On the Permanence of Information Stored in the Human Brain

Many people believe that information that is stored in long-term memory is permanent, citing examples of "retrieval techniques" that are alleged to uncover previously forgotten information. Such techniques include hypnosis, psychoanalytic procedures, methods for eliciting spontaneous and other conscious recoveries, and—perhaps most important—the electrical stimulation of the brain reported by Wilder Penfield and his associates. In this article we first evaluate • the evidence and conclude that, contrary to apparent popular belief, the evidence in no way confirms the view that all memories are permanent and thus potentially recoverable. We then describe some failures that resulted from attempts to elicit retrieval of previously stored information and conjecture what circumstances might cause information stored in memory to be irrevocably destroyed. Few would deny the existence of a phenomenon called "forgetting," which is evident in the common observation that information becomes less available as the interval increases between the time of the information's initial acquisition and the time of its attempted retrieval. Despite the prevalence of the phenomenon, the factors that underlie forgetting have proved to be rather elusive, and the literature abounds with hypothesized mechanisms to account for the observed data. In this article we shall focus our attention on what is perhaps the fundamental issue concerning forgetting; Does forgetting consist of an actual loss of stored information, or does it result from a loss of access to information, which, once stored, remains forever? It should be noted at the outset that this question may be impossible to resolve in an absolute sense. Consider the following thought experiment. A person (call him Geoffrey) observes some event, say a traffic accident. During the period of observation, a movie camera strapped to Geoffrey's head records the event as Geoffrey experiences it. Some time later, Geoffrey attempts to recall and Vol. 35, No. S, 409-420 describe the event with the aid of some retrieval technique (e.g., hypnosis or brain stimulation), which is alleged to allow recovery of any information stored in his brain. While Geoffrey describes the event, a second person (Elizabeth) watches the movie that has been made of the event. Suppose, now, that Elizabeth is unable to decide whether Geoffrey is describing his memory or the movie—in other words, memory and movie are indistinguishable. Such a finding would constitute rather impressive support for the position held by many people that the mind registers an accurate representation of reality and that this information is stored permanently. But suppose, on the other hand, that Geoffrey's report—even with the aid of the miraculous retrieval technique—is incomplete, sketchy, and inaccurate, and furthermore, suppose that the accuracy of his report deteriorates over time. Such a finding, though consistent with the view that forgetting consists of information loss, would still be inconclusive, because it could be argued that the retrieval technique—no matter what it was— was simply not good enough to disgorge the information, which remained buried somewhere in the recesses of Geoffrey's brain. Thus, the question of information loss versus This article was written while E. Loftus was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California, and G. Loftus was a visiting scholar in the Department of Psychology at Stanford University. James Fries generously picked apart an earlier version of this article. Paul Baltes translated the writings of Johann Nicolas Tetens (177?). The following financial sources are gratefully acknowledged: (a) National Science Foundation (NSF) Grant BNS 76-2337 to G. Loftus; (b) 'NSF Grant ENS 7726856 to E. Loftus; and (c) NSF Grant BNS 76-22943 and an Andrew Mellon Foundation grant to the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Requests for reprints should be sent to Elizabeth Loftus, Department of Psychology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195. AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST • MAY 1980 * 409 Copyright 1980 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0003-066X/80/3505-0409$00.75 retrieval failure may be unanswerable in principle. Nonetheless it often becomes necessary to choose sides. In the scientific arena, for example, a theorist constructing a model of memory may— depending on the details of the model'—be forced to adopt one position or the other. In fact, several leading theorists have suggested that although loss from short-term memory does occur, once material is registered in long-term memory, the information is never lost from the system, although it may normally be inaccessible (Shiffrin & Atkinson, 1969; Tulving, 1974). The idea is not new, however. Two hundred years earlier, the German philosopher Johann Nicolas Tetens (1777) wrote: "Each idea does not only leave a trace or a consequent of that trace somewhere in the body, but each of them can be stimulated—-even if it is not possible to demonstrate this in a given situation" (p, 7S1). He was explicit about his belief that certain ideas may seem to be forgotten, but that actually they are only enveloped by other ideas and, in truth, are "always with us" (p, 733). Apart from theoretical interest, the position one takes on the permanence of memory traces has important practical consequences. It therefore makes sense to air the issue from time to time, which is what we shall do here, The purpose of this paper is threefold. We shall first report some data bearing on people's beliefs about the question of information loss versus retrieval failure. To anticipate our findings, our survey revealed that a substantial number of the individuals queried take the position that stored information is permanent'—-or in other words, that all forgetting results from retrieval failure. In support of their answers, people typically cited data from some variant of the thought experiment described above, that is, they described currently available retrieval techniques that are alleged to uncover previously forgotten information. Such techniques include hypnosis, psychoanalytic procedures (e.g., free association), and— most important—the electrical stimulation of the brain reported by Wilder Penfield and his associates (Penfield, 1969; Penfield & Perot, 1963; Penfield & Roberts, 1959). The results of our survey lead to the second purpose of this paper, which is to evaluate this evidence. Finally, we shall describe some interesting failures that have resulted from attempts to elicit retrieval of previously stored information. These failures lend support to the contrary view that some memories are apparently modifiable, and that consequently they are probably unrecoverable. Beliefs About Memory In an informal survey, 169 individuals from various parts of the U.S. were asked to give their views about how memory works. Of these, 75 had formal graduate training in psychology, while the remaining 94 did not. The nonpsychologists had varied occupations. For example, lawyers, secretaries, taxicab drivers, physicians, philosophers, fire investigators, and even an 11-year-old child participated. They were given this question: Which of these statements best reflects your view on how human memory works? 1. Everything we learn is permanently stored in the mind, although sometimes particular details are not accessible. With hypnosis, or other special techniques, these inaccessible details could eventually be recovered. 2. Some details that we learn may be permanently lost from memory. Such details would never be» able to be recovered by hypnosis, or any other special technique, because these details are simply no longer there. Please elaborate briefly or give any reasons you may have for your view. We found that 84% of the psychologists chose Position 1, that is, they indicated a belief that all information in long-term memory is there, even though much of it cannot be retrieved; 14% chose Position 2, and 2% gave some other answer. A somewhat smaller percentage, 69%, of the nonpsychologists indicated a belief in Position 1; 23% chose Position 2, while 8% did not make a clear choice. What reasons did people give for their belief? The most common reason for choosing Position 1 was based on personal experience and involved the occasional recovery of an idea that the person had not thought about for quite some time. For example, one person wrote: "I've experienced and heard too many descriptions of spontaneous recoveries of ostensibly quite trivial memories, which seem to have been triggered by just the right set of a person's experiences." A second reason for a belief in Position 1, commonly given by persons trained in psychology, was knowledge of the work of Wilder Penfield. One psychologist wrote: "Even though Statement 1 is untestable, I think that evidence, weak though it is, such as Penfield's work, strongly suggests it may be correct." Occasionally respondents offered a comment about 410 • MAY 1980 • AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST hypnosis, and more rarely about psychoanalysis and repression, sodium pentothal, or even reincarnation, to support their belief in the permanence of memory. Admittedly, the survey was informally conducted, the respondents were not selected randomly, and the question itself may have pressured people to take sides when their true belief may have been a position in between. Nevertheless, the results suggest a widespread belief in the permanence of memories and give us some idea of the reasons people offer in support of this belief.