False Memories Essay

False memories are the result of your brain recalling previous events that have taken place. Not only can memories be mixed with other events from the past but it has been shown that these false memories can come from events that have never previously happened. (Ill and Marsh, 2009). Many psychologies have run tests in order to grasp an understanding of how these false memories are triggered. Experiments including “lost in the mall (Loftus and Pickrell, 1995)”, “Car accidents (Dodd and Bradshaw, 1980)”, “office theft (Zaragoza, 1998) and “word lists (Roediger and McDermott)” have all been done to find more knowledge on this subject. The results from these tests have concluded that some of the triggers of false memories include events that

They had arranged two experiments, each involving thirty-six test subjects. The first experiment that they completed was focused on recall and recognition. The test subjects sat through six lists of twelve words each and after each had finished they were told to recall the list. The results show that they recalled words that were similar but were not on the list. The second experiment that they completed consisted of twenty-four fifteen-word lists. The main goal of the experiment was to determine if the test subjects were able to distinguish if the words were words they had studied or if they were new words (Roediger and McDermott, 1995).

Zaragoza was also a researcher who completed a research study to learn more about false memories. Zaragoza took an “office theft “approach in which she showed her test subjects slides of an office theft. This also consisted of two experiments. Test subjects in the first experiment answered questions that were misleading while either unfocused on the situation or completely focused on the situation. After a certain amount of time they were then asked to recall information about the theft in which provoked many false memories. In experiment two the test subjects were given very little time to understand what they had just seen to then make a judgment almost immediately (Zaragoza,