Introduction Recent research has shown that memory is not a passive system of automatic recording of all experiences, but a flexible function whose storage capacity is limited. Studies of the American cognitive psychologist Elisabeth Loftus in the 1990s, has shown that memories are sensitive to beliefs, expectations and suggestion, and that people can ‘‘remember” information they have not experienced, which is called false memories (Loftus & Ketcham, 2012). For more than 20 years, most of the research has focused on their dramatic consequences, particularly in the context of recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse in therapy, which have destroyed many victims and their families (Brédart, 2012). However, positive consequences of false memories
There is a lot of research that suggests that most of our memories are actually false, thus should not be treated as a reliable source of reference. These studies will be discussed in more detail, in order to improve
False memories Repressed memories are often recovered in therapy. The issue with treating a repressed memory that was recovered during therapy as contingent for a court case is that there is no way to prove that the therapy did not falsely construct the memory, leading to a false memory. A false memory can be misinterpreted as a repressed memory if the individual, for instance, feels a lot of emotion towards the false memory; “victims may experience ‘denial,’ an unconscious defense against painful or unbearable memories and feelings about the crime” (“How Crime Victims React to Trauma”). However, it is important to note that just because a “memory might be false does not mean that the person is deliberately lying” (Loftus, 1993, p. 525). False memories can be created unintentionally by the unconscious: or another way to explain how a memory can be constructed in therapy and believed to be truly recovered, one can look to false memory theories of “associative activation” and “thematic consistency” (Gallo, 2006, p. 51-53).
McClosky and Zaragoza (1985a, 1985b) disputed the memory impairment hypothesis. Johnson and Lindsay in 1986 gave the source misattribution hypothesis. The hypothesis states that, the inability to distinguish whether the original event or some later event was the true source of the information. Belli (1989) gave the concept of misinformation acceptance i.e., accepting additional information as having been part of an earlier experience without actually remembering that information. Belli pointed out that misleading information may bias the responses unrelated to the presentation of misinformation, fail to remember the event item.
Amnesia Anonymous student PYSC 1504 University of the People Word count 707 During the 1990s there were a lot of cases of reported child abuse based on repressed memory. Many individuals were arrested and jailed, many of which were innocent. Sigmund Freud believed that individuals repress their memories (not consciously) so that their painful effects would not have to be experienced. There is a lot of controversy as to whether repressed memories can be trusted. In this assignment, look for a news article (old or new) describing the resurface of a repressed memory or studies on it.
The speech from Elizabeth Loftus “The Fiction of Memory” she mentions that she study false memory for almost 30 years. False memory is the things that people remember but didn’t happened or remember it differently than the way they really were. After watch the video “The Fiction of Memory” by Elizabeth Loftus, I realize that false memory can be affect on everyone. In my personal experience; sometime I went to the place that I never been there before, but I will believe that is place I have been when I was child. False memory can be given by someone else and effect on your own; for example, when my friend and I planed to go to some place and I am the one driving the car.
As a child, we have little that takes up space in the memory bank of our brains, but as time goes on we develop new memories, develop beliefs based on new knowledge. We access those old memories less and less, making the reliability of those earlier memories questionable. On the other hand, suppose a person has developed a mental disorder or age has caught up to them and they suffer from Dementia or Alzheimer's, the reliability of their memories would also be questionable but on the grounds that their minds aren’t functioning
For instance, individual who experienced childhood sexual abuse could not able to recall her past, to be exact the situation when the abuse happened until she found the “access code” to the memories. She needed to recall some characteristics of sound, smell, image, taste or somatic feeling before she could gain access to the repressed memories. Once repressed memories are recalled, they were recognized by a reasonably healthy mind as genuine. However the mind that had been severely damaged through incest may fail to make
It is unlikely that social consequences of false memories can be avoided. Elizabeth Loftus was intrigued to study false memories, and is perhaps personally responsible for subsequent developments throughout the history of false memories. Some of this history addresses various theories aimed at isolating how or why false memories occur. These include Source Monitoring Framework, Activation Monitoring Theory, Fuzzy Trace Theory, and strategies for persuasion which can lead to the development of false memory. Such persuasion leads to the present discussion concerning how persuasion in the judicial system has created false confessions and wrongful eyewitness testimonies, due to the Misinformation Effect.
For example, it is unlikely that a child younger than 3 years old, could remember anything and keep remembering that until an older age. If a person claims she or he remembers something from that time, Julia suspects that somebody could have influenced these memories via a therapy, interrogation, or even a story that sounded convincing: “False memories are everywhere. In everyday situations, we don't really notice or care that they're happening. We call them mistakes or say we misremember things” (Bryce, 2017, para. 7).