False Memories

False memory is the ability of individual to recall false events or distorted happenings when presented with misleading information. The article “The formation of false memories” by Elizabeth Loftus focuses on the formation of such memories by individuals. In the article, she gives a number of experiments and the outcomes of the experiments. The University of Washington did conduct a research on the issue and the article recalls the results from the research. According to the article, memories are not occupying an empty vacuum and instead they keep on interfering with one another. Disruptions in the memory are because of either things that the subject experienced before (proactive interference) or things they experience afterwards (retroactive interference) (Loftus & Pickrell, 1995). The article looks at a number of cases when researchers give subjects truthful information and later on false information and how they incorporate lies into the factual events.

The objective of the article is to shed light into this topic of cognitive psychology. It seeks to perform experiments on a number of people and understanding the level of creation of false memories. Achieving the objective means performing the actual research on individuals and to this effects the study is able to show that indeed memory is not in an empty space but rather they disrupt each other an act that experts in the field refer to as interference (Loftus & Pickrell, 1995). The theoretical assumption in this field is that individuals have the capability of changing the facts of a story after sometime due to either proactive disruptions or retroactive interferences. The article (1995) is able to indentify that positively by the use of subjects supplied by the university of Washington students. While at it, the article is able to prove retroactive interferences effects do affect how individuals recollect information.

In her article, Loftus analyzes how information that a subject receives after a given incident causes the individual to change the events as they did happen. She does indicate that the changes are predictable and that they do depend on the amount of information that the subject receives after the events. If at a particular time, experts offer the contradictory information to subjects on an issue they were previously aware about in the end they do not recollect the exact happenings. It is obvious from the article that the author is opposed to repression subsequently leading to alterations of the cornerstones that hold together the theories of psychoanalysis. The article does change the way people view memories from childhood and their accuracy. She seeks to indicate that it is difficult to remember happenings of childhood accurately and that such memories have bias.

The views of the article on the issue indicate that jury and the public should start treating childhood rape cases differently. This brings out the importance of this theory and its applicability to the world today. Most of the studies in the cognitive false memories have been on proactive events but the article seeks to shift that view by indicating that retroactive events do affect the way people remembers things from their childhood. To prove this particular point she uses a number of hypothetical and real life situations. Accordingly, the article (Loftus & Pickrell, 1995) is changing how psychologists will apply false memories in their analysis of cognitive psychology. According to the article, there are numerous distorted reports from a number of studies. Many are times people report extra details like tape recorders or even a color that was not there. Most of this people believe that those events did actually happen in reality because of memory disruptions.

The author gives proof to this regard by giving a number of research experiments conducted by the University of Washington. In one of them, they give a young boy wrong information about his disappearance but even after debriefing, the young boy mixes the factual details with the misleading information. Most notable of them is a particular experiment conducted in the same institution where relatives to a number of people gave them the wrong information concerning some event in their childhood. Surprisingly, after the very same relatives apologized for the misleading information and a correct version given to them they still did give misleading information. These revelations by the article are remarkable given the amount of research that the author and her group undertook to come up with such results. Hence, the article is a good source of understanding effects of retroactive events to childhood memory.

Suggestions from the article that are clear is that therapists have to be extra careful while dealing with cases involving childhood memories given that they are not exactly correct and different people have different levels of accuracy. Consequently, according to the concepts contained in the article they should consider each individual singly rather than as wholes. Hence, each case needs assessment on timing, credibility, potential, and motives in order to order to indicate the meaning of mental product (Loftus & Pickrell, 1995). Rather than the usage of uncovered memories in therapies, the article suggests the usage of functioning enhancements and the best aspects of the patient’s life. This is evident from the argument from the article that memories depend on the amount of exposure to post events on the individual. Hence, in many cases the method of therapy fails to meet the required objectives.

The methods that the author uses are both quantitative and qualitative in nature. This given that the study conducts research based on the ability of the subjects to recall events making the study qualitative. On the other hand, it is quantitative in that it analyses the whole data using statistical methods. The research used twenty-one females, three male and their age varied from 18 to 53, and all of them had to complete all the phases of the study. The research included using relatives to narrate childhood stories that are not family folklores. Three stories among the four stories narrated were true but one of them was not true. After that the requirement was to assesses their ability to recall events and thereafter went home but with an advice not to discuss the events with relatives. The second interview intended to get as much information as possible from the interviewee and allowed them to rate the confidence level and the clarity of their information. The results were that the subjects were only able to recall 68% of the true events hence the rest was fictions information (Loftus & Pickrell, 1995). The method used in the article is good and gives reliable information.

The article is intimate with other materials on the same subject. This is evident from the fact the author does cite a number of writings that support her concept regarding the situation. At the end of the article, she does include a bibliography section that features a number of literature materials that the article uses. Among the literary materials that the author uses include “human theory” by a renowned psychologist Greene and Hymans et al “False Memories of childhood experiences”. Not only is the article showing strong support for other writings on the same subject but the author also presents the issue in a vivid manner. The article is well arranged and clear to understand. Loftus arranges the article in manner that is easy to follow and understand by dividing into complimentary sub-titles. Consequently, the article is friendly to the reader due to the evident better arrangement in the paper.

The “formation of false memories” by Elizabeth Loftus is an incisive article giving details on how people tend to have disruptions in their memory. Loftus is very detailed in the article and includes in the article the methods of research that she uses. Accordingly, she allows the reader to use read the material easily without having any major hurdles. In the article, she gives direction to the field of cognitive development changing most if not all the corner stone’s making theories of the field. The article does a good job at proving that many of us do not remember happenings in our childhood with accurateness. Consequently, the jury and therapists should change the way they handle cases concerning childhood memories. Loftus also arranges her work meticulously allowing the reader to have an easy time reading the article, this by dividing concepts into easy to understand topics. Overall, the article is a milestone in the field of cognitive development psychology.

References

Loftus, E.F. & Pickrell, J.E. (1995). The formation of false memories. Psychiatric Annals, 25, 720-725.