False Memory Essay ⋆ Criminal Justice Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

The use of the term false memory by psychologists can be traced to a symposium at the 1992 meeting of the American Psychological Society titled “Remembering ‘Repressed’ Abuse.” Elizabeth Loftus served as the symposium discussant and presented her research on planting in adults false childhood memories of having been lost in a mall. She drew generalizations from this research to the real-world issue of assessing whether memories for incidents of childhood sexual abuse may be suggestively planted and thus be “false memories.” This symposium was followed by a lead article on this topic in the American Psychologist in 1993. The False Memory Syndrome Foundation, which coined the phrase false memory syndrome, was also founded in 1992. In both the symposium and the subsequent article, the use of the term false memory was specifically intended to refer to memory for an entirely new event that in fact never occurred.

There have been several published literature reviews that have examined what types of research studies are being conducted under the term false memory. Although PsycINFO searches of the empirical publications using the subject heading “false memory” reveal several hundred publications since 1992, few researchers have studied false memories by studying the planting of memories for an entirely new event that was never experienced by an individual. The large majority of empirical studies published under the descriptor “false memories” have utilized what is called the Deese, Roediger, and McDermott paradigm. In this task, participants are presented a list of related words to study (e.g., sandal, foot, toe, slipper) in which at least one prototypical word (e.g., shoe) is not presented. When asked later to recall or recognize words in the presented list, participants frequently misremembered the related-but-not-presented word (e.g., shoe). Prior to the early 1990s these would be called intrusion errors, commission errors, or false alarms. However, in the wake of the false memory research bandwagon, these errors have been labeled “false memories.” Although numerous researchers have cautioned against generalizing from the Deese, Roediger, and McDermott paradigm to contested memories for abuse, this caution is frequently ignored. Thus, the term false memories has come to refer to two very different research literatures that probably do not relate to the same memory processes.

By specifically examining the few studies that have investigated false memory as defined by the planting of an entirely new event in memory, one can see that several factors affect the probability of this occurring. False events are more likely to be planted in memory if an individual imagines himor herself performing the event and if the suggestion is instantiated by presenting a picture of the individual (a) performing the false event, or even (b) in the context in which the false event is suggested to have occurred. However, in several recent studies, Kathy Pezdek has reported that false memories are less likely to be planted for implausible than for plausible events, and whereas imagining a plausible false event increases individuals’ belief that the event occurred to them, imagining an implausible event does not have this effect.

How does a suggested false event become planted in memory? If a suggested false event is judged to be true, then (a) generic information about the event as well as (b) specific details from related episodes of the event that the individual may have experienced are “transported” in memory and used to construct a memory for the false event. The degree of detail in the constructed false memory will be affected by the degree of relevant information already available in memory.

Controversy about the accuracy for abuse memories has been widely covered in the media. Within this controversy the term false memory has often been presented as the opposite of recovered memory, as in references to false versus recovered memories. However, this is confusing rhetoric; memories can be false and recovered, true and recovered, false and always remembered, and true and always-remembered. In fact, Jennifer Freyd has reported that recovered memories are no more likely to be false than always remembered memories.

Bibliography:

DePrince, A. P., Allard, C. B., Oh, H., & Freyd, J. (2004). What’s in a name for memory errors? Implications and ethical issues arising from the use of the term “false memory” for errors in memory details. Ethics & Behavior, 14, 201–233.
Freyd, J. J. (1998). Science in the memory debate. Ethics & Behavior, 8, 101–113.
Loftus, E. F. (1993). The reality of repressed memories. American Psychologist, 48, 518–537.
Pezdek, K., & Banks, W. P. (Eds.). (1996). The recovered memory/false memory debate. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Pezdek, K., & Lam, S. (2007). What research paradigms have cognitive psychologists used to study “false memory,” and what are the implications of these choices? Consciousness & Cognition, 16, 2–17.

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