After interviewing (please note all fans of the blog: interviewing!) Ms. Price over 5 years, James McGaugh, a neuroscientist, and his team at UC Irvine concluded that she had a near perfect memory in this article first published in the journal Neurocase. An editor at the Free Press went even further, entitling her story The Woman Who Can't Forget: The Extraordinary Story of Living With the Most Remarkable Memory Known to Science.
Ms. Price does indeed have an amazing memory, but Dr. Marcus, upon examining her further, discovered that her memory isn't all-inclusive. Rather her forte is autobiographical memory. Dr. Marcus writes that the source of this autobiographic memory is rumination that appears obsessive. She didn't seek out this memory and she didn't know its source; it was an unsought consequence of her journaling and other daily habits.
OK, OK, so what does this have to do with ministerial examining?
- Examinees can mislead examiners even when they are not trying to do so.
- Interviewing is a limited tool at best even when in the hands of scientists who should know better. (Being a professional doesn't assure that you are a skilled interviewer, and even skilled interviewers can be misled or can deceive themselves.)
- Examining and assessment should be based on a multiplicity of instruments, and there should be appeal/review mechanisms because of the possibility of error.
- Interviewers are likely to be tempted, and may even consciously or unconsciously fall to the temptation, to seek information that affirms the conclusions they've already reached.
- "Ordinary" people can achieve extraordinary results with practice, practice, practice. (The thesis of Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, which is discussed elsewhere in this blog.)
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