Copyright 2020, InterAmerica, Inc.
The 1980 Rendlesham incident(s) continue to bother
me. Something odd happened nearby the English military establishments, that
seems certain. But what exactly?
Like Roswell and other select UFO, flying saucer-related,
events or accounts, the initial stories begin with an assortment of details and
then, over time, escalate to full-blown, fantastic tales. How and why does this
happen?
(I’ve outlined, many times, the Smiley-Blanton Syndrome whereby a person
intermingles two or more matters, often only slightly related or not related at
all, creating a new scenario or creation. But I’m not writing about that here.)
I’m probing the idea that persons experience something odd
or create a fiction (lie) that eventually evolves (or grows) into an event of a
totally different kind: a new, bastardization of the initial, reported episode,
whether real or contrived.
For example, the Rendlesham military men who, on patrol to
determine the reality of weird lights in Rendlesham Woods, ended up seeing
those strange lights and eventually, years later, claiming a craft with strange
[hieroglyphic-like lettering] inscription on it and one member of the
reconnaissance crew being presented mentally [telepathically?] with a series of
binary code.
Did the current (and subsequent) information making up the
context of the Rendlesham event(s)
today come about from updated memory (always questionable) or by way of
‘The Illusory Truth Effect”?
“fMRI Evidence for the Role of Recollection in Suppressing
Misattribution Errors: The Illusory Truth Effect
Jason
P. Mitchell1,2, Chad S.
Dodson3, and Daniel L.
Schacter1
Abstract & Misattribution refers to the act of attributing a memory or idea
to an incorrect source, such as successfully remembering a bit of information
but linking it to an inappropriate person or time [Jacoby, L. L., Kelley, C.,
Brown, J., & Jasechko, J. (1989).
Becoming famous overnight: Limits on the
ability to avoid unconscious influences of the past. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 56, 326–338; Schacter, D. L. (1999). The seven sins of
memory: Insights from psychology and cognitive neuroscience. American
Psychologist, 54, 182–203; Schacter, D. L. (2001). The seven sins of memory:
How the mind forgets and remembers. Boston: Houghton Mifflin]. Cognitive
studies have suggested that misattribution errors may
occur in the absence of recollection for the details of an initial encounter
with a stimulus, but little is known about the neural basis of this memory phenomenon. Here we used
functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the hypothesized role
of recollection in counteracting the illusory truth effect, a misattribution
error whereby perceivers systematically overrate the truth of previously
presented information. Imaging was conducted during the encoding and subsequent
judgment of unfamiliar statements that were presented as true or false.
Event-related fMRI analyses were
conditionalized as a function of subsequent performance. Results demonstrated
that encoding activation in regions previously associated with successful
recollection—including the hippocampus and the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (PFC)—correlated with the
successful avoidance f misattribution
errors, providing initial neuroimaging support for earlier cognitive accounts
of misattribution.
In the current research, we extend the scope
of these earlier investigations to another form of memory failure, that of
misattribution. Misattribution refers to situations in which one erroneously attributes a memory
or idea to an incorrect source, such as successfully remembering a bit of
information but linking it to an inappropriate person, time, or place (Schacter, 1999, 2001;
Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993; Jacoby et al., 1989).” [From a
Google search]
The above excerpt from the larger monograph
may explain the psychological mechanism by which Rendlesham ended up more
complex and sci-fi like than it started out in 1980.
Then there is this that may apply to Rendlesham and very
likely applies to Roswell and also the George Adamski (and other contactee)
tales and some (many) early UFO encounters:
“What does it mean if you believe your own lies?
Pathological lying is broadly defined as telling compulsive,
elaborate lies. ... Believing (or seeming to believe) their own lies – some
experts believe that because people who pathologically lie do so with great
ease and frequency, they may not always remember what is real, and what they've
made up.
What is it called when you convince yourself something is
true?
Self-deception involves convincing oneself of a truth (or
lack of truth) so that one does not reveal any self-knowledge of the
deception.” [Ibid]
What I’m suggesting is that there are psychological or
sociological behaviors that can explain the creation or development of UFO
accounts that stem from a queer occurrence and evolve (develop) into the
stories that have become the UFO lore we have today.
Preston Dennett, a popular ufologist, subscribes to UFO
abduction stories as if they’re true in toto. (He has a book about such
alleged happenings.)
Many UFO enthusiasts succumb to tales that are fictive in
almost every way imaginable, not knowing or ignoring how the mind works causing
UFO reportage that is fallacious or noteworthy for their imaginative flavor.
Niek Redfern recently posted (on Facebook) a few book covers
of early UFO sightings, particularly amenable to the Illusory Truth Effect
or, sadly, something more devious (sociopathic).
Many UFOers don’t care about truth or facts. They are
consumed by their belief systems, as the Illusory Truth Effect explains.
RR
