Have you ever remembered something that happened to you, only to find out it didn’t really happen to you? And even though you realize it didn’t happen to you, can you still ‘remember’ specific details about the event?

Alan Scoboria says you’re not alone. A professor in the University of Windsor’s Psychology department, he says more people than you might think report having what are known as “non-believed memories,” and he’s received a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council to better understand how and why they occur.

According to a paper he co-authored in 2010 and published in Psychological Science, the academic journal of the Association for Psychological Science, almost 350 students out of a sample of 1,386 who were asked indicated that they had a non-believed memory.

“Nobody had really ever just asked people if they had a non-believed memory,” said Dr. Scoboria. “We thought they were pretty rare, but 20 per cent, or about one in five, said they have had one.”

A classic example of a non-believed memory comes from the prominent developmental theorist Jean Piaget. For much of his life he had a detailed memory of a man attempting to kidnap him as a child while he was out with his nurse, only to find out 13 years later the nurse had fabricated the entire story. He stopped believing the incident happened, yet he was unable to stop remembering it as if it had occurred.

“It’s actually very easy to get people to believe things that never happened,” said Scoboria, who added studies show there are even some people who continue believing in a memory of something that happened to them even when faced with indisputable evidence to the contrary. “Once we believe something, we tend to keep believing it.”

Scoboria said his NSERC grant, which will provide him with $135,000 in funding over the next five years, will allow him to hire and train graduate students and research assistants to help with a project on understanding the mechanisms that lead people to continue to have elements of memory about things that they no longer believe happened to them.

“What is it that makes the person stop believing the memory, but doesn’t eliminate the elements of the memory?” he asked. “What are the underlying cognitive processes that lead to this?”

He says the phenomenon speaks to the ability of memory to be manipulated and could have important implications, especially in the courts. He noted there were a number of high-profile cases in the 1990s in which people were accused of sexual assaults that never occurred, which were based on false memories originating from suggestive therapy practices that encouraged patients who had no memories of abuse to try to remember when they were abused.

“There are important implications for this in the legal arena,” Scoboria said. “You want people to rely on their recall and not on their belief that events happened. We don’t tend to differentiate between the two very well. So it’s really important to understand, to be able to break memory down into its different components.”

Scoboria – who was one of 30 UWindsor researchers who received a total of more than $2.9 million in NSERC funding from the agency’s last round of grants – hopes the project will lead to better questions, better experimental methods and better measurement tools to assess the experience of remembering. The research is currently ongoing.

Scoboria will appear today on Research Matters, a weekly talk show that showcases the work of University of Windsor researchers and airs every Thursday at 4:30 p.m. on CJAM 99.1 FM.

The chance to win a semester’s tuition was a huge draw to attend the Welcoming Celebration on Wednesday afternoon, says Kelsey Adams.

The social work student did win the raffle, sponsored by the University of Windsor Alumni Association, but walked out of the St. Denis Centre with more than just a cheque. She also gained inspiration and Lancer pride, courtesy of a presentation by UWindsor president Alan Wildeman on the theme “Believe in Yourself” and a special appearance by varsity athletes and mascot Winston.

“It’s surreal for me to win,” said Adams, a resident of Macdonald Hall. “I never win anything.”

Thousands of first-year students in every program filled the St. Denis Centre, singing and dancing and whipping up enthusiasm for Thursday’s start of classes.

Windsor Welcome Week continues today as classes begin in most programs. The Adrenaline Rush inflatable carnival runs 1 to 4 p.m. in front of Dillon Hall, promising freebies, fun and friendly faces.

Friday’s activities include the Taste of Sandwich eatery walking tour and an evening riverboat cruise. Saturday is Shinerama Shine Day with events from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m., including a pep rally in the residence quad leading up to the Lancer football game on Alumni Field. Visit www.windsorwelcomeweek.ca for a full list of events, locations and times.

If you prefer working outdoors and consider yourself something of an environmentalist, UWindsor’s campus now has the perfect spot for you.

A solar bench, which captures energy from the sun and converts it to electricity, was recently installed near the gardens in front of the Leddy library.

Klaus Dohring, owner of Green Sun Rising, the Windsor company that made and donated the bench, said it’s an ideal location to sit outside and work on a laptop or to charge up an electronic device.

“We hope that students, faculty and staff will embrace and use the solar bench, enjoying the seating arrangement, weather protection, LED lighting and the charge capabilities for cell phones and laptops,” he said. “It’s clean, autonomous energy for a greener world.”

Capable of seating four people, the bench’s roof has three thin-film solar panel modules that capture the sun’s energy and turn it into standard household 120-volt power, Dohring said. Its two 12-volt deep-discharge batteries can store 204 watts of direct current power, over and above what it generates during sunny conditions, so it can be used 24 hours a day. The bench also has a two-watt LED light mounted in the top to light it up at night.

“Whenever the sun is out, it’s making electricity,” he said. “But even under dim conditions, it’s still generating something.”

Dan Castellan, the university’s Manager, Facility Planning, Renovations & Construction, said he was delighted that Dohring donated the bench and that it demonstrates the university’s commitment to using more sustainable sources of energy.

“It was a really nice gesture on the part of Green Sun Rising,” he said.

Dohring said the bench was recently set up temporarily at the Balloonapalooza event downtown and it was very well received, and well used by many people who attended. The university’s bench, he said, is the first permanent installation of a bench that his company has done.

“Your students are very smart, so I’m sure they’ll figure it out very quickly,” he said. “We hope it gets good reception and usage.”

Nevin MacLeod enjoys going out with his friends, sharing some laughs and even maybe a drink or two, but says that in his experience, “the best times are the ones you remember.”

It’s a message the Student Alcohol Education Coordinator hopes to bring to as many of his peers as possible. He says the university years are formative for many young people.

“This is the first time away from home and away from the supervision of their parents,” says MacLeod. “They are developing into their own persons. We just don’t want them to make choices that can snowball into a potentially dangerous lifestyle.”

He says he has learned that alcohol has many different implications: financial, social, physical and psychological.

“The Don’t Be That Guy/Don’t Be That Girl campaign isn’t about abstinence; it’s about drinking responsibly,” he says. “We want students to keep their heads.”

A fourth-year student in the concurrent education program, MacLeod has been out through Welcome Week, staffing a booth to distribute literature and gear reminding students to moderate their behaviour. One of the tools he promotes is the e-Chug Challenge, an online self-assessment tool that provides participants with personalized feedback on their use of alcohol.

“It looks at your life and gives concrete examples of how your life could be different, like what you could do with the money you would save if you cut back on drinks,” he says. “It’s really an eye-opener.”

Students who visit his booth also have the opportunity to enter the Beats over Buzz draw, which offers ballots for a chance to win one of two pairs of Dr. Dre Beats Solo headphones.

“I noticed that a lot of students keep their headphones around their necks, so I thought offering a high-quality set of expensive headphones would attract them,” says MacLeod.

A free public reception on Friday, September 7, will celebrate the opening of visual arts student Mike Marcon’s exhibition “Inland Empires” at Artcite, the artist-run centre for contemporary art.

Marcon’s mixed-media installations explore themes related to Canadian identity. Found objects, images and sculpture act as a catalyst for the displacement of symbols and myths that continue to inform the “official” national identity.

He says he is interested in the idea of the wilderness as a privileged space: “a kind of masculine homeland within the greater framework of the nation state.”

Artcite is located in downtown Windsor, at 109 University Avenue West. Friday’s reception begins at 7:30 p.m. Marcon’s show will remain on display through October 13.

The greatest responsibility for safety in the workplace falls on the employer, but under Ontario’s Occupational Health and Safety Act, supervisors and workers share that responsibility.

The September issue of Safety in Mind, the UWindsor health and safety newsletter, outlines the concept of the Internal Responsibility System and the role of each stakeholder group in preventing injury.

Safety in Mind is distributed online but formatted for printing and posting in work areas and on bulletin boards. Read the entire newsletter on the health and safety Web site.