Theories Of False Memory

Sexual abuse can be hard to define because of the many different forms it can take on, the different levels of frequency, the variation of circumstances that can occur. Until a child is fit to function as a self-supporting and informed adult, we have an obligation not to take advantage of their lack of power or protection to inflict damage, or demand submission to acts that are not in their own best interests within. Children are being abused every day in different countries. While commonly accepted wisdom had been that childhood sexual abuse results in long lasting negative outcomes.

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).

False memory refers to a phenomenon that makes an individual believe that they remember events in their lives but in real sense, these events have never occurred. In most cases, these events are traumatic, and relate to sexual abuse. False memory syndrome was postulated in 1992 in an attempt to explain the theory of adult childhood memory. Adults who remember sexual abuse events when they were young may be creating an occurrence that never happened or information that is not correct.

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

A psychologist named Elizabeth loftus has studied for how easy the brain is to manipulate into believing false things. She essentially believes the brains can be manipulated to a point where someone else can alter our memories that make one, them. She says that false memories that there could be a benefit to false memories because it's like a system that allows us to update our memories when errors are found in a memory.false memories. The problem is that the system could be used against us and there is no defense to counter it.

An estimated 39 million survivors of childhood sexual abuse exist in America today (Darness2Light, 2009a ). This figure continues to grow daily as perpetrators of this crime continue in this destructive path. The definition of child sexual abuse is the force, coercion, or cajoling of children into sexual activities by a dominant adult or adolescent. Sexual abuse of children includes touching (physical) sexually including: fondling; penetration (vaginal or anal using fingers, foreign objects or offenders organs; oral sex, or non-physical contact including: sexual comments; indecent exposures; masturbating in a child’s presence; child prostitution or child pornography (Child Welfare, 2009a).

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).

In my data for the false memory task, I found I was able to accurately recognize 91.7% of the words shown in the recognition task that were from the original lists. I also falsely remembered 16.7% of words that were not originally shown, but were related. Fortunately, I did not falsely remember any words (0%) that were not originally shown or related to the words in the original list.

The diagnosis of sexual abuse in children has substantial implications legally, communally and emotionally for the child, the parents and the clinician. Therefore, the FNP must consider the medical-legal implication of the interview with the patient, the parents as well as the history and physical exam of the child. Careful documentation of all findings from the visit is vital to the advocacy of the patient (Burns, et al, 2013).

There are two prominent distortions of the episodic memory system: forgetting and the false memory effect. False memory is the propensity to report an event as part of an episodic experience that was not actually present (Holliday, Brainerd, & Reyna, 2011). Several theories give an explanation for this effect, but the most prominent one is the fuzzy trace theory,

Since the early 90’s a large debate has divided many medical professionals in the psychology realm over the relationship between recovered-memory therapy and false memory syndrome. Memory has been studied in several different areas to recognize how it compares not only to others but also in certain situations and even as far as being replicated to fit to a person’s beliefs, feelings, and memory they’ve have pieced together instead of reproduced (Lynn, Evans, Laurence and Lilianfeld, 2015). False memory was coined in 1992 by a group of professionals who noticed numerous adults were claiming to have been sexually abused as a child from their parents after receiving therapy. The adults who claimed to have been sexually abused as

The two concepts that I resonated with are Memory and the Psychodynamic theory. Starting with the Psychodynamic theory is an approach to psychology that studies the psychological forces underlying human behavior, feelings, and emotions, and how they may relate to early childhood experience. This theory is most closely associated with the work of Sigmund Freud, and with psychoanalysis, a type of psychotherapy that attempts to explore the patient’s unconscious thoughts and emotions so that the person is better able to understand him or herself. The second one is Memory; understanding how memory works will help you improves your memory. Which is an essential key to attaining knowledge. Memory is one of the important cognitive processes. Memory involves remembering and forgetting. I chose the two concepts because throughout the class they stood out to the most. Understanding the conscious, subconscious mind and also memory. I’m interested in understanding the human behavior.

When should we use the implantation of false memories?
I feel like the use the implantation of false memories should only be used for a good cause, or positive outcome. For example, It could be used for an overweight child, who's parents want their child to become healthy and active. They could plant a false memory of the child enjoying running, so then the child could become active, and lose weight. I dont think false memories should be used as a common thing, it should be used for serious situations. I feel like it could really mess with peoples minds, which is never a good thing. People are who they are because of memory and the way they view things. Memory is a factor of our personality, and it is evil to take something like that away.

Many research studies in the field of psychology suggest that long-term memory is often inaccurate. one of the potential explanations for this phenomenon may be what we call the misinformation effect. misinformation effect refers to an inclusion of misleading information into a pre-existing memory after the event. essentially, the new information that the person receives works backward in time to distort the memory of the original event. this runs on the principle of retroactive interference. In simple words, falsification of memory by suggestion or misinformation is the root cause for a distorted memory of the past. false memory is created as an effect of newer and unmatching information.

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