, but we can hardly remember them when we are sober.
As Shaw points out in Illusions of memory, you could try to use these psychological signs to your advantage.
People who I chew gum. or they drink coffee They will remember more while studying if they do the same at test time.
Smells can also be significant: so try to wear the same perfume or aftershave lotion to the exam that you associate with your preparations and studying.
3. Your mental timeline is distorted
Take a moment to guess the month and year when the following events took place:
- Michael Jackson's death
- Beyonce album release Lemonade
- the famous Oscars mess when La La Land mistakenly named best film
- Angela Merkel's announcement that she will step down as German Chancellor
Unless you are unusually well-versed in news cycles, your responses will likely be a complete failure, and they may follow a recognizable pattern.
Research has shown that we often underestimate the amount of time that has passed since some long-ago events (such as Michael Jackson's death), and overestimate the amount of time that has passed since some more recent ones (Angela Merkel's announcement).
This phenomenon is known as "temporal displacement" or "telescoping".
Your mental timeline is distorted and does not correspond to the actual chronology of events.
The correct dates are:
- June 2009
- April 2016.
- February 2017.
- October 2018
4. Hazy memories can be useful
Try to draw your best friend from memory or describe him in as much detail as possible without looking at a photo.
Unless you suffer from face blindness, you'll probably be able to give a pretty good description of his general facial features, only to find that specific features - such as something as basic as his eye color - are hard to guess.
This is an example of how we tend to remember the gist instead of the delicate details, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Delicate facial details, for example, often change from day to day, but the overall impression or essence remains the same, meaning you can still recognize your friend in different light or with a different hairstyle.
(By the way, even our own memory of ourselves isn't very accurate, and we usually remember our faces as more beautiful than they actually are.)
5. Overconfidence in the accuracy of your memory has a financial cost
If you were to try to draw or describe your own face, you probably believe you would remember much more than you actually think.
Many studies have shown that most people believe their memory is above average, when, in fact, this is a statistical impossibility.
We seem to dismiss and then forget all those times when our memory has failed us and prefer to recall the times when it was successful, so the next time we have to assess its accuracy, we assume it will be infallible.
This is a serious problem for police officers, for example, whose belief in the accuracy of their recollection can affect a criminal case, and it can also spell doom for many students, who overly optimistically overestimate how much they have actually learned.
We place too much faith in our "potential memory" - the ability to remember things we need to do in the future, and it can come at a financial cost.
As Shaw points out, subscription services can take advantage of this fact by offering us a free trial period for a certain period of time, after which an automatic payment will be made from your account.
Thanks to overconfidence in their potential memory, many people forget to cancel that subscription by the time its free trial period ends.
6. You may be suffering from digital amnesia
The ubiquity of smartphones could be a huge benefit to our memory.
Just think of all those events stored in your Facebook and Instagram posts, which are a vast archive of stimuli to help us remember.
But social media also has the potential to distort our recollection of past events.
One reason is a phenomenon known as "return-induced forgetting."
It is now well known that memories can become "labile" and "fragile" when we bring them into our consciousness, and this also exposes related memories to distortion.
As a result, recalling one element of an event can enhance our recall of details, but often leads us to forget related information that is not actively recalled.
It's easy to see how this plays out on social media.
A Facebook prompt that draws your attention to a particular wedding photo, for example, may therefore cause you to forget other aspects of that same day.
This is especially problematic when you consider that the main pages on our social networks are already cultivated and nurtured to present an unrealistic image of ourselves.
"By dictating which experiences count as the most meaningful in our lives, social media potentially eradicates memories deemed less shareable," Shaw writes.
"At the same time, they amplify memories collectively selected as most conducive to responding, potentially making some memories more significant and memorable than they actually were."
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