False Memory Essay
A false memory is a mental experience that is mistakenly taken to be a veridical representation of an event from one’s personal past. Memories can be false in relatively minor ways and in major ways that have profound implications for oneself and others. False memories arise from the same side of your brain as do true memories and hence their study reveals basic mechanisms of memory. Early psychology researchers have been baffled by memory distortions. Just as the memory is made, it can be distorted in the same sense. A timeless example would be of Bartlett’s, 1930, studies in which he spoke of a fable from an unknown country and asked the people who he told it to, to recall it from memory. Bartlett noted that the memory errors found from the
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E. Loftus, 1970 psychologist, launched a research program investigating the impact on event memory of information. He suggested between the time of a witnessed event and the time people are required to testify the information is likely to be distorted. One of his studies he chose to test the memory of witnesses of an automobile crash. He showed test subjects a video of a car crash and asked them questions regarding the speed of which the cars smashed into each other. Though with another half of the group he replaced the word ‘smashed’ with ‘hit.’ The results a week later were staggering. The people in the first group were likely to say ‘yes’ to have seeing broken glass in the film even though that had never happened. In summary, generation, elaboration, and integration of information across individual experiences from different sources reflect such stimulations can overturn memory and complex thought. Though this very capacity of creativity makes us even more so vulnerable for memory distortions.
The most comprehensive account of false memories to date is source monitoring. With source monitoring framework it is shown that memory is attributed by ongoing judgement processes, not by mental experiences.
It can be further highlighted by four key aspects of memory attributions.
One: Various qualitative characteristics are what memory ascribing is based upon. An example would be perceptual, spatial, temporal, or emotional details that are taken as evidence from a mental experience that is a true
E. Loftus, 1970 psychologist, launched a research program investigating the impact on event memory of information. He suggested between the time of a witnessed event and the time people are required to testify the information is likely to be distorted. One of his studies he chose to test the memory of witnesses of an automobile crash. He showed test subjects a video of a car crash and asked them questions regarding the speed of which the cars smashed into each other. Though with another half of the group he replaced the word ‘smashed’ with ‘hit.’ The results a week later were staggering. The people in the first group were likely to say ‘yes’ to have seeing broken glass in the film even though that had never happened. In summary, generation, elaboration, and integration of information across individual experiences from different sources reflect such stimulations can overturn memory and complex thought. Though this very capacity of creativity makes us even more so vulnerable for memory distortions.
The most comprehensive account of false memories to date is source monitoring. With source monitoring framework it is shown that memory is attributed by ongoing judgement processes, not by mental experiences.
It can be further highlighted by four key aspects of memory attributions.
One: Various qualitative characteristics are what memory ascribing is based upon. An example would be perceptual, spatial, temporal, or emotional details that are taken as evidence from a mental experience that is a true