Experts more prone to false memory

[Moonraker]

This article

 

in the Daily Telegraph caught my eye.

 

"The results showed that if someone was interested in a topic, this increased the frequency of accurate memories relating to that topic. But it also increased the number of false memories too – 25 per cent of people experienced a false memory in relation to an interesting topic, compared with 10 per cent in relation to a less interesting topic. And having a high level of knowledge about a topic – as measured by the number of true memories recorded – rather than just an interest, increased the frequency of false memories too."

 

(I didn't think that the conclusion in the last sentence was at all startling, but that's by the way.)

 

Others here may join me in admitting to having made comparable errors in their area of Great War specialism, though perhaps fewer may confess to thinking that their own research has been overwhelmed. Ten years ago, I liked to think that I had one the best over-views of Wiltshire military history between 1897 and 1920, but those subsequently researching specific localities and themes have eclipsed me. I think in particular of books on early aviation at Lark Hill, military railways on the Plain and the Western Kennet Valley, with the authors locating and accessing archives of which I was unaware - thanks to their own diligence and the Web (which was not a resource available to me in the late1990s).

 

Very recently I was flattered when two GWF members thought that I might be able to provide some insight into training at a particular location. Initially I was able to offer very little, but luckily the second person advanced some theories which I feel able to endorse. (I shall consider them over the Bank Holiday and reply to the two gentlemen by email.)

 

Moonraker

[clive_hughes]

Moonraker,

I find myself in a sort of general agreement.  Some of us feel we have long been ploughing a lonely furrow as far as specialisms go, only to find that others have also been working in the same or related fields (or have started more recently, but independently of us).   Some of the more locally-oriented researchers do indeed have a greater knowledge, but again only within their own more narrow specialism, if I can put it that way.  Hopefully the general sum of human knowledge on these topics can be enlarged through the common effort!  

 

I'm certain that along the way I've made errors or wrong assumptions galore.  But I'm still willing to be corrected and to learn from them.  Not being aware of a source only shows up the limitations even of "experts" - but more of these sources keep emerging from the shadows, don't they?  Only a few years back I was entirely unaware of things like the Soldiers Effects registers; Soldiers Wills collection; Naval War Graves records; and the Pension Records administered by the WFA (the latter, I can clearly recall, we were told back in the late 1970s, had been destroyed...but they weren't! - so my assertions on that point were erroneous up to the time of revelation of their existence).  

 

Being an expert isn't, I think, being a walking encyclopaedia, but knowing where to lay your hands on the information (or who else can assist).  And that status seems to need updating from time to time!

 

Clive