False Memory Syndrome
How accurate and reliable is memory? "Studies on memory have shown that we often construct our memories after the fact, that we are susceptible to suggestions from others that will help us fill in the gaps in our memories" (Carroll 6). Prior to reading and discussing the issue of False Memory Syndrome, I hadn’t thought much about the topic. Maybe a person who had experienced this would be more educated. I did however find it very interesting to research and my beliefs or feelings about it now exist and will be shared at a later time. The purpose of this paper is to describe what False Memory Syndrome is and summarize some of the facts that have been gathered through previous research and my own research.
The definition of False Memory Syndrome, according to the Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary, is a "psychological condition in which a person believes that he or she remembers events that have not actually occurred" (Freyd 3). Dr. John F. Kihlstrom, a professor of psychology at Yale University also suggests that FMS is a condition in which a person’s identity and interpersonal relationships are centered around memory of traumatic experience which is objectively false, but in which the person strongly believes. This false memory has been so deeply ingrained that is often interferes with the individuals personality and lifestyle. The disorder will sometimes be destructive because the individual will avoid any type of confrontation that might challenge the memory. This often distracts the person from coping with everyday life challenges (Freyd 2).
When a couple was accused by their own daughter for abuse that had never happened, the couple, Pamela and Peter Freyd, formed the False ...
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Works Cited
Pendergrast, Mark. Victims of Memory: Sex Abuse Accusations and Shattered Lives. Hinesburg: Upper Access, Inc.
Ofshe, Richard and Ethan Watters. Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy, and Sexual Hysteria. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1994.
Carroll, Robert Todd. "Memory." The Skeptics Dictionary. 1998. http://dcn.davis.ca.us/~btcarrol/skeptic/memory.html (01 Dec 2000).
Hochman, John, M.D. "Recovered Memory Therapy and False Memory Syndrome." Altedena: Skeptics Society, 1994. http://www.skeptic.com/02.3.hochman- fms.html (20 Nov 2000).
Freyd, Pamela, Ph.D. "Frequently Asked Questions." Philadelphia: False Memory Syndrome Foundation. Sept. 1995. http://www.fmsfonline.com/fmsffaq.html. (20 Nov 2000).
Freberg, Laura. Stand!. Boulder: Coursewise Publishing Inc., 1999.
The influence of the investigators parallels the influence of therapists in cases of sexually abused children's recovered memories. Works Cited 1)Silverglate, Harvey A; Takei, Carl:Mistrial- The Capturing of Friedman's DVD sheds new light on the case.
The first study I reviewed was “Creating False Memories: Remembering Words Not Presented in Lists” by Roediger III and Kathleen B. McDermott. The study was published in 1995, in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory & Cognition. Roediger and McDermott conducted two separate experiments in their study. The experiments were modeled after Deese’s 1959 study “On the Prediction of Occurrences of Particular Verbal Intrusions in Immediate Recall.” The results of Deese’s study concluded that participants falsely recalled a nonpresented critical lure 44% of the time. 36 students from Rice University participated in Roediger and McDermott’s first experiment. The students participated as part of a course project. The participants were presented with six lists that were developed from Deese’s study and Russell and Jenkins 1954 study “The complete Minnesota norms for responses to 100 words from the Kent-Rosanoff word association Test.” The six lists that were chosen for the Roediger and McDermott study were shown to elicit high rates of false recall in Deese’s study. The list contained 12 associated words that related to one nonpresented word. An example nonpresented word is chair, the 12 associated w...
Amici curiae is a social psychologist and legal scholar who studies the effects of the Recovered Memory Syndrome on individuals’ behaviors and judicial practices. Amici has conducted research and published several peer-reviewed articles explaining the role of hypnosis in uncovering repressed memories and related traumas that come along with it. This brief intends to provide the Court with relevant and current literature explaining the recovered memory phenomenon and its relationship with psychotherapeutic techniques where recovery of memories often occurs. Research presented by amici demonstrates that cases of sexual abuse, real or imagined, must be given careful consideration as victims undergo significant emotional
McNally, R. J., Clancy, S. A., Barrett, H. M., Parker, H. A., Ristuccia, C. S., & Perlman, C. A. (2006). Autobiographical memory specificity in adults reporting repressed, recovered, or continuous memories of childhood sexual abuse. Cognition & Emotion, 20(3/4), 527-535. doi:10.1080/02699930500342779
Many of the memories that were remembered are usually previous childhood experiences. Dewhurst and Robinson (2004) conducted a study where 5, 8 and 11 year old children were tested on memory illusion. One of the procedures used to test false memories is the DRM paradigm. The DRM paradigm presents a list of words that include a critical word that is typically remembered although it was never presented. During the DRM procedure the children were given five lists that contained eight words. Each list consisted of at least one rhyme and a semantic theme. Each child was tested on their own by the classroom
6. With respect to the controversy regarding reports of repressed memories of sexual abuse, statements by major psychological and psychiatric associations suggest that:
In the summary it is noted that “memory access was bias towards (a) mood-congruent, (b) recent and (c) distinctive (unusual) events” (Berntsen, 1996). Earlier I had looked into detail on the moods and distinctiveness of my memories. After looking closer, I noted that ten of the twelve memories had taken place in the last five years, with the other two happening six and ten years ago. The same literature discusses how involuntary memories can be used as a defense mechanism, and that “may help cover up disturbing, perceptual aspects of the current surroundings” (Berntsen, 1996). This would make a lot of sense when examining my negative memory, because it seems to be used as a warning for me to think of something else or look at something else. In a different piece of literature, repeated memories of traumatic events are discussed. I would consider my negative memory to be a traumatic event, since it made me physically sick. It also comes to mind involuntary often, when I see or think of something that could relate or look like it. This could be that it is way of “working through and coming to terms with the trauma” for me (Berntsen, 2008). Yet another piece of literature lines up with my experience, and it comes from a 1998 publication by Dorthe Berntsen. It is written that, “the results suggest that
Gartner, Richard B. Betrayed as Boys: Psychodynamic Treatment of Sexually Abused Men. New York: Guilford, 1999. Print.
There have been several experiments done to try to prove that false memories can indeed be formed. One experiment, for example, was tried with a 14-year-old boy. The boy was told four memories, one of which was falsely constructed but similar to that of a true memory. The memories that were suggested took place when the boy was about 10 years younger. As the false memory was retold to him, he was asked to explain in detail what he had remembered from that event. Surprisingly, he claimed to remember the event, even though it was falsely created by the interviewer and his brother, and went on to explain what he remember to have happened, details and all. After collecting everything he had said about the four memories, he was told that one of the suggested memories was made-up and he was asked to guess which one it may have been. When he couldn’t decide which one it was, he was told that it was in fact the memory of getting lost in a store. He was confused and had trouble believing the truth.
Kowalski, M.(1998, December). Applying the "two schools of thought" doctrine to the repressed memory controversy. The Journal of Legal Medicine. Retrieved September 14, 2000 from Lexis-Nexis database (Academic Universe) on the World Wide Web: http://www.lexis-nexis.com/universe
In psychology we learned that you are never fully able to “vividly” recall memories, and that often times the memories you do recall are inaccurate. While I do not doubt my professor and her expert knowledge in her field, I truly do feel that there are a few memories I can vividly remember with precise detail. Flashbulb memories are the closest we can get to reliving an event, but even then these memories, while often referred to as “vivid” for lack of a better word, are still not completely accurate. The flashbulb memories I have of my favorite place feel factual rather than misconstrued, I know for a fact that these events happened, and it feels just as real as if they happened yesterday, but I am aware that logically I cannot know for sure
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 general public and many researches were done in order to find more about the false memory. The constructive approach to memory, which states that memory is constructed by person based on what really happened in addition to person’s other knowledge, experiences, and expectations, supports the idea of false memory. Just like what constructive approach to memory states, the false memory can be created by person’s knowledge, common biases, and suggestions. The present study was done in order to demonstrate one methodology that biases people to create and recall false memories. The present study is based on Deese’s experiment in 1959 and also on Roediger and McDermott’s experiment in 1995. The participants will be presented with sequence of words visually, and then they would have to classify a set of words as either in the sequence or not in the sequence. Our hypothesis is that people will create false memories and recall distractor words that are related to the sequence of words presented significantly m...
Recovered memories of childhood trauma and abuse has become one of the most controversial issues within the field of psychology. Controversy surrounding repressed memory - sometimes referred to as the memory wars – reached its’ peak in the early 1990s, where there was a rise in the number of people reporting memories of childhood trauma and abuse that had allegedly been repressed for many years (Lindsay & Read, 2001). There are a number of different factors that have contributed to the dispute surrounding recovered memories. Firstly, there is an ongoing debate about whether these types of memories actually exist or whether these accusations arose as a result of suggestive therapeutic procedures. In particular, this debate focuses on two main
According to Sternberg (1999), memory is the extraction of past experiences for information to be used in the present. The retrieval of memory is essential in every aspect of daily life, whether it is for academics, work or social purposes. However, many often take memory for granted and assume that it can be relied on because of how realistic it appears in the mind. This form of memory is also known as flashbulb memory. (Brown and Kulik, 1977). The question of whether our memory is reliably accurate has been shown to have implications in providing precise details of past events. (The British Psychological Association, 2011). In this essay, I would put forth arguments that human memory, in fact, is not completely reliable in providing accurate depictions of our past experiences. Evidence can be seen in the following two studies that support these arguments by examining episodic memory in humans. The first study is by Loftus and Pickrell (1995) who found that memory can be modified by suggestions. The second study is by Naveh-Benjamin and Craik (1995) who found that there is a predisposition for memory to decline with increasing age.
Overall, this article was very informative. I believed Loftus and Bernstein did a great job analyzing these different methods of research. I would of like the article more if the findings in thus research were more elaborate on the process. Finally, the reader is left with various detailed procedures but no definite answer on how to really tell false or true memories.