False Memories: Investigating the Reliability of Human Memory
Jordan Asnicar
University of Queensland
Memory plays a fundamental role in our everyday lives. Our ability to absorb, store and recall information, as we need it, is integral to how we understand and navigate the world. Most people consider their memory to be reliable however memory is malleable and is often manipulated by a range of factors that we’re not aware of (Laney & Loftus, 2013). Psychological studies have revealed both the tendency for memories to deteriorate (Zhu et al., 2011) and how the brain can be manipulated into creating false memories (Laney & Loftus, 2013). These false memories have the potential to be pervasive in the justice system and could …show more content…
Both experiments measured the effect of language on the recall of details of an event. Experiment I took a sample of forty-five undergraduate students and exposed them to seven films depicting car accidents. The sample was split into groups. The participants were given a questionnaire containing the critical question “About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?” Hit was substituted with a different verb for each group. It was hypothesised that verbs like smashed would provoke higher estimations of speed. Participants in Experiment II viewed a film depicting multiple car accidents. The sample of one hundred and fifty students received one of three questionnaires; one that contained the critical question: “About how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?” One that substituted the verb smashed for hit. Or alternatively, their questionnaire did not contain a question about the speed of the car. A week later participants completed a second questionnaire. The critical question referred to whether or not they had seen broken glass in the video a week prior. It was expected that participants in the smashed condition would be more likely to recall that they had seen broken glass in the video, despite there actually being none. Loftus and Palmer, with reference to Daniel (1972), claim that language can cause a reconstruction of the memory so that it more adequately fits with the verbal label the …show more content…
suggest that people are more likely recall misinformation if they acquired the misinformation socially. Each participant was either paired with a confederate from his or her age group, or alternatively they were provided with a narrative supposedly written by a person from his or her age group. Given this, the study did not account for how misinformation might be accepted of rejected when people from different demographics interact. Confederates were trained to respond to participants in very specific ways, which may not have produced a perfect model of an everyday conversation, potentially affecting whether misinformation was accepted or rejected by participants. Misinformation might be accepted more or less readily in non-laboratory situations due a variety of factors such as demand characteristics, nervousness. Gabbert et al. compared scores on non-critical questions between their manipulation and control groups. This checked that general deterioration of memory was not responsible for false recollections of the simulated crime event. Filler tasks were used in place of long time durations to allow the study to accurately examine memory. Both, participants in the biased-confederate condition and the biased-narrative condition recalled more inaccurate details than the control group. Comparison of the biased-conditions found that more misinformation was reported from participants in the biased-confederate condition than in the biased-narrative condition. In
Jordan Asnicar
University of Queensland
Memory plays a fundamental role in our everyday lives. Our ability to absorb, store and recall information, as we need it, is integral to how we understand and navigate the world. Most people consider their memory to be reliable however memory is malleable and is often manipulated by a range of factors that we’re not aware of (Laney & Loftus, 2013). Psychological studies have revealed both the tendency for memories to deteriorate (Zhu et al., 2011) and how the brain can be manipulated into creating false memories (Laney & Loftus, 2013). These false memories have the potential to be pervasive in the justice system and could …show more content…
Both experiments measured the effect of language on the recall of details of an event. Experiment I took a sample of forty-five undergraduate students and exposed them to seven films depicting car accidents. The sample was split into groups. The participants were given a questionnaire containing the critical question “About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?” Hit was substituted with a different verb for each group. It was hypothesised that verbs like smashed would provoke higher estimations of speed. Participants in Experiment II viewed a film depicting multiple car accidents. The sample of one hundred and fifty students received one of three questionnaires; one that contained the critical question: “About how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?” One that substituted the verb smashed for hit. Or alternatively, their questionnaire did not contain a question about the speed of the car. A week later participants completed a second questionnaire. The critical question referred to whether or not they had seen broken glass in the video a week prior. It was expected that participants in the smashed condition would be more likely to recall that they had seen broken glass in the video, despite there actually being none. Loftus and Palmer, with reference to Daniel (1972), claim that language can cause a reconstruction of the memory so that it more adequately fits with the verbal label the …show more content…
suggest that people are more likely recall misinformation if they acquired the misinformation socially. Each participant was either paired with a confederate from his or her age group, or alternatively they were provided with a narrative supposedly written by a person from his or her age group. Given this, the study did not account for how misinformation might be accepted of rejected when people from different demographics interact. Confederates were trained to respond to participants in very specific ways, which may not have produced a perfect model of an everyday conversation, potentially affecting whether misinformation was accepted or rejected by participants. Misinformation might be accepted more or less readily in non-laboratory situations due a variety of factors such as demand characteristics, nervousness. Gabbert et al. compared scores on non-critical questions between their manipulation and control groups. This checked that general deterioration of memory was not responsible for false recollections of the simulated crime event. Filler tasks were used in place of long time durations to allow the study to accurately examine memory. Both, participants in the biased-confederate condition and the biased-narrative condition recalled more inaccurate details than the control group. Comparison of the biased-conditions found that more misinformation was reported from participants in the biased-confederate condition than in the biased-narrative condition. In