Essay On False Childhood Memories

False Childhood Memories I chose to research the study, “a picture is worth a thousand lies: using false photographs to create false childhood memories.” This research study was done by Wade, Garry, Read, and Lindsay. The participants were given four photographs to look at from their childhood. One of the photographs was doctored; it never happened. The goal of this experiment was to see if the doctored photograph would be enough to produce a false childhood memory in the participant. In this experiment, there were twenty adult confederates who chose a family member who was at least 18 years of age, had never taken a psychology course, and who had never taken a hot air balloon ride. The confederates had to show their family member 4 photos from when they were between the ages of 4-8. For the false photo, they decided to photoshop the child into a hot air balloon ride. The participants were interviewed 3 times during a 1-2 week time period. They audiotaped the first and third interview and followed a Step-Wise procedure. The participants had to talk about everything they remembered during the event; answer general questions to help clarify details regarding the event, and answer questions about the experience of remembering the event. They were told during …show more content…
Not surprisingly, many did not recall the hot air balloon ride. When this would happen, the interviewer would make sure the patient knows that many people have a hard time initially recalling a childhood memory because they haven’t thought about it in a long time. If this still did not bring back any memory recollection, then the experimenter had to use guided imagery to help recreate the memory. They were given the photograph that they did not recall after interview 1 to look at every night, and to try and recall the forgotten