False Memory Story

It is said that there are many different versions to a story. There is one persons story, then there is an other person’s story, and then, there is the truth. “Our memories change each time they are recalled. What we recall is only a facsimile of things gone by.” Dobrin, Arthur. "Your Memory Isn't What You Think It Is." (online magazine). Psychology Today. July 16, 2013. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/am-i-right/201307/your-memory-isnt-what-you-think-it-is. Every time a story is told, it changes. From Disney movies to books, to what we tell our friends and colleagues. Sometimes the different sides to the story challenge the

The study of creation of false memories has been a topic of interest since the 1930s when Bartlett (1932) conducted the first experiment on the topic. Though the results of this experiment were never replicated, they contributed greatly to research by distinguishing between reproductive and reconstructive memory (Bartlett 1932 as cited in Roediger & McDermott, 1995). Reproductive memory refers to accurate production of material from memory and is assumed to be associated with remembering simplified materials (e.g., lists). Reconstructive memory emphasizes the active process of filling in missing elements while remembering and is associated with materials rich in meaning (e.g., stories).

The distractions of war, misinterpretation of reality and limited control of fate as a result of the human condition appear throughout the Vietnam War at all times. Tim O’Brien, as a narrator describes the struggles of storytelling during and after the war. The constant struggle to determine reality versus personal perception arises in many aspects of his memory. Some factors of recalling events are uncontrollable such as interference of imagination and uncertainty as a result of the human condition. In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, the telling of story-truth, rather than happening-truth, is necessary, as no replica can be as genuine as the original.

A false memory once created, it is difficult to eliminate from individual’s thoughts. In the article “Creating False Memory” by Elizabeth Loftus, Nadean Cool believed that she had been enrolled in a satanic cult that brought several false memories (Loftus 71). Once created, false memory becomes part and parcel of someone’s thoughts. According to Loftus, false memory is invented to explain minor situations. For instance, an uncomfortable feeling when meeting with family members at family reunions. Perhaps, the uncomfortable feeling is caused by something a family member did when in the real sense; nobody did anything (Rosen et al.

Memory is one of the most critical parts of cognition. It is important because it is involved in almost every aspect of cognition including problem solving, decision making, attention, and perception. Because of this importance, people rely on one’s memory to make important decisions. The value of one’s memory in this society is so high that it is used as evidence to either save one’s life or kill one’s life during murder trials. But as many of the cognitive psychologists know, human’s memory can cause many errors. One of these errors is false memory which is either remembering events that never happened or remembering events differently from the actual event. This finding of false memory raised big interests among psychologists and

False memories are a strange phenomenon that everyone is victim to. False memories, show the weaknesses and holes in our minds. False memories cause many wrong convictions. False memories can make one rethink all of one's memories. False memories are caused by the overload that our minds take daily. People's minds only remember important details that occurred and leaves out small things like unimportant colors. False memories still aren't completely found out entirely today and they might never

False memory is a term for the event of an individual remembering information or events they were not exposed to. Jerwen and Flores (2013) defined it as the creation of a memory about an event that an individual did not experience. They point out, “although not being able to remember something is a memory problem, ‘remembering’ something that did not happen can be as serious a problem.”

False memory, second to forgetting, is one of the two fundamental types of deformation in episodic memory (Holliday, Brainerd & Reyna, 2010). Simply stated, false memory is the propensity to account normal occurrences as being a fraction of a key experience that in actuality was not an element of that experience (Holliday, Brainerd & Reyna). False memories are something nearly everyone experience. Furthermore, false memory is defined as placed together, constructed representations of mental schemas that are incorrect (Solso, MacLin & MacLin, 2008). Individuals do not intentionally fabricate their memory. However, perceptual and social factors are a few things that a responsible for manipulating memory (Solso, MacLin & MacLin, 2008).

There are many different ways our memory might fail us. Encoding failure occurs when our brain fails to realize all the information around us and can only store what we are most focused on at the time. This causes people to lose information that could have beneficial because they didn’t focus on one single thing. This problem only gets worse with age. Storage decay can also affect the reliability of our memories. Even if the information does get encoded into memory, there is still a chance it could be forgotten over time. There is a forgetting curve that shows how quickly people can forget events. Another way our memories may be clouded could be by the misinformation effect. The misinformation effect can change the way people remember things. If people hear someone tell a story about an event that happened, they could take that information and believe it’s their own information they experienced first hand. These memory failures cause for controversy over whether or not eyewitness testimony should be used in court. These issues are enough to cause reasonable doubt when trying to convict a person off of an eyewitness account. I do believe their are ways for law enforcement agencies to avoid these issues to strengthen the reliability of their eyewitnesses’

Unfortunately error in memory recall is not the only difficulty facing those who have experience wrongful conviction. In Mr. Bravo’s case he was unable to produce a strong alibi due to the lack of assistance from his council (“Innocence Lost,” 2004). This setback

A false memory is a memory of an event that did not actually occur. This is something that is very common and happens to everyone. It can affect a person’s life daily and sometimes leads to psychotherapy. When memories are stored, they can change due people’s personal lives. The more people think about things, the more they change. For example, if a girl really likes a guy’s eye color and thinks about it constantly, eventually her recollection of his eye color

False Memories are fundamentally, unintended human errors, which results in people having memories of events and situations that did not actually occur. It’s worth noting that in humans there are both true and false memories, these false memories occur when a mental experience is incorrectly taken to be a representation of a past event. For example, when people are asked to describe something that happened at a particular time, people rarely deliver accurate answers. Based on research, in eyewitness testimony, the confidence people show while recalling

False memories include distorting features of events and situations or recalling facts and memories that never occurred at all (Roediger and McDermott, 1995).

Memory does not work like a video camera, smoothly recording every detail. Instead, memory is more of a constructive process. We remember the details that we find most important and relevant. Due to the reconstructive nature of memory, the assimilation of old and new information has the ability to cause vulnerable memories to become distorted. This is also known as the misinformation effect (Loftus, 1997). It is not uncommon for individuals to fill in memory gaps with what they assume they must have experienced. We not only distort memories for events that we have observed, but, we may also have false memories for events that never occurred at all. False memories are “often created by combing actual memories with suggestions received from

Memory facilitates necessary functions in daily life activities, but it is not a perfect mechanism in operation. Goldstein (2011) states that memory is, “…the process involved in retaining, retrieving, and using information about stimuli, images, events, ideas, and skills after the original information is no longer present” (p.116). There are many adaptive functions within the complexities of the human memory system and the interlinked constructs between each function leave room for doubt in the accuracy of recollection. Study of the human mind has opened avenues of discovery on the inner workings of our brains and the resulting knowledge suggests that humans are prone to creating false memories and even remembering things that never actually happened. A great deal of information has been written explaining the nature of memory errors and within the following pages a real-life case offers a glimpse into how recall distortions and memory errors can wield unpleasant consequences. Memory errors can be avoided with a significant effort, but the truth remains that no one is perfect and memories are subject to individual bias.