Memory justifications provide valid indicators of retrieval accuracy across time
Avi Gamoran, Zohar Raz Groman, Michael Gilead, Talya Sadeh · 2025
Read Memory justifications provide valid indicators of retrieval accuracy across time by Avi Gamoran, Zohar Raz Groman, Michael Gilead, Talya Sadeh (2025) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-12820377.txt.
Description
Avi Gamoran, Zohar Raz Groman, Michael Gilead, and Talya Sadeh test whether people's reasons for trusting a memory actually track its accuracy, even as time passes, in a 2025 paper. We constantly judge our own recollections — in conversation, and under oath. The justifications we give for believing a memory ('I can picture the room') feel informative, but feelings are not proof.
Four hundred twenty-one participants recalled events and justified their beliefs; the justifications were checked against free recall performance and mined for linguistic change over time. Recall faded as expected, yet the justifications stayed valid signals of accuracy. Courts and clinicians alike lean on such self-reports, so knowing they hold up has practical weight.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Avi Gamoran, Zohar Raz Groman, Michael Gilead, Talya Sadeh |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2025 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 73 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |