Memory Editing Mechanisms

This special issue of Memory is devoted to an investigation of those mechanisms by which memory is edited for inaccuracies and inconsistencies. In the past 20 years false memories have been investigated from a variety of different angles. Substantial evidence indicates that false memories can be created in a number of different situations including word learning, sentence and story memory, eyewitness memory, memory for faces, and memory for naturalistic scenes. In each of these cases, it has been found that memory is subject to a range of distortions. But there has also been an increasing recognition that this is only half the story. For although memory is subject to distortion, there are also quality control mechanisms that are utilized that allow our memories to be relied on as reasonably accurate under most circumstances. These mechanisms include recollection rejection, distinctiveness, and source memory. The focus of this special issue then, is on the interplay between those mechanisms that distort memory and those mechanisms that protect memory against distortion.