Elizabeth Loftus is a well recognized psychologist. Elizabeth is known for her eyewitness memory, and the different ways it can change (Hockenbury, Nolan, Hockenbury, 2016). Loftus collaborated with several other colleagues on many studies dealing with memory and memory distortion. Loftus then continued on in her research to find that source confusion on memories, lead to false memories. False memories are the distorted or fabricated recollection of something that did not actually happen (Hockenbury,et al., 2016). False memories then became huge in courtroom cases which lead Elizabeth to be known as an expert witness that was able to evict criminals just by using her technique to draw out memories. Elizabeth Loftus was born on October 16,
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This study involved 24 participants who were given four different scenarios that happened when they were a child. These scenarios were provided from close relatives, except for one. One of the four scenarios was the pseudoevent, which is an event that didn’t happen. For the study Loftus and Pickrell made the psuedoevent about the participant being around the age of five to six being lost in a mall, and was found by an elderly lady who eventually helped them reunite with the family.The participants were to read all four event descriptions and write down as much details they could remember for each event. A couple weeks later they were brought in again and they had to do the same thing, read the event descriptions and write all the details they could remember. Two weeks after that they were asked again what they could remember about the four events. On the final interview six out of the 24 participants had come up with memories about being lost in the …show more content…
With this finding she started another study that soon revealed that false memories sometimes rely on semantic or conceptual information. For example, if the participant inaccurately remembers studying a word that did not appear earlier but is semantically related to items that were shown they are able to use the other items as clues. Such as the participant studying the word apple, but is later shown grape, banana, and orange. With using her knowledge in neuroimaging she found that the brain regions that deal with semantic or conceptual processing can both deal with true and false memories. Which can help explain why false memories can
This study involved 24 participants who were given four different scenarios that happened when they were a child. These scenarios were provided from close relatives, except for one. One of the four scenarios was the pseudoevent, which is an event that didn’t happen. For the study Loftus and Pickrell made the psuedoevent about the participant being around the age of five to six being lost in a mall, and was found by an elderly lady who eventually helped them reunite with the family.The participants were to read all four event descriptions and write down as much details they could remember for each event. A couple weeks later they were brought in again and they had to do the same thing, read the event descriptions and write all the details they could remember. Two weeks after that they were asked again what they could remember about the four events. On the final interview six out of the 24 participants had come up with memories about being lost in the …show more content…
With this finding she started another study that soon revealed that false memories sometimes rely on semantic or conceptual information. For example, if the participant inaccurately remembers studying a word that did not appear earlier but is semantically related to items that were shown they are able to use the other items as clues. Such as the participant studying the word apple, but is later shown grape, banana, and orange. With using her knowledge in neuroimaging she found that the brain regions that deal with semantic or conceptual processing can both deal with true and false memories. Which can help explain why false memories can