The second factor is suggestion — Page 160, Lesson 252

I want to walk you through three important factors that can distort what we recall from long-term memory — and these are especially relevant for you as a pilot, because your memory of an event may carry serious consequences in an investigation or report. Let's start with the first factor: expectation. If an experienced pilot witnesses an aviation accident, that pilot will have a much stronger expectation of what a likely set of events would be, compared to a lay observer — someone without aviation training. The key point here is that the pilot's recollection may be more biased toward his interpretation of what he observed than the non-expert's recollection of the events themselves. In other words, your professional knowledge can actually work against the accuracy of your memory, because you unconsciously fit what you saw into what you expected to see. The second factor is suggestion. Our recollection of events gets modified by the circumstances of suggestion and recall — meaning the way we are asked about an event can change what we remember. The excerpt gives a clear example: two observers witness the same event. One is asked to estimate a vehicle's speed as it 'came' around the bend. The other is asked to estimate the speed as it 'screeched' around the corner. The first witness will invariably give a lower figure than the second. Why? Because the word 'screeched' suggests speed and urgency, and subconsciously the responder may give a reply that he thinks the questioner wants. So the wording of the question itself plants a suggestion that alters the memory. Suggestion can also be inferred — not just from direct wording, but from context. The excerpt describes an experiment from 1981. Some undergraduates were asked to wait for several minutes in a small cluttered office belonging to a graduate student. When later asked to recall everything that was in the office, most students mistakenly 'remembered' that books were present, even though there were none. The cluttered academic setting suggested books should be there, so their memory filled in the detail. The third factor is repetition. Imagine a person telling friends about a very amusing episode he experienced. Over the years, as he repeats the story, he may add small embellishments to make it even more amusing. Eventually, the narrator will be unable to distinguish between what were the exact facts of what took place and the embellishments he added. The memory gets overwritten by the repeated retelling. So to summarise: expectation, suggestion, and repetition are three distinct ways our long-term memory recall can become unreliable. As a pilot, you need to be aware that your own expertise can bias your recollection, that the way questions are phrased can shape what you remember, and that simply telling a story multiple times can blur the line between fact and fiction.