Skip to main content

Memory and the Moses illusion: failures to detect contradictions with stored knowledge yield negative memorial consequences.

Publication ,  Journal Article
Bottoms, HC; Eslick, AN; Marsh, EJ
Published in: Memory (Hove, England)
August 2010

Although contradictions with stored knowledge are common in daily life, people often fail to notice them. For example, in the Moses illusion, participants fail to notice errors in questions such as "How many animals of each kind did Moses take on the Ark?" despite later showing knowledge that the Biblical reference is to Noah, not Moses. We examined whether error prevalence affected participants' ability to detect distortions in questions, and whether this in turn had memorial consequences. Many of the errors were overlooked, but participants were better able to catch them when they were more common. More generally, the failure to detect errors had negative memorial consequences, increasing the likelihood that the errors were used to answer later general knowledge questions. Methodological implications of this finding are discussed, as it suggests that typical analyses likely underestimate the size of the Moses illusion. Overall, answering distorted questions can yield errors in the knowledge base; most importantly, prior knowledge does not protect against these negative memorial consequences.

Duke Scholars

Altmetric Attention Stats
Dimensions Citation Stats

Published In

Memory (Hove, England)

DOI

EISSN

1464-0686

ISSN

0965-8211

Publication Date

August 2010

Volume

18

Issue

6

Start / End Page

670 / 678

Related Subject Headings

  • Young Adult
  • Psychomotor Performance
  • Memory
  • Male
  • Knowledge
  • Illusions
  • Humans
  • Female
  • Experimental Psychology
  • Bible
 

Citation

APA
Chicago
ICMJE
MLA
NLM
Bottoms, H. C., Eslick, A. N., & Marsh, E. J. (2010). Memory and the Moses illusion: failures to detect contradictions with stored knowledge yield negative memorial consequences. Memory (Hove, England), 18(6), 670–678. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2010.501558
Bottoms, Hayden C., Andrea N. Eslick, and Elizabeth J. Marsh. “Memory and the Moses illusion: failures to detect contradictions with stored knowledge yield negative memorial consequences.Memory (Hove, England) 18, no. 6 (August 2010): 670–78. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2010.501558.
Bottoms, Hayden C., et al. “Memory and the Moses illusion: failures to detect contradictions with stored knowledge yield negative memorial consequences.Memory (Hove, England), vol. 18, no. 6, Aug. 2010, pp. 670–78. Epmc, doi:10.1080/09658211.2010.501558.
Bottoms HC, Eslick AN, Marsh EJ. Memory and the Moses illusion: failures to detect contradictions with stored knowledge yield negative memorial consequences. Memory (Hove, England). 2010 Aug;18(6):670–678.

Published In

Memory (Hove, England)

DOI

EISSN

1464-0686

ISSN

0965-8211

Publication Date

August 2010

Volume

18

Issue

6

Start / End Page

670 / 678

Related Subject Headings

  • Young Adult
  • Psychomotor Performance
  • Memory
  • Male
  • Knowledge
  • Illusions
  • Humans
  • Female
  • Experimental Psychology
  • Bible