(HealthDayNews) -- How good is your memory?
Not the part of memory that stores the lyrics to favorite songs or reminds you when to send birthday cards. We're talking about the memories of your own life and feelings.
Here's a clue from the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
In 1962, researchers at Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago interviewed 73 mentally healthy 14-year-old boys. They asked questions about family relationships, home environment, dating, sexuality, religion, parental discipline and general activities. Then they put the files away, with a note to pull them out 34 years later.
When a new group of researchers found the participants and asked them to recall their original answers, the answers were no better than would have been expected by random chance.
The researchers' advice? Don't take personal memories as truth, just as reconstructions.
