How reliable are these recollections by Samuel D. Green?

[_Chap]

Joe, thankyou. Your insights and information are really helpful.

Connell wrote back to me and said that usually this would be correct, but he also pointed out that many late recollections can be very useful and then listed reasons why. If people what to know his reasons, let me know and I will list them.

I'd be very interested in his reasons.

I know that my mother, now 82, remembers things far better from her youth than she does with regard to what happened yesterday... A weird phenomenon! Not only does she remember events, particularly during the war, but she remembers the emotions that went with them... I would think that Joseph, and Jacob Cochran were memorable characters. There are some people who are so charismatic/different that they attract attention and an emotional response and as such I would think would be remembered.
(just my own garbled thoughts)

You have to be very careful here. To be precise, your mother feels much more at ease telling stories about the remoter past than she does about giving accounts of what happened recently. That much is clear.

That does NOT however mean that her stories about WWII are some kind of photographic record of what happened then. It simply means that she has practiced narrating her stories many times over the last 60 or so years, and so has no problem repeating them. If you heard recordings of her telling these stories 60, 50, 40, 30 and 20 years ago, you might well find that they had changed in important respects - although she has no memory of having done this consciously.

[_Cicero]

You have to be very careful here. To be precise, your mother feels much more at ease telling stories about the remoter past than she does about giving accounts of what happened recently. That much is clear.

That does NOT however mean that her stories about WWII are some kind of photographic record of what happened then. It simply means that she has practiced narrating her stories many times over the last 60 or so years, and so has no problem repeating them. If you heard recordings of her telling these stories 60, 50, 40, 30 and 20 years ago, you might well find that they had changed in important respects - although she has no memory of having done this consciously.

Right, which is why a contemporary source is always better than a recollection/memoir written years after the event took place. For examples in Church history, one only needs to look at the evolution of the First Vision and priesthood restoration stories as examples. Another example is the Brigham Young "transfiguration into Joseph Smith" story (for which no contemporary sources exist).

[_Mary]

Cicero, yeah, that makes sense. Good point.

Chap, just found this at the BPS.....Interesting.....

http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.co. ... about.html

1) Is a person's confidence in their memories a good predictor of the accuracy of those memories?
2) Is it true that eye witness testimony reflects not just what a witness originally saw and heard, but also other information obtained later on from the police, other witnesses etc?
3) Is a witness's ability to recall minor details about a crime an indication of the accuracy of their identification of the perpetrator?
4) Does intense stress at the time of an event impair the accuracy of the memory of that event?
5) Can their attitudes and expectations affect a person's memory of an event?
6) Does the presence of a weapon tend to impair a witness's memory for a perpetrator's face?
7) Does most forgetting tend to occur soon after an event?
8) Do children have better memories for events than adults?
9) How far back into their childhood can most people remember?
10) Are traumatic memories from childhood that are "recovered" in therapy (having never before been recalled) likely to be false?
11) Are dramatic events more or less likely to be forgotten?
12) Is it possible for a perpetrator to have forgotten their criminal act because they've suppressed that specific memory?

Here are the answers: 1) No, 2) Yes, 3) No, 4) Yes, 5) Yes, 6) Yes, 7) Yes, 8) No, worse, 9) to the age of three to four years 10) Yes, 11) Less, 12) No

What interested me from the study was that dramatic events are less likely to be be forgotten. To me, from what Cicero wrote, that would make the mixed memories of the Book of Mormon Witnesses more problematic. (Can't get any more dramatic than a vision etc)