Research Paper On False Memories

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.

The individual who experiences these awful memories will forever hold that pain into adulthood. Memories and negative past experiences are big factors of trauma. Trauma is a distressing experience psychologically, and can last for a lifetime, that may keep an individual from executing certain activities successfully. Lin Shi and Jason Nicol from Dekalb, Illnios are specialized in Family Therapy, and have observed a criminal through the experimental process. Shi and Nicol have announced that, “In the stabilizing sessions that followed aggressive episodes, regardless of what set him off, he frequently referred back to his unpleasant experiences with his parents which often involved a strong physical reaction” (par. 10). The pain coming from an unpleasant experience had resorted out into violence every time the brain conjures up a past memory that was agonizing. A negative reaction is usually shown when the individual had been hurt physically and/or emotionally from any past events. These painful childhood memories make an individual rash out into anger followed by the offenses committed (Shi and Nicol par.10). When a sixteen year old male was analyzed by a treatment center, the clinic had been told that the boy’s mother walked out of the child’s life at the age of two and had been living with the father (par. 5). Children who are left by the main nurturer in the family effects the decisions carried into adulthood. Negative consequences are the

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 an apparent recollection of an event that did not actually occur. The reason why false memories happen are due to the fact that one's brains can only handle so much.There has been several experiment pertaining to the phenomenon, to find how it works.In the next part of the experiment the psychologist showed the participants a word list.False memories are very common and can happen to anyone. On very rare occasions false memories can be harmful to someone and the people around them.False memories are so common that they affect all of a person's memories. False memories can be made more clear by others memories or they could become more distorted. False memories have caused many wrongful convictions. A psychologist

The seriousness of this problem is exemplified in the cases of individuals creating false memories of sexual abuse as a result of therapy. These types of events caused vast amounts of research to be done on the topic. The Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) paradigm has been one of the most popular in false memory research and it continues to be a topic of interest today. A search of “DRM” in all text and “False Memory” in subject terms, using PsycINFO, gave results of 560 peer-reviewed articles published in research journals within the last five years (2011-2016).

False memories have been studied science the early 1990’s because they have become controversial topic. In the beginning they was no thought that your memory would be unfaithful and that if you had a memory that you “recovered” it had to be true because your memory couldn’t fail you. Could it? Well one woman’s disbelief caused her, Susan Clancy, who was a Harvard University graduate student at the time decided that while everyone else was arguing over the accuracy of recovered memories, she would create a study on them (Grierson 1). Clancy first started out by interviewing her subjects that said to have recovered memories of abuse after they had gone through therapy. The stories were horrifying but she was brought up to believe that what they were telling her was true. But, soon after she found herself wondering if they had even really went through these events that they “recovered”. When she spoke out against the recovered memory patients saying that they couldn’t of forgotten such a traumatic memory and that they had created a false memory by going to the therapy the hate mail started coming in (Grierson 3). Throughout this time many other scientists started to do more and more research on false memories and most of the studies have concluded with the same information. “The false memory researchers point to other research showing that traumatic events are normally remembered all too well. They argue that

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).

Teaching About Repressed Memories of Childhood Sexual Abuse - This article describes an undergrad 3 credit hour course taught in the fall at Rollins College. It examines human memory and its role in two applied issues which include repressed memory of childhood sexual abuse and eye witness testimony. The course content includes four components: 1) the instructor introduces students to the subject matter, 2) students review the nature of science, 3) learn about the extensive literature on the nature of human memory, and 4) learn about the anecdotal and scientific literature (for and against) on repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse and the literature on the accuracy of eyewitness testimony and identification. Freud and the notion of repression is discussed both in this article and in

The authenticity of repressed memories has been the cause of much controversy in the psychology world. Some even refer to these controversies as the “memory wars”. One side supports the idea of repressed memories, saying that there are multiple reasons for memories to be forgotten and retrieved later. The latter disagrees with how legitimate repressed memories are, since there is no way to prove the honesty of the memories presented.

The need for understanding the phenomenon of repressed memories is also very important from a legal standpoint. In recent years there has been numerous cases of people suing their parents or other authority figures for abuse that has been recalled many years after the abuse was said to have occurred. The rulings in these cases have often been controversial considering there is often not enough concrete or collaborative evidence to prove the accused to be guilty or innocent. The judge and jury are often forced to make a ruling that relies heavily on the testimonial of the accuser. This is very contentious considering there is not an accurate and reliable test to determine the validity of the accuser.

Do you think an experience can be so traumatizing that the brain pushes it into an inaccessible corner of the unconscious to later recall it years later? This concept on the mind is expressed as repressed memories. These are types of memories that are blocked unconsciously due to the high levels of stress experienced during the event. This theory on memories are based on the idea that even though the memory is repressed it is still affecting the individual in their conscious aspects of life. Repressed memories are often associated with childhood sexual abuse. This relies on the idea that these memories of sexual abuse can be brought up either in therapy or by the victim themselves years after the abuse. The concept of repressed memories has been a huge controversy in psychology from the beginning of time. Many people believe that repressed memories in regards to childhood sexual abuse are possible while others believe they can’t be as accurate as some people believe.

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