Memory and recollection are affected significantly by subjective perception; thus, leading up to situations where different persons may have different recollections of a similar mind. The subjective opinion refers to a situation where people often seek to use their emotions and senses when building their recollection of events focusing on a specific memory, which tends to have notable impacts on the accuracy of the memory. It is a common occurrence to find persons exploiting subjective perception that create a change in their understanding and ability to present an accurate picture touching on a specific memory or events. That leads to the critical question, can we trust our memory? The focus of this report is to examine my personal view of what I consider as an accurate recollection of memory while providing an experience where my friend I had a completely different recollection of similar events.
Personal View of an Accurate Recollection of Memory
In my assessment of how we recollect memory, I must say that a majority of people find it hard when trying to project an accurate recollection attributed to the fact that they often find it much more comfortable in changing some parts of the events to meet their subjective perception. Matthews & Meck (2016) indicate that persons, during the process of memory recollection, often use artistic license that creates a significant differentiation in their abilities to tell a story rather accurately, as one can change the story depending on who is listening. From this perspective, what I consider as an accurate recollection of memory is a description of events that can be supported by another person that experienced similar events.
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When listening to a memory recollection, I also focus on the similarity in the events between two or more persons, which would be of great value towards establishing the accuracy of the activities described. However, this may not be possible when listening to a recollection of memory when dealing with a single perspective of the events. In this case, I also try to examine the consistency in the description of the events, as the person is describing them. The expectation is that this would help in determining possible areas where the person may have changed the events to match his or her subjective perception. I always find much easier in ensuring that persons would give their recollection of events over and over as a way of trying to identify some of the possible areas of inaccuracies. The use of this strategy aids in determining whether the recollection of events is accurate or inaccurate, depending on how they are presented.
The recollection of a Situation
When I was around 12 years old, one of my friends was struck by a car while on a crosswalk on our way from school sustaining severe injuries that forced him to spend some time in hospital. As our parents were questioning us on what had transpired leading up to my friend being struck by the car, I vividly remember the fact that our recollection of events was very different considering that each of us gave a different scenario before the actual accident. As part of the reconciliation of the memory, our parents focused on the relevant sections from each of the recollections that we had provided while ignoring areas that they consider as being subjective or an exaggeration with the sole intention being towards enhancing overall capacity to determine the accuracy of the situation.
Reference
Matthews, W. J., & Meck, W. H. (2016). Temporal cognition: Connecting subjective time to perception, attention, and memory. Psychological Bulletin , 142 (8), 865.
