Paper Reading #18 - Jogging Over a Distance Between Europe and Australia

Comments:

Reference:
Jogging Over a Distance Between Europe and Australia
Florian Mueller, Frank Vetere, Martin R. Gibbs, Darren Edge, Stefan Agamanolis, Jennifer G. Sheridan
UIST '10

Summary:

"Jogging over a Distance" is a system that seeks to allow people who consider jogging a social activity to communicate while jogging, even when not in the same location.  Two joggers agree to job at a certain time and equip a headset and heart rate monitor.  A mini computer and mobile phone are contained in a small waist pouch.  They set a target heart rate, which acts as the basis to determine how the joggers locations are related to each other in virtual space.  When they are both at their target heart rate, the audio they receive makes it sound like they are right next to each other.  Should one joggers heart rate rise while the other remains steady, it will sound like the first jogger is pulling away.  As the focus is on social jogging, the actual pace and distance covered by the joggers was unimportant to the study.

Based on data recorded from jobbers in Austrelia, Germany, and the United Kingdom, the researchers determined that Jogging over a Distance can facilitate a social jogging experience.  Participants enjoyed that they could jog as fast or slow as they wished and still be able to communicate with their jogging partner.  They also reported that the sense of jogging with another person made them push themselves farther than if they were on a solo run.  Having the system tied to the exertion of the joggers made it seem more real.  In the future, the researchers will examine if any other exertion interactions could reveal more possibilities for the design.

Discussion:

While I don't find this particularly interesting on a personal level, on an intilectual level I can see possibilities for other applications.  First, there is the old truth that having a workout buddy helps prevent becoming lazy.  But what if this system were tied into a virtual reality setting, where you could hop on a treadmill and run with your friend through just about any place you could think of?  Could this be used by the armed services to get a better idea of what's going on in the field (based on the exertion link, I don't expect a squad to go jogging through the middle of a battlefield).  It will be intersting to see what this technology produces.

Book Reading #42 - Coming of Age in Samoa

Reference:
Coming of Age in Samoa
Margaret Mead
1928 Harper-Perennial

Summary:
Modern Samoa is much more preserved than other cultures in Polynesia.  In many respects life continues as it has for centuries.  There are few obvious marks of western influence, as the natives still use many traditional tools and live in traditional shelters.  However, some western technology had changed parts of Samoan life (such as the cessation of building large boats, since a Navy vessel can transport people).  Western culture has influinced Samoan culture in some ways, and modern Samoan society is much more forgiving than in ages past.

Discussion:
I'm somewhat surprised at how much of the Samoan culture has survived over the years.  I figured that at least the architecture would change, but I guess that when living in the tropics, an open house is preferable to an enclosed one (especially without air conditioning).

Book Reading #41 - Why We Make Mistakes

Reference:
Why We Make Mistakes
Joseph T. Hallinan
2009 Broadway Books

Chapter 2

Summary:

Our memory is much better at recalling meaningful information over arbitrary data.  This is why you can instantly recognize someone but still be unable to remember their name.  We tend to track important things that describe a person (like occupation, birthplace, etc.) over their label.  If we employ mnemonic devices, or assign meaningful traits to arbitrary data, we are much more likely to remember it.

Discussion:

I have always been terrible with names.  I might be able to tell you everything about someone but not be able to remember their name to save my life.  As this has been my experience in life, I completely agree with and accept this chapter.

Chapter 3

Summary:

Even if we are not aware of it, our brains are always working in the background.  It is able to determine things that we are not aware of on a conscience level and make snap decisions without any analytic thought.  It can also be easily tricked, like when an expensive wine is served from a cheap bottle.  It also causes us to err in favor of inaction rather than action.

Discussion:

I've hard most of this before, but it is good to review every once in awhile.  It is so easy to fall into the trap of first impressions, so I always try to gather as much accurate data about a person/situation before I make any conclusions.

Ethnography Results - Week 7

An interesting thing is happening to me.  I've spent much of my time on reddit browsing /r/politics over the past several weeks, but as more time passes I feel less and less inclined to visit the subreddit.  I assume it is a result of my personal political views being very different than the majority of redditors, and so I feel like I'll just have to wade through story after story that I fin inaccurate.  I decided to take some time to check out the recent postings of a redditor I mentioned back at the beginning of this ethnography.  At the time, most of his postings were in /r/politics and his opinions were similar to my own.  What I saw in his recent posting trends was that his /r/politics postings began to drop off about three weeks ago, and two weeks ago they became infrequent.  It now seems that he spends most of his time in other subreddits.  I don't know exactly what triggered this shift, but I'm going to guess that his reasons for less frequent visits are similar to my own (especially since one of his postings in the weeks leading up to the switch mentioned how he felt like giving up on /r/politics).

Paper Reading #17 - UIMarks: Quick Graphical Interaction with Specific Targets

Comments:


Reference:
UIMarks: Quick Graphical Interaction with Specific Targets
Olivier Chapuis, Nicolas Roussel
UIST 2010

Summary:

UIMarks is a system that allows users to set targets and associated actions on a screen by using a graphical marking language.  It aims to supplement the current pointing system instead of replacing it.  This system uses marks, uniquely identafiable objects that are placed on the screen in an (x,y) location and are charicterized by their creator, their target, and their lifetime.  Each mark has a primary action that is triggered when the mark is activated, but it can also have preceding and following actions.  The configuration of a mark can be complicated as it involves both keyboard and mouse manipulation. 

Twelve participants were used to test UIMarks.  As expected, the size and distance of the targets affected the interaction speed of both UIMarks (UIM) and the standard pointing system (STD).  In almost all categories, UIM performed better than the STD pointer in terms of speed, with an even greater advantage when small targets were used.  It performed worse than STD in situations where it was being used like a normal pointer system and not taking advantage of its capabilities.  This study was entirely focused on effeciency of the system, so other criteria like learnability or memorability were not considered. 

Discussion:

While I see this technology being useful at a later date, at this point it is more or less in an experimental stage.  The paper is written in a very technical form, so it was hard to get excited about UIMarks.  As learnability and memorability are not really being considered at this point, I have to wonder if this system will eventually be intuitive or just prove to be another confusing layer of abstraction.  Time will tell, but I do hope they get it right.

Book Reading #40 - Coming of Age in Samoa

Reference:
Coming of Age in Samoa
Margaret Mead
1928 Harper Perennial

Summary:
Mead recaps the problems facing Western youth (primarily female) in her time.  She cites the heterogeneous culture of the West as the primary reason for these problems.  In addition, she mentions how the primary form of discipline that parents held over their daughter, namely money, was shattered the moment the daughter was capable of getting a paying job.

Discussion:
I think that perhaps Mead got too technical with her differentiations between a homogeneous and heterogeneous society.  Where she talks of the choices that can be made in a heterogeneous society, I would simply call it liberty or freedom.  Still, I can't deny that a blend of cultures will expose people to new ideas.  There are a couple of things I take issue with though.  Mead says that parents shouldn't champion one ideology over another to their children.  In this case, parents are more or less reduced to unfortunate necessities in their child's life, simply someone to live with.  If and when I have children, I certainly want them to have similar values to me.  I'm not going to love them any less if they come in one day saying they've converted to greek mythology, but I'm going to let them know that I'm not terribly thrilled over thier decision.  The second thing I take issue with is how Mead states that ethics and morality are subjective from group to group, and as a result no group should judge another groups morality.  While this is true in many cases, I refuse to believe that I have no more moral clout that, for example, the Lord's Resistance Army of the Sudan.

Book Reading #39 - Why We Make Mistakes

Reference:
Why We Make Mistakes
Joseph T. Hallinan
2009 Broadway

                                                                             Chapter 0

Summary:
People make mistakes all the time, and there isn't much we can do about it.  We make mistakes based on our biases, the way we perceive the world, and our own lack of awareness.  There are ways to avoid making mistakes, but they require more insight into what we do.

Discussion:
This is mostly stuff that's been covered in previous readings, though there are more numerical values than some of the material we've seen (e.g. the % of people who had forgotten passwords after three months).  It is, however, nice to know that aenesthesiologists are much better than they were when I was but a lad.

                                                                            Chapter 1

Summary:
This chapter examines visual mistakes.  We only really see around 2% of our field of vision clearly, and the rest is peripheral.  Men tend to notice different things than women, and lefties are more likely to remember different object orientations than right-handed people.  We all tend to think that we see everything it great detail, but fail to notice glaring changes in people and scenery right under our noses.  Finally, if we continuallty fail to spot something in a scene, we are more likely to miss it when it is indeed present.

Discussion:

This chapter should be unsurprising to anyone who has seen the "dancing bear" or "color changing scenery" videos online, where viewers often miss outlandish events occuring on camera because they've been told to focus somewhere else.  I suspect this is where most of the "they came out of nowhere" car accidents stem from.  I must admit that I found the section detailing how we are "programmed to fail" particularly disturbing.  I certainly don't want medical screeners missing vital information on a scan or x-ray.

Obedience to Authority - Full Blog

Book Reading #38 - Coming of Age in Samoa

Book Reading #37 - Obedience to Authority

Ethnography Results - Week 6

Well, more of the same coming from /r/politics this week.  Many stories were posted with editorialized headlines that either twisted the article or asserted unproven or outright false claims as truth.  Withing the comments, I noticed many redditors calling out people for using 'true Scotsman' and other fallicies. 

As a way of gathering quantitative data this week, I tracked the front page of Reddit and recorded which categories the top 25 postings came from.  After gathering 3 seperate sets of data (75 postings), here are the results:

• /r/pics - 14
• /r/gaming - 12
• /r/politics - 10
• /r/videos - 8
• /r/funny - 7
• /r/IAmA - 6
• /r/reddit.com - 5
• /r/todayilearned - 5
• /r/worldnews - 4
• /r/AskReddit - 4

I would tend to divide these ten categories into two groups: thoughtful/serious (containing politics, IAmA, todayilearned, worldnews, and AskReddit) and leisure (pics, gaming, videos, reddit.com, and funny).  With this division, there are 29 postings (~39%) in the thoughtful/serious group and 46 (~61%) in the leisure group.  I plan to gather more sample data in the remaining weeks of this project to obtain a more accurate distribution of categories.

Book Reading #36 - Coming of Age in Samoa

Reference:
Coming of Age in Samoa
Margaret Mead
1928 Harper Perennial

Summary:
As Samoans enter adulthood, they have to lose their carefree attitude in order to function with the rest of the villiage.  When two people from different villiages marry, they must live in one villiage or the other.  Little changes for the woman if she is the one to move, but the man in the relationship is removed from the group he's worked and grown with his entire life.  He finds it difficult to ever completely fit in with the working group of a new villiage, which in turn leads him to become more focused.  Women look forward to their first child, while men look forward to their first title.  As they age, a woman gains more power over the intimate family unit, while the man gains more power in the political workings of the villiage.
Discussion:
I find it a bit curious that the men that move to the villiage of their wife have so much trouble fitting in with the new Aumaga.  I wonder if it is all due to resistance from the Aumaga to fully accept an outsider into their ranks, or if it also involves a part of the man that refuses to fully accept assimilating into an alien group.

Book Reading #35 - Obedience to Authority

Reference:
Obedience to Authority
Stanley Milgram
1974 Harper Perennial

Summary:
Ch. 1 - Milgram states his intention of studying the effect that authority has on obedience.
Ch. 2 - The obedience experiment is described.  It hindges on a subject administering a series of electrical shocks that become more powerful with each application.   These are administered when an incorrect answer is given.
Ch. 3 - Groups of phychiatrists, college students, and middle-class adults are surveyed to determine where they think the breakoff would occur in the experiment.  In other words, they estimated at what point a subject would disobey the experimentor.
Ch. 4 - While experimenting, Milgram discovers that the closer in proximity the subject is with the "victim," the easier it is to defy the experimentor.
Ch. 5 - A series of descriptions about several test subjects, as well as quotes and results from their particular experiments.
Ch. 6 - A number of variations of the experiment are run, including changing actors, having the subject choose the shock level, changing locations, and testing female subjects instead of male ones.
Ch. 7 - More subject analysis, basically an extension of ch. 5 with the new experiment parameters.
Ch. 8 - More variations of the experiments are tested, all geared toward trying out the possible combinations of instructor and victim.

Discussion:
Though I know about Milgram's experiment through Opening Skinner's Box, I did enjoy reading it in further detail.  It's one thing to read a statistic, but another entirely to actually read about individual subjects and see the raw data.  I wonder to what extent the tendency to obey authority can be used (or misused) in CHI.  Will the cars of tomorrow say to us "You have no option but to turn right."  Certainly interesting to think about, but potentially disturbing. 

P.S.  That was not 80 pages.

Opening Skinner's Box - Full Blog

Reference:
Opening Skinner's Box
Lauren Slater
2004 W. W. Norton & Company

Summary:

Opening Skinner's box is a book in which the author, Lauren Slater, reviews and discusses many of the most important psychological experiments throughout the history of the field.  She starts with the namesake of the book, B. F. Skinner, and his experiments with conditioning behavior via positive reinforcement.  She then examines the experiments of Stanley Milgram, which used controversial methods to examine the types of behavior that the presence of an authority figure can enforce.  Next she looks to David Rosenhan, who along with several volunteers made up psychological distresses in order to commit themselves to various mental institutions. They then reverted to their normal behavior and observed how long it took for them to convince the staff that they were not insane.  Slater next examines the work of John Darley and Bibb Latane, which documented the famous Kitty Genovese murder in which over thirty witnesses did nothing to help the victim.  After a chapter covering the concept of cognitive dissonance, Slater covers Harry Harlowe and his experiments that replaced the mothers of baby chimps with a artificially constructed surrogate "mother."  Next on the list is Bruce Alexander and his observations concerning how rats in a Utopian environment were far less likely to drink opiate laced water than rats in a depressing environment.  Slater then reviews the thought experiments of Elizabeth Loftus, who found that it was possible to create a false, though detailed, memory through the right suggestions. 
Next comes the research behind mapping the brain, and what causes memories to be formed or forgotten.  Finally, Slater covers the history and contemporary use of lobotomies to relieve psychological distress.

Discussion:
This book was both interesting and disturbing for a variety of reasons.  While I enjoy learning new things about people and the way that we think, this book also brought some unpleasant truths about human nature to light.  While I found the historic studies valuable, I often found myself at odds with Slater's take on things, and at times I could not have disagreed with her more.  Still, I was glad to have a dissenting voice to make me analyze and think over my own views a second time.  For me, in the final analysis, I care far more about an individual's behavior than I do about their motives.  Sometimes the best intentions cause the worst outcomes, and vice versa.  In my opinion, it's the result that matters most.

Paper Reading #15 - Enhanced Area Cursors: Reducing Fine Pointing Demands for People with Motor Impairments

Comments:


Reference:
Enhanced Area Cursors: Reducing Fine Pointing Demands for People with Motor Impairments
Leah Findlater, Alex Jansen, Kristen Shinohara, Morgan Dixon, Peter Kamb, Joshua Rakita, Jacob O. Wobbrock
UIST '10

Summary:
This paper explores ways to improve mouse-based interfaces for individuals with motor imparements.  The researchers developed four enhanced area cursors, two of which use magnification while the others use goal crossing.  The two crossing methods used are click-and-cross and cross-and-cross.  The click-and-cross cursor works as follows.  The user moves a cursor with a circular area over the desired target, then clicks to activate the area trigger.  The cross-and-cross method employs a point cursor inside of an area cursor.  A "trigger arc" is used on the area cursor, and it always follows the point cursor opposite the direction of movement.  When the user wishes to activate the cross-and-cross cursor, they reverse movement direction and cross the trigger arc, activating the area cursor.  For both methods, when the area cursor is activated the targets within are assigned to various crossing arcs.  The user selects a target by crossing the appropriate arc and stopping the mouse for at least 300ms.

The two magnification-based cursors are the motor-magnifier and the visual-motor-magnifier.  For both cursors, the user moves and area cursor over the target area and clicks once to enter the selection phase.  The motor-magnifier decreases the mouse gain, effectively magnifying the motor space, though there are no changes to the visual representation of the targets.  The visual-motor-magnifier works in the opposite way by increasing the targets covered by the area cursor without changing the mouse gain. 

For the experiment, 24 participants were used (half of whom had motor impairments).  All participants were regular computer users.  Participants were exposed to the four cursors described above, with the addition of a  point cursor and a bubble cursor.  They had to operate in environments where targets were 4, 8, or 16 pixels wide.  In addition, they had to navigate environments with no, half-target width, or full target width spacing.  Target clutter was also varied, with 250 and 1000 distracters to see performance in sparse vs. cluttered areas.

Most area cursors did not degrade with decreasing target size, with VMM, CLC, and bubble performing the best for small targets.  In addition, most enhanced area cursors performed well with decreased spacing.  Crossing cursors did not perform well with cluttored spaces.  CLC, VMM, and bubble cursors all had fewer submovements than their competitors, and submovement reduction proved to be greatest with the smallest target size.  Seven of the impared participants preferred the VMM cursor, while the CRC and CLC cursors had 3 and 2 supporters respectively.  The point cursor was the least preferred (9 of 12), while MM, CRC, and CLC received one response each.  The able bodied participants all performed better with the point and bubble cursors, and no data indicated if any of the enhanced area cursors improved accuracy.

Discussion:

I have seen research before that dealt with mouse cursors, but this is the first I've seen to specifically focus on motor-impared users.  That being said, while reading this paper I kept thinking that while the described cursors did not sound appealing to me, they would sound fantastic to someone with limited movement.  It was interesting to see multiple solutions to this problem, and it makes me wonder what other methods are being researched.  A computer is a powerful tool, and I like that work is being done to make them more accessible to all members of the public.

Ethnography Results, Week 5

Nothing much to say about /r/politics that I haven't said before, so I'll instead discuss more general trends.  I have found that in the less serious subreddits (i.e. /r/pictures, /r/funny, etc.) that it is not uncommon for a successful post to have many copycat posts that follow shortly after.  These usually involve altering something from the original post (adding words/photoshopping images) or posting some kind of rebuttal (i.e. "No, this is the best _________").  People who dislike this trend complain that the copycats are simply looking for easy karma, which may indeed be the case.

I also paid closer attention to /r/ama (ask me anything) and what it can be used for.  In most cases, it is truely used as a teaching/explination device, as in the case of a California congressman and a terminal cancer patient.  Sometimes it seems it's someone looking for the spotlight or someone who just wants to let people know more about them (such as a user claiming they were Ken Jennings of Jeopardy fame).

Paper Reading #14 - Chronicle: Capture, Exploration, and Playback of Document Workflow Histories

Comments:
//comment 1
//comment 2

Reference:
Chronicle: Capture, Exploration, and Playback of Document Workflow Histories
Tovi Grossman, Justin Matejka, George Fitzmaurice
UIST '10

Summary:
Chronicle is a system designed to provide a revision history for documents.  In this way, the user will be able to keep the information that is lost during document editing, whether it be deleted data or the sequence of commands necissary to accomplish a certain task.  This wil aid people who decide that they are unhappy with a change they made, or people who wish to learn a complex sequence from a more skilled peer.

The display shows a list of before and after thumbnails called chronicles.  Each chronicle represents a revision and contains workflow information.  One of the main tools that Chronicle offers is a variety of probes that can be used to observe changes in a specific area.  These include data, ui, and selection probes.  A number of filters are used to select specific times, layers, users, tools and workflows.  The timeline feature allows the user to see and control playback of previous work done on a document.  It also indicates key events to improve the ease of browsing.  It too has seperate controls for tools, colors, layers, users, notes, and activities.

Eith participants were used in the evaluation of Chronicle.  After a brief demo, the participants were given a document with 2 hours of time loaded and were told to complete certain tasks.  These tasks took an average of ten minutes to complete.  The participants were extremely impressed with Chronicle, rating only 3 subtools under a 6 on a scale of 1 to 7.

Discussion:
I must admit, I was less than excited when I first read the title of this paper.  After the first paragraph, however, I was reading with wide-eyed engrossment.  This is an incredible tool that can be applied to things like photo, video, and text documents.  Considering that it took novice users only ten minutes able to complete fairly complex tasks on a two hour recorded document, it can be said that this is a very intuitive system.  I am excited about chronicle, and look forward to using it sometime in the (hopefully not too distant) future.

Book Reading #34 - Opening Skinner's Box

Reference:
Opening Skinner's Box
Lauren Slater
2004 W. W. Norton & Company

Summary:
Phychosurgeries, such as lobotomies, have been performed since the 1930s.  They are done to relieve debilitating psychological illnesses, and typically 70% of the recipients show a moderate to significant improvement.  Modern techniques are much more sophisticated than those employed during the field's infancy.  Doctors are now able to target specific areas with pinoint precision instead of blindly probing an open skull.  Some criticisms of psychosurgeries note that while patients can show beneficial results, they tend to be less vibrant, less animated than they were prior.  They seem to lose the "vital spark" that makes them unique. 
Discussion:
Well, this is a tough issue and no mistake.  Surgeries are done all the time to remove damaged tissue, but destroying healthy tissue (especially tissue as important as the brain) should at least give people pause.  As a general rule, I believe the brain is something that shouldn't be tampered with, as the information it contains defines us.  However, without the proper experience it is impossible to fully empathize with the pain of another person, so I recognize that there can be merit to psychosurgery.  I just pray that I am never put to that test.

Book Reading #33 - Coming of Age in Samoa

Reference:
Coming of Age in Samoa
Margaret Mead
1928 Harper Perennial

Summary:
Samoan society has little tolerance for drawn out conflict or social deviancy.  Most conflicts are minor, and are patched up shortly after they arise.  In cases of lasting strife, however, one of the involved parties usually leaves the village.  Of the deviants that Mead observed, she found that they could be separated into two seperate categories.  Girls in the first group would become isolated because of their personality/situation, and would devote themselves to some other calling, like the church.  The second group consisted of girls who could be described as delinquents.  They would be combative, dishonest and even violent.  Mead also observed a deviant who fell into neither category, a girl who was so incompetant that she was held in contempt rather than antagonism.
Discussion:
This chapter brings to mind the whole nature vs nurture theory of personality development.  How similar would these deviant girls be if they had been raised in a different environment?  Would there be much difference at all?  In addition, I find it fascinating how the samoan philosophy tends to center around "do what's expected or else."  There is little tolerance for non-conformity, so it seems that little help is offered to people who have genuine problems. 

Paper Reading #13 - D-Macs: Building Multi-Device User Interfaces by Demonstrating, Sharing, and Replaying Design Actions

Comments:



Reference:
D-Macs: Building Multi-Device User Interfaces by Demonstrating, Sharing, and Replaying Design Actions
Jan Meskens, Kris Luyten, Karin Coninx

Summary:
Coming Soon

Discussion:
Coming Soon

Book Reading #32 - Opening Skinner's Box

Reference:
Opening Skinner's Box
Lauren Slater
2004 W. W. Norton & Company

Summary:
A botched epilepsy treatment uncovers the basis for forming memories, dispelling the previous notion that memory was not stored in any one area of the brain.  This information ignites new research into memory, and the research shows that memories are carved into our brains through shifting neural networks.  Further study unveils the chemical compunds that can cause or prevent the formation of memories.
Discussion:
Memory is one of the most important aspects of humanity.  Memory makes advancement possible, as each new generation doesn't need to reinvent the discoveries of the last.  Perhaps most interesting, however, is that it appears the ability to forget is what gives us our humanity.  The patient referred to as S. had perfect recall, yet lacked a basis for putting everything into context.  I wonder what kinds of research is being done in AI with neural networks, and how much capacity such a machine could have to forget.

Book Reading #31 - Coming of Age in Samoa

Reference:
Coming of Age in Samoa
Margaret Mead
1928 Harper Perennial

Summary:
Samoan children live relatively unsheltered lives.  Practically no care is taken to shielded them from gore and sexuality.  As they age, sexuality takes an a role of increasing importance in their lives.  In general, the only times when sexual contact is frowned upon is when it occurs in public. Homosexual experiences are not uncommon, and are only of notw when someone is incapable of feeling attraction to the opposite sex.  In addition fidelity is consiered to be a short-lived stage, typically lasting only days or weeks.
Discussion:
Interesting chapter, as I thought that a smaller society woudl have more restrictions in place than a bit one.  Then again, when everyone knows each other and knows the rules, it seems that enforcement of laws and customs is a simple thing.

Book Reading #30 - Emotional Design

Reference:
Emotional Design
Donald A. Norman
2004 Basic Books

Summary:
There are three seperate levels of design: visceral, behavioral, and reflective.  Visceral design is based on appealing to the target user's senses.  Behavioral design champions usability above all.  Reflective design is geared toward getting its meaning across to the user. 
Discussion:
All three levels of design should be utilized correctly to appeal to the correct audience.  When designing a product for expert users, behavioral design should take precedence.  If trying to gain a wider audience, visceral and reflective design should take a higher role.

Book Reading #29 - Opening Skinner's Box

Reference:
Opening Skinner's Box
Lauren Slater
2004 W. W. Norton & Company

Summary:
Elizabeth Loftus tests the accuracy of memory.  She finds that, with a minimal amount of suggestion, it is possible to create vivid, detailed, and entirely false memories in a person.  She was able to 'implant' false memories of being lost in a shopping mall as a child in approximately 25% of research participants.

Discussion:
Nothing I haven't heard before, but still a very interesting subject.  I have often been told that I have a good memory, but I still often question my recollection of events.  In the past few years, I've had multiple occasions where someone would tell a story and I would find my recollection to be different.  I don't know how many cases were a result of embellishment or purposeful alteration of the story, but in more that a few cases the storyteller really believed that events happened the way they describes.  I usually am able to corrobarate my recollection with others, so assuming I wasn't influencing their memories at all, it would seem that I have a better than average memory.  On the other hand, I'm a lousy storyteller, hate exaggerating, and will typically admit if I'm not 100% sure of something.  This makes me wonder if people who are better storytellers are more apt to remembering something incorrectly.
P.S. I have my own "lost in the mall" story.  When I was young, my family went to some kind of fair.  One of the attractions was a large group of hot air balloons.  Apparently at some point my parents were watching them, and I wandered off.  Fortunately, they found me before too long.  Now, I know that this happened and I've seen pictures of the event.  Despite this, I have absolutely no recollection of such an event happening.  I guess I'm part of the 75%.