Repressed Memories Case Study

The Case Against Memory Memories are an indicator of what individuals believe to be the truth. While some individuals may believe that an event occurred in early childhood, there are often parents that will not recall the event at all. It’s necessary, then, to establish if there are pieces of physical evidence that can be traced back to the memory in question. Without other evidence, memories become a case of “he said, she said,” which is not an ideal way of conducting investigations, let alone bringing charges upon individuals in court. For that reason, it is incredibly difficult to approach the subject of repressed memories, as neither side can be proven or disproven. I will examine how memories can be altered and adaptable over time, keeping …show more content…
As an example, in False Memories of Childhood Experiences, the experimenters asked individuals about getting lost, going to the hospital, a birthday, loss of a pet, a family vacation, and interaction with a famous person, which afterwards was checked by asking their parents (Hyman et. al, 184). When recalling the memories, the experimenters write that “The subjects had either recalled the event or had reconstructed a memory based on the first interview” (Hyman et. al, 186). In effect, people are capable of reconstructing memories that aren’t quite familiar to them, though it is noted that “None the less we found evidence that the process of false recall creation most probably depends on accessing some relevant background information” (Hyman et. al, 193). What memory requires is background information, so people can adapt their memories to fit the needs of the information. The implications of this are that people can easily make a false memory if they are given a reasonable amount of information about a specific event, though it remains to be seen if these individuals believe it. Moreover, Loftus writes in Creating Bizarre False Memories Through Imagination, that “It is possible that this false episodic content develops because of the reconstructive nature of memory. Participants may have drawn upon the episodic content of actions actually performed in this experiment and misattributed that content to actions only imagined or not presented,” which establishes how people use reconstructive memory to remember events that may have not occurred (Loftus, 430). For this reason, it is of the utmost importance to present objective statements to people when trying to recall any kind of memory. Memories are highly influenceable, which makes it possible for people to imagine things that did not happen, and believe them based on the reconstruction of their