False Memories
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- Date Submitted: 09/03/2011 11:05 AM
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False Memories
Introduction
False memories are remembrances of events and experiences that never occurred or they denote event recalls of incidences that occurred differently from the manner in which one perceives them. Through the use of findings from researches, analyses and theoretical frameworks, it can be shown that false memories arise from coaching or accidental association of the event with other occurrences in the subject’s life.
How false memories are formed
Loftus and Pickrell (1995) carried out a research among twenty four Washington university students. They collected information from the participant’s relatives about their childhood experiences. All subjects were expected to give additional details on what they remembered about four events in their childhood. One of these events (the third one) was a false event. A follow up interview of the participants was done; they were expected to give more details about the events. Another interview was done after the first one. Participants were told that they had been deceived and asked to identify the false event among the four. It was found that seven of the twenty four subjects remembered the false memory. When debriefed about the experiment, five subjects wrongly identified some of the true events as false ones. The study therefore illustrated that people can be led to remember events that never took place through suggestion. The participants were given cues from the interviewers and took this as background information. The cues were probably general knowledge from other experiences. It was hypothesized by the authors that the false information given must have been stored by the participants together with the background or schematic knowledge.
Afterwards when asked to recall the false event, the subjects then combined the false event with the schematic knowledge and formed one component, which is the pseudo memory. False memories are thus created through suggestion and...
Introduction
False memories are remembrances of events and experiences that never occurred or they denote event recalls of incidences that occurred differently from the manner in which one perceives them. Through the use of findings from researches, analyses and theoretical frameworks, it can be shown that false memories arise from coaching or accidental association of the event with other occurrences in the subject’s life.
How false memories are formed
Loftus and Pickrell (1995) carried out a research among twenty four Washington university students. They collected information from the participant’s relatives about their childhood experiences. All subjects were expected to give additional details on what they remembered about four events in their childhood. One of these events (the third one) was a false event. A follow up interview of the participants was done; they were expected to give more details about the events. Another interview was done after the first one. Participants were told that they had been deceived and asked to identify the false event among the four. It was found that seven of the twenty four subjects remembered the false memory. When debriefed about the experiment, five subjects wrongly identified some of the true events as false ones. The study therefore illustrated that people can be led to remember events that never took place through suggestion. The participants were given cues from the interviewers and took this as background information. The cues were probably general knowledge from other experiences. It was hypothesized by the authors that the false information given must have been stored by the participants together with the background or schematic knowledge.
Afterwards when asked to recall the false event, the subjects then combined the false event with the schematic knowledge and formed one component, which is the pseudo memory. False memories are thus created through suggestion and...