PSYA1 Memory in Everyday Life Eyewitness Testimony

Memory in Everyday Life: False Memories

Lost in a shopping mall Loftus & Pickrell (1995) Aim: To see if people could have a memory implanted of being lost in a shopping mall. The memory was to be of being frightened and crying for an extended time but then being rescued by an elderly person & reunited with their family. Method: Recruited 24 participants (3 male, 21 female) & spoke to parents or a close relative to ascertain real life events from when they were 5 or 6. Participants were told that the study concerned the kinds of things you may be able to remember from your childhood. Three suggestive interviews took place in which participants were given brief descriptions of four events that supposedly occurred while they and a close family member were together. Three were true events and one was the false lost event. They were asked to write about these events in detail and were later interviewed about the events on two separate occasions. Findings: 25% fell sway to suggestion that they had a memory of being lost in a shopping mall whilst 75% resisted the suggestion about being lost and they continued to resist during the second interview. During the first interview, 17 participants maintained that they had no memory whatsoever of the false event happening to them. One additional subject, who had earlier accepted the event partially, now claimed that she did not remember being lost. Discussion: These findings suggest that people can be led to believe that entire events happened to them as a result of suggestion. Loftus and Pickrell make no claims for the percentage of people percentage of people who might be prone to be misled, only that this is evidence for false memory formation. Evaluation : Getting lost is not an uncommon childhood experience and the account may have evoked a similar but true memory. Suggestions can become linked to other knowledge about being lost (stories of others & images of lost children) and become confounded or integrated with that knowledge to make a new memory. However, would it be so effective if it were more unusual? The participants were also given three true memories from a trusted source could this have acted as an inducement to accept a
N J Gardner 1

PSYA1 Memory in Everyday Life Eyewitness Testimony

Lost in a shopping mall Loftus & Pickrell (19951) Loftus has continued to demonstrate the circumstances under which our memories can be shown to be unreliable and prone to contamination from questioning and suggestion. In her investigation with into whether or not it was possible to create false memories for a fictitious childhood event Loftus and Pickrell used the analogy of a Trojan horse when explaining how new information influences memory recall. What do you think they meant by this? ...................................................................................................................... .............................. ...................................................................................................................... .............................. ...................................................................................................................... .............................. ...................................................................................................................... .............................. Elizabeth Loftus and Jacqui Pickrell thought that some form of schematic reconstruction may account for the creation of false memories. What people appear to do at the time that they encounter false details is to recall schematic knowledge that is closely related to the false event. Then they think about the new information in conjunction with the pre-existing schema. When they later try to remember the false event they recall the false information and the underlying schema together. Hence, false memories can be viewed as a form of source confusion.
Diagram representing how the process described by Loftus & Pickrell (1995) might work:

Loftus, E. F., & Pickrell, J. E. (1995). The formation of false memories. Psychiatric Annals, 25, 720725.

N J Gardner

PSYA1 Memory in Everyday Life Eyewitness Testimony

Loftus & Pickrell (2003) Whats up doc? Im no Disney character I only have eyes for MGM

Aim: ...................................................................................................................... .............................. ...................................................................................................................... .............................. ...................................................................................................................... .............................. Procedure: 120 participants who had in their childhoods were divided into .. groups and asked to evaluate . and fill out questionnaires and Group 1: Group 2: answer questions about a trip to Disneyland.

Group 3:

Group 4:

Results:

N J Gardner

Evaluation: