medium · SAT Reading & Writing

Eyewitness memory feels like a recording, faithfully replayed on demand. Research tells a different story. Each time a memory is recalled it becomes briefly malleable and must be stored again, and in that window it can absorb new information—a detail implied by a question, an image seen afterward—without the rememberer noticing any change. The very act of remembering, then, can quietly revise the memory it retrieves, so that a vivid, confident recollection is no guarantee of accuracy. Which choice best states the main idea of the text?

1. Most people feel that their eyewitness memories play back like faithful, unaltered recordings.
2. A misleading question can plant a false detail into a person's memory of an event.
3. Because recalling a memory can alter it, even a vivid and confident recollection may be inaccurate.
4. Human memory is so unreliable that eyewitness testimony has no legitimate value in a courtroom.

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