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Essays on false memories
Essays on false memories
Strength/weaknesses of case study of false memories
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Inaccurate memories can happen to anyone even when they believe it truly happened. One might think that there is only one type of memory but that it not the case. When Jim thinks that he remembers something but actually does not, the memory he thinks he remembers would be categorized under flashbulb memories. Usually, it is a flashbulb memory of a childhood experience. These memories are actually very similar to regular memories.
Flashbulb memories are emotional memories that seem so vivid that people appear to recount them in extraordinary vivid detail. They are just like other memories, but somewhat more intense because there is an emotional connection to it. Psychologist have found that flashbulb memories are actually just like ordinary
Our memory is made up of many different types of memories; episodic, semantic, and implicit. Episodic memory is the remembrance of a certain event. An example of this
In one study conducted by Jason Chan and his partner Jessica Lapaglia, participants put the accuracy and concreteness of their memories to the test. Volunteers were told to watch the pilot episode of the show 24 and then answer some comprehension questions about the episode. Next, the participants listened to an audio summary of the episode, where some of the details had secretly been changed. After listening to the summary, the participants took another comprehension test over what they had seen in the episode. What Chan and Lapaglia found was that the false information had rewritten the original information, even if the participant had correctly recalled the information the first time. The unfortunately two-faced side of memory is the fact that "memories are just rewritten once, but every time we remember them" (Yong
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.
In recent years there has been a hot debate between "repressed" vs. "false" memories. Neurobiological studies show that both suppression and recall and the creation of false memories are possible. This paper evaluates the evidence but forth by both sides of the controversy and concludes that both are feasible and separate phenomenon, which occur at significant rates in our society.
False Memories are essentially, unintentional human errors, or a state of none-factual creativeness; which results in persons having declared memories of events and situations that did not occur in the actuality of their own lifespan reality history. If they were not unintentional errors they would be deception, which has the nature of a different purpose, morality and legality. False memories have no authenticity, realness or legitimacy, in the subject’s actual life. However they may not be complete false memories: more likely to be a combination of subjugation of previous memory cue’s; or imaginative inventive production, activated and initiated by an origination of external scenario additive as a prompt, indicator or sign, which fuses into memory recall. Therefore ‘False Memories’ are a genuine but inaccurate remembering of experimental data or recall of an genuine occurrences; both of which have rudiments of accuracy and inaccuracy in their transitive attention, giving most ‘False Memories’ partiality.
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...
Jim, from the scenario above, had a flashbulb memory from his childhood about the day his parents won the lottery, or he though he did. A flash bulb memory can be defined as memories people can remember vividly, even down to the details on a specific action that someone was doing. On this day Jim realized that the flashbulbs memory he experienced was actually wrong, but this situation can happen to a lot of people. Memories are very complex and there are multiple factors that could lead Jim to recalling his memory incorrectly.
Current models of flashbulb memories propose that factors determining the development and preservation of flashbulb memories include interest, importance, emotions, rehearsal, and even surprise (Tinti, Schmidt, Testa, & Levine, 2014). The term “flashbulb memory” originated from research by Brown and Kulik (1977) who believed that these sharp memories surrounding hearing about a special event were similar to photographs in their level of perceptual vividness. As more research has sprouted, cognitive psychologists have questioned this analogy, because memories, even for specific emotional events, can unintentionally change over time. Although flashbulb memories are unique in that they are tremendously vivid and have a high level of subjective certainty, research reveals that factors other than those presented in typical flashbulb memory models can have significant effects on consistency of flashbulb memories. This supports the idea that flashbulb memories are not necessarily
In her speech on memory, Elizabeth Loftus (2013) asserts, “Memory works a little bit more like a Wikipedia page: You can go in there and change it, but so can other people.” Elizabeth Loftus is a memory expert, she does not, however, study forgetting, as some may assume when told what she studies. Loftus (2013) says in her speech, “I study the opposite [of forgetting]: when [people] remember, when they remember things that didn't happen or remember things that were different from the way they really were. I study false memories.” In Loftus’ fascinating speech How reliable is your memory?
Finally, after analysing a study by Schmolck, Buffalo, and Squire (2000) that proved that the accuracy of flashbulb memories deteriorates and distortions increase over time, and discussing a study by Talarico and Rubin (2003) that confirmed that flashbulb memories are remembered with no more accuracy than a normal everyday memory, it is clear that flashbulb memory is not reliably accurate when it comes to recalling details of past events because many details have the potential to be forgotten. In future it is recommended that wider age range and an equal number of male and female participants are used to get a reliable cross-section of the general population.
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.
The article How to Tell If a Particular Memory Is True or False by Daniel M. Bernstein and Elizabeth F. Loftus, addresses the various techniques used by cognitive scientists and other researchers in hopes of distinguishing true from false memories. For this article Loftus and Bernstein, memory researchers, chose to discuss the different methods currently used, rather than trying to find new ways to tell if a particular memory is true or false. Their findings in these three different approaches are very interesting, and leads us to think critically of the veracity of true and false memories.
False memory can be defined as someone making a recollection of an event that actually did not occur. False memory can be vivid, emotional, and can be held with great confidence. Studies have suggested that formation of false memory can be because of sleep deprivation affecting memory. The amount of sleep an individual many need can vary from time to time, however if a person goes several days of sleep deprivation, he or she can experience difficulty learning new information and paying attention, and can experience a few episodes of hallucinations.
The findings of this research would reinforce findings of previous research specifically in relation to the robustness of false memories. The experiment undertaken by students will also be helpful to the study of false memories specifically to test the reproducibility of this type of experiment.
By and large, researchers assert that the customary understanding regarding research and the subsequent views garnered through the research of memory can straightforwardly provide justification for the understanding of false memories (Schacter, 1999). As a starting point it is easy to interpret the understanding of this theoretical paradigm by accepting that the reconstructive nature of memory was grounded in research by Bartlett’s 1932 study (as cited in Gleaves, et. al, 2004) in which he established that an individual’s experiences or occurrences are reconstructed in the light of present views, using available schemas, that is, knowledge structures. In fact, such schemas guide not only the retrieval of events, but even their storage (Straube,