On Sat, 13 Sep 2008 14:10:16 -0700, Claudia Stanny wrote: [in reponse to Chris Green statement that Bob Wildblood's recollection might be a false memory] >Yes, I think this is an example of a distorted memory if not a false memory. > >There is such a study, but not of 9/11.
There are a variety of studies of distorted memories for 9/11 but not the type of distortion that Wildblood reports. For example, quoting Scott D. Gronlund, Curt A. Carlson, and Debra Tower's chapter on Episodic Memory (Ch05) in Frank Durso's Handbook of Applied Cognition: |On the morning of September 11, 2001, two planes hit the |towers of the World Trade Center. Although people will never |forget this event, they also report that they will never forget who |first told them and where they were when they heard of the attack. |Memory for the personal circumstances surrounding events of |great consequence is termed flashbulb memory (Brown & Kulik |1977). On September 12, 2001, Talarico and Rubin (2003) had |students report memories for a recent everyday event and for the |particulars of learning about 9/11. Accuracy decreased similarly |for both types of memory, despite participants reporting their |flashbulb memories with great confidence. Inaccurate flash-bulb |memories are the norm (e.g., Schmolck et al. 2000; but see |Berntsen & Thomsen 2005), no matter how noteworthy your |connection to the event. On December 4, 2001 and January 5, |2002, President George W. Bush reported that he watched on |television as the first plane flew into one of the towers (though this |would have been impossible), while on December 20, 2001 he |told the Washington Post that Karl Rove told him about the first |plane (Greenberg 2004). What kind of memory do we have that |at once makes some memories indelible, others quickly forgotten, |and still others reconstructions that we mistake for real? see: http://tinyurl.com/5ca5o9 For those who don't remember, television showed Andy Card notifying President Bush while he was reading "My Pet Goat" to school children in a Florida classroom on the morning of 9/11 when the jetliners hit the NY World Trade Center. However, in a speech that President Bush made in Orlando, Florida on *December 4 2001* he is quoted as saying the following: |THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Jordan. Well, Jordan, you're not |going to believe what state I was in when I heard about the terrorist |attack. I was in Florida. And my Chief of Staff, Andy Card -- actually, |I was in a classroom talking about a reading program that works. I was |sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit |the tower -- the TV was obviously on. And I used to fly, myself, and |I said, well, there's one terrible pilot. I said, it must have been a horrible |accident. >From a White House Press Release available on: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/12/20011204-17.html Of course, the first crash into the north tower was not televised on 9/11, instead, the first broadcast of this occurred on 9/12 from the videotape made by the French documentary film makers the Naudet brothers who were making a study of a young NYC firefighter in lower Manhattan (known as a "probie" because all firefighters start out by being on probation for several months). The resulting documentary "9/11" was broadcast by CBS in 2002 and is available on DVD; see: http://www.amazon.com/11-Filmmakers-Commemorative-Tony-Benatatos/dp/B00006B1HI It is very curious that President Bush thought he saw the first jetliner crash into the north tower, especially so soon after the event. Did he create a particularly fast false memory for the event? Or did he really see the crash but from a source that was not revealed to the public? Conspiracy theorists, discuss. -Mike Palij New York University [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
