One popular conception, if I’ve got my pop psychology right, is that [people believe that] memories are stored in brains like they’re stored in computers; that is, they’re archived at a particular location and are always in principle retrievable, even though it might take a lot of effort to do so. You’ll see this popular conception in action if you watch children’s cartoons where the plot involves going into a character’s brain in some metaphorical way; a less high-tech metaphor might visualize the brain as a giant collection of filing cabinets (I’m thinking of an episode of Spongebob in particular).
Right, I heard the cabinet metaphor before. Another piece of evidence that people think that way is that they often unquestioningly trust memories retrieved via regressive hypnosis and stuff to be genuine.
What? Are there any popular conceptions of how memory is stored? I don’t think I’ve ever heard any.
One popular conception, if I’ve got my pop psychology right, is that [people believe that] memories are stored in brains like they’re stored in computers; that is, they’re archived at a particular location and are always in principle retrievable, even though it might take a lot of effort to do so. You’ll see this popular conception in action if you watch children’s cartoons where the plot involves going into a character’s brain in some metaphorical way; a less high-tech metaphor might visualize the brain as a giant collection of filing cabinets (I’m thinking of an episode of Spongebob in particular).
Right, I heard the cabinet metaphor before. Another piece of evidence that people think that way is that they often unquestioningly trust memories retrieved via regressive hypnosis and stuff to be genuine.