Let’s face it, people tend to remember things in different ways and this shows when you start to talk about the first date, last year’s holidays or last week’s visit at the cinema. Is reality only a point of view?
Check out: ‘But You Never Said…’ Why Couples Remember Differently
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Listen
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Glossary
- spouse – a husband or wife, considered in relation to their partner
- weight room
- bias – prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair
- reap – receive (a reward or benefit) as a consequence of one’s own or other people’s actions
- reconcile – restore friendly relations between
- reminisce – indulge in enjoyable recollection of past events
- minutiae – the small, precise, or trivial details of something
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Think about it
Answer the questions below.
- In what way did the Aulenbachers miscommunicate?
- Why do people sometimes remember the same event differently?
- What kind of things do women remember better?
- What is the “egocentric bias”?
- How does your mood influence your memory?
- What is collaborative memory?
- How do the Aulenbachers go about deciding whose memories of an event are correct?
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Practice makes perfect
Fill in the blank spaces with the correct forms and tenses of the words in brackets.
Carrie Aulenbacher remembers the conversation clearly: Her husband told her he ________ (want) to buy an arcade machine he found on eBay. He said he ________ (save) up for it as a birthday present to himself. The spouses ________ (sit) at the kitchen table and discussed where it ________ (go) in the den.
Two weeks later, Ms. Aulenbacher ________ (come) home from work and ________ (find) two arcade machines in the garage—and her husband beaming with pride.
“What are these?” she demanded.
“I told you I was picking them up today,” he replied.
She asked him why he ________ (buy) two. He said he ________ (tell) her he was getting “a package deal.” She reminded him they ________ (measure) the den for just one. He stood his ground.
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Fill in the blank spaces with the missing words. Use ONE word per blank space.
Mr. and Ms. Aulenbacher, who have been married ________ 10 years, each believe ________ own memory is more reliable. Mr. Aulenbacher, who is a security officer for ________ college, prides himself ________ having to remember every detail of a case or event at work, without ________ notes. Ms. Aulenbacher, who ________ a secretary for a real-estate firm and writes romance novels ________ the side, says she has relied ________ her memory to succeed at both occupations. “As a writer, I get caught up in the minutiae of everything that is happening because when I ________ the story later I am going to want to tell all the details,” she says.
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