False Memory Term - Essay Example

Inquiry Assignment on False Memory Introduction: The term ‘false memory’ refers to a psychological situation in which an individual recalls a memory that never occurred in actual. As the phenomenon is largely associated with a wide number of mental disorders, its significance is worth exploring and discussing. This paper aims to review, analyze, and briefly discuss false memory and its varied aspects as illustrated in four different review articles on the same topic. Make-believe memories: False memories can play a crucial role in infecting the human mind. Loftus (2003) discusses the issue of memory distortion which leads to make-believe memories infecting the mind. Loftus argues that misinformation or misguided suggestion can lead to memory distortion. This hypothesis is supported by a review of previous researches on the implications of false memories. While highlighting the influence and power of misinformation, Loftus discusses a rich literature associated with false memories – a wide variety of connotations for make-believe memory. In an attempt to explain the relevance of memory distortion effect, Loftus provides the instances of eyewitness memory and its implications especially in cases of police investigation where misinformation plays a determining role in memory distortion. There are also discussions of other related misinformation suggestion techniques instigating memory distortion, including post-event misinformation effect (Rovee-Collier et al., 1993) and misleading interrogation (Scoboria et al., 2002). Memory distortion can also happen through exposure to misinformation. There are various ways of planting false memories. The influence of false memories depends to a large extent on the resistance power of the individual to believe or refute it. Further, resisting such misinformation effect results in the prevalence of true memories. Whereas in case of accepting misinformation, the human mind can be strongly affected to create rich false memories out of events that never happened in real. In order to explain and support the hypothesis, Loftus implements the technique of planting false memory by misinformation. Loftus provides the example of Alan Alda, a renowned TV personality, who was asked to fill out questionnaires designed to gather information about his life-long history with food and his personality. By the use of these questionnaires and technology (with misinformation), Alda was convinced to believe that as a child he used to get sick of eating too many hard-boiled eggs. As a result, in a group picnic Alda refused to eat eggs from the items which included hard-boiled eggs. In another method of suggestive manipulation to plant false memory, Alda was shown fake ads for Disney that featured Bugs Bunny, a Warner Brothers character. But Alda resisted misinformation this time. The study provides insightful information on the power of misinformation effect and techniques of planting false memories with plenty of evidences in support. The independent variable used in the study is false memory which is measured by two dependent variables – misinformation effect and manipulative techniques to plant false memories. However, the example of Alda’s reluctance to eat hard-boiled eggs cannot be termed as a strong evidence as the causes of his reluctant response require more analysis. On a broader level, more analysis with strong evidences is required to explain relevant techniques of suggestive manipulations to plant false memories. This is particularly effective for police investigations and crime scenes. In short, the study finds out that false memories and their consequences influence human mind and memory which can result in expected or unexpected applications. The misinformation effect and manipulative techniques of planting false memories can provide a convincible base for developing a means to distinguish true and false memories. Further, the research on false memories has a greater scope of application in varied fields like trauma memories, reading of autobiographies and memoirs. Creating false memories: False memories are remembering events that either never happened or remembering them quite differently from the way they happened. Roediger & McDermott conducted a study on the creation of false memories (1995). They argue that the process of remembering old memories paves the way for creating new memories that never existed in reality. In order to support their argument, the study includes a review literature of previous researches on the creation of false memories. While discussing the varied ways of false memory creation, the study distinguishes between reproductive and reconstructive memory, as conducted by Bartlett in the first experimental investigation on false memories (1932). As defined by Bartlett, reproductive memory is “accurate, rote production of material from memory, whereas reconstructive memory emphasizes the active process of filling in missing elements while remembering, with errors frequently occurring (p. 803).” There is a technique to study false recognition of words in a list learning paradigm (Underwood, 1965). The technique involves a continuous recognition task of words where participants are asked to recall if the words in the current list are present in the previous list. The task verified that words associatively related to previously presented words are usually falsely recognized. To explain the hypothesis of creation of false memories from old memories, Roediger & McDermott conduct two experiments to find out levels of false recall and false recognition in a list learning paradigm. In the experiments, university undergraduates were tested and their false recall rates were 40% and 55% respectively in the immediate recall test and with expanded word list. The study is informative in terms of false memory creation researches. The independent variable used in the study is false memory creation which is measured by two experiments using list learning paradigm. However, the second test with expanded word list includes a prolonged 42-item recognition list where the account of non-studied items is more than double the size of the studied items. Due to this, the false recall rate of 55% is not a surprising result. In order to come to a more comprehensive result, more of such recall tests are required at various levels. The results of the study find out that irrespective of reproductive and reconstructive memory, recalling is constructive in nature. The differences of false recall and false recognition are quantitative, not qualitative. Tricks of memory: Expanding the previous study further, Roediger & McDermott conduct another research to discuss the concept of memory illusion which is the outcome of memory errors resulting from false recall and false recognition (2000). The study argues that memory illusions occur due to errors at different stages of the recalling process. The study uses its previous research of associative memory illusion (using list learning paradigm) as a base to discuss the tricks of memory. Besides this, the study discusses the relevance of false memory effect to decide the regularity of this illusion. Participants in the recall test were informed about the nature of false memory which comparatively reduced hit rates and false alarm rates. The independent and dependent variables used in this study are similar to the ones used in the previous study. The research provides a laboratory environment to study cognitive processes creating false memories along with memory distortions. The study further finds out that memories are prone to errors but they are intelligent errors created by intelligent cognitive systems. There is more to the complexities of the human mind. Because, “that people can recollect vividly events that they only inferred, is a small price to pay for the inventiveness and adaptiveness of the human mind (p. 127).” Avoiding false memories: In response to Roediger & McDermott’s list learning paradigm for false memories, another study by Watson et al. (2004) focuses on avoiding the false memories using the false memory paradigm. The study argues that in case of critical word recalling process, false alarm rates can vary in terms of age of participants. As researches show, age-related increases in false memories are significant highlights but comparatively very less has been studied to find out the extent to which old adults adopt strategies to avoid memory errors. Practice and warning manipulations by young and old adults in false memory paradigm are studied at length (Gallo et al., 1997; McDermott & Roediger, 1998; Neuschatz et al., 2003). Age difference plays an important role in terms of false recall and recognition where young adults fair relatively better than old adults via repeated study-test trials. Similarly, warnings provide a better contextual support than repeated study-test trials to old adults in avoiding false memories. To support the argument of age differences in recalling process, the study conducts recall test to assess how practice as well as warnings (combined) in young and old adults can influence false memories. Participants for the critical word recalling test were graduates and adults from Washington University. The warning manipulation was modeled using the false memory paradigm. Participants were warned against false memory manipulations. The research provides useful information detailing manipulative factors such as practice, warning, age, and false memories in false memory paradigm. The independent variable used in the study is false memory which is measured by a number of dependent variables including practice, warning, and age differences via false memory paradigm. The study finds out that in case of study-test trial, the presentation rates for young adults and old adults are fast and slow respectively. In case of veridical recall, there was virtually no influence of warning for young or old adults. In case of false recall of critical words, young adults show considerable reduction via multiple study-test trials in comparison to their old counterparts. Discussion and new proposal: False memory enables recollection of events that never occurred in reality, or of real events that are remembered differently than they happened. Misinformation or misguided suggestion can lead to memory distortion. Memory distortion can influence human mind that leads to creating false memories. Due to errors at different stages of the recalling process, the mind can have memory illusions. These illusions can be checked using various recalling techniques and processes as discussed in the articles mentioned above. In order to examine and analyze nuances of memory illusions and false memory creations, we would like to propose a new research using a different dimension: how do memory illusions occur in a gender-oriented situation? To examine our research question, Roediger & McDermott’s list learning paradigm for false memories will be used. The findings of the research will enable us to describe how and if yes, why gender-based false memory rates differ in terms of the recalling processes of males and females. Since memory illusions are due to intelligent errors, a gender-oriented research on false memories will be insightful to explore the intelligent cognition patterns of human mind. References: Loftus, E. F. (2003). Make-believe memories. American Psychologist, 867 – 873. Roediger, H. L., & McDermott, K. B. (1995). Creating false memories: Remembering words not presented in lists. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 21(4), 803 – 814. Roediger, H. L., & McDermott, K. B. (2000). Tricks of memory. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 9(4), 123 – 127. Watson, J., McDermott, K. B., & Balota, D. A. (2004). Attempting to avoid false memories in the Deese/Roediger-McDermott paradigm: Assessing the combined influence of practice and warnings in young and old adults. Memory & Cognition, 32, 135 – 141. Read More