Cleary composed two kinds of experiments to test the validity of this hypothesis on the basis of familiarity-based recognition principles. (Recollection-based recognition implies that you recognize a person or a location and also know where you saw them last or when you were there. Familiarity-based recognition implies that you know the person or location, but you can't remember why.)
In the first experiment, Cleary gave participants a list of celebrity names to look over; later, she showed them a group of celebrity photos. Some of the names overlapped with the pictures, some did not. Despite having never seen some of the celebrities before, the participants had a good sense of who had been on the list and who had not. They could not say how they knew the celebrity, but they felt familiar with them. The same experiment was performed again, this time substituting celebrities for famous landmarks (Stonehenge, the Taj Majal). The results were the same.
In the second experiment, participants read through a list of words and then performed a word recognition test later on. Some of the words on the test resembled those on the list in pronunciation (e.g. "lady" and "eighty"). The volunteers remarked on the sense of familiarity to the words, though they could not recall the word from the original list. (This experiment recalled previous research using isolated shapes in pictures that showed that, when a person recognized a pattern or familiar shape, they would feel familiar to a completely new picture with similar structures.)
These results led Cleary to conclude that events and experiences are stored as individual elements in our memories, and that similar seeming events or experiences can cause deja vu.
Familiarity-based recognition and reconstructive memory, especially regarding the word recognition test, appear to be two sides of the same coin. While reconstructive memory maintains that suggestion can lead to the false impression that you have done or seen something before that you haven't, even though it feels familiar, familiarity-based recognition (and deja-vu) states that things you have not done or seen feel familiar to you because you have seen them before (or have seen something similar to them in the past) but can't remember where. The brain is good at recognizing patterns rather than facts, and, in the case of reconstructive memory, building upon that foundation to create something that makes sense to you, rather than something that is real. (On a similar note, there was a movement regarding recalling repressed memories we discussed weeks ago. The psychiatrists who advocated this method kept suggesting or expecting horrible things to have happened in their patients' lives when in fact there was nothing to "uncover" since nothing had been "suppressed" or "repressed". However, due to their methods, the patients themselves grew to believe in their own horrible childhoods and testified against their "abusers" in court or claimed to have been wronged, genuinely believing the fabrications created in their own minds. Due to the nature of the "treatments" they underwent, one can only assume that the psychiatrist reconstructed their patients' memories, reinterpreting certain events to give the impression that they had been traumatized by some horrific event in their past.)
We discussed eye-witness testimony in class last week, particularly regarding face recognition in line-ups, or even the photo albums of potential suspects, and the idea of reconstructive memory being fifty/fifty does not appeal to me. The person looking at the photos must always ask themselves, Do you I really recognize this person or does he just have similar features? Am I recognizing a familiar face or just experiencing deja vu?
Hint: Just check the DNA.
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