Many common beliefs about how memory works are inaccurate. Memory is not like a video recorder that perfectly records events. People also do not have truly photographic memories or eidetic imagery. Contrary to popular belief, most forgetting occurs immediately after an event rather than gradually. Confidence in a memory is a poor indicator of its accuracy. Traumatic memories are generally not repressed and recovered later through therapy. Hypnosis does not reliably aid recall of forgotten memories. Amnesia typically only affects new memories, not long-term identity and autobiographical memories.

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Memory myths
Many of us subscribe to false beliefs about how our memories work,
sometimes with serious consequences. We debunk some common myths
By Christian Jarrett, author of The Rough Guide to Psychology
The Guardian, Saturday 14 January 2012
As a lifelong user of human memory, you probably feel you've got a good
idea of how it works, right? To test your understanding of memory, we
compare several commonplace conceptions with insights from psychology
...
Memory acts like a video recorder
In a US survey published in 2011, 63% of 1,838 respondents said they
believed "strongly" or "mostly" that memory works like a video camera,
"accurately recording events we see and hear so that we can review and
inspect them later". Memory is, in fact, a creative, fallible process, highly
prone to suggestion and other distorting influences.
Some people have photographic memories
An extension to the memory as video recorder myth is the idea that some
people have a "photographic memory"; that they can take a snap shot of a
scene or a page in a book, and then bring it to mind whenever they want to.
It's tempting to invoke such an ability to explain the achievements of
celebrated memory champions such as Lu Chao. In 2005, he set a new
world record (as recognised by the Guinness World Records) by reciting
the first 67,890 digits of pi entirely from memory. However, studies of

2. memory champions reveal that they depend on mnemonic devices and
thousands of hours of practice.
A related concept is eidetic imagery, in which a person claims to "see" a
detailed visual scene that is no longer visible. However, tests of
"eidetikers" find their memory of images to be no more accurate than
control participants. It seems they just feel as though the image is vivid and
still "out there" rather than in their heads.
Forgetting occurs gradually
Some memory misconceptions have serious consequences for the way eye-
(and ear-) witness testimony is treated in court. For example, many people,
including psychologists (according to a recent Norwegian survey), believe
that forgetting occurs gradually, as if memories decay like an ageing reel of
film. In fact, most forgetting occurs immediately after an event.
Confidence is a reliable indicator of memory accuracy
While it's true that accuracy and confidence can correlate within a single
person's repertoire of recollections, confidence is a poor marker of accuracy
when judging a single act of recollection or when comparing across
witnesses. One reason is that some factors, such as repeated questioning,
can boost confidence without increasing accuracy. Also, we all vary in our
baseline levels of memory confidence. So when judging a single witness,
we don't know if their confidence is high by their standards. In the legal
system, when convicted people are exonerated by DNA evidence, confident
testimony from an eye witness is the most common reason they were
originally found guilty.
A related myth is that emotional events lead to more ingrained, accurate
memories. Memories for dramatic events often feel more vivid and people
feel more confident in these memories, but, in fact, they are just as prone to
being forgotten as ordinary memories. Furthermore, if an event is stressful,
this is likely to interfere with remembering details of that event.

3. Traumatic memories can be repressed and "recovered" years after
they occurred
While subscribing to the erroneous idea that memories of emotive events
are highly accurate, many people also often hold the somewhat paradoxical
belief that traumatic memories, such as of abuse in childhood, are prone to
repression. A related belief is that such memories can be "recovered" later
in life, dug out with the help of a skilled therapist, or perhaps a hypnotist.
In fact, studies of child abuse victims suggest strongly that they usually do
not forget their experiences. Moreover, research has shown that memories
of abuse "recovered" in therapy are far less likely to be corroborated by
third parties, or other evidence, than abuse memories recalled later in life
outside of therapy, or never-forgotten abuse memories.
The consensus of the American Psychological Association on child abuse
memories says that "most people who were sexually abused as children
remember all or part of what happened to them, although they may not
fully understand or disclose it".
Hypnosis can be used to retrieve forgotten memories
Many people believe that hypnosis can be used to unearth not only past
traumas but all manner of long-forgotten memories, including recollections
way back to the womb or even to past lives.
In a way, it is a belief that is consistent with the "memory as a video
recorder" myth; the mistaken rationale being that because everything we
experience is stored, we just need to find a way to reach it. In fact, nearly
all the evidence suggests that hypnosis fails to aid recall, but instead has the
potentially harmful effect of increasing people's faith in their memories,
whether or not they are accurate recollections of events.
Amnesiacs forget who they are
A persistent myth is the idea that people suffering from amnesia have lost
their long-term memory, including any recollection of their identity. In fact,
amnesia caused by illness or brain damage typically manifests as an
inability to lay down new memories. Specifically what is broken is the
ability to convert short-term memories into long-term memories. An
amnesiac will usually be able to tell you who they are and share stories
about their earlier lives, but they won't be able to tell you what they had for
breakfast.