Repression & False Memories – Flashcards
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Describe what is meant by repression
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Repression was conceived by Freud as a way to cope with stressful and traumatic memories. It was the idea that memories are encoded in such a way that banishes then from conscious recall until we can cope with them. Yet despite having no memory, they unconscious emotions would 'seep out' into every day and when they were uncovered, they would be in pristine condition
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How could self-help books play on repression
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Self-help books may have been helpful for those who had suffered genuine abuse. However, they were also extremely suggestive of generic features that were supposedly indicative of repressed abuse and so primed beliefs of abuse in people which encourage the search for evidence of abuse.
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State and Explain 4 ways dangerous therapy leads to belief of repression
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Priori assumptions assumed abuse without needing to prove the abuse had happened. Confirmation biases and specific hypotheses testing causes searches for information that would confirm the abuse. Plausibility enhancing evidence refers to the vulnerability to plausible evidence and constructs a bias towards the abuse occurring. Adoption and Confirmation for a belief of abuse where the therapist and the patient search for knowledge that believe exists with suggestive techniques which may develop false memories. These factors all develop a feedback look suggestive of abuse happening, when it may not have occurred.
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How does guided imagery link to repression?
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Therapists would encourage patients to try and imagine what the abuse would have been like which could cause 'imagination inflation' and source confusion resulting in increased false memory production
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How might rebirthing link to repression?
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Therapist attempts to help the patient relieve the trauma of child birth
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How might hypnosis link to repression?
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Puts the patient in a very suggestible state that can increase detail of accurate memories retrieved, but can also increase the production of false memories
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How might age regression link to repression and what has been found around this
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Idea that with therapy, can re-experience the behaviours and mind-set of a younger age to help elicit repressed memories. However, studies have found that 3 year old children were actually a lot more sensible than the age regressed adults suggesting that the adults may have been over-compensating their behaviours
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How might dream work link to repression?
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Idea that patient will present a dream in therapy which the therapist will provide a bogus interpretation indicative of repression. However, dreams are not indicative of actual events per se.
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What is the memory war?
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The debate between therapists and researchers over the existence of repression
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On what grounds to researchers debate repression
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Researchers suggest that if anything, a traumatic encoded memory should be stronger and therefore unlikely to be repressed and irretrievable. As such, they believed that traumatic memories were subject to the same memory processes (decay and distortion) as normal memories
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Describe the three-pronged evidence approach?
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Have to prove there was a memory of the event, that it was forgotten and irretrievable for a time and then later remembered.
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Describe retrospective memory studies
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Studies that ask today whether someone had been abused, and their continuity of the memories for that traumatic event.
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How are retrospective studies flawed?
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Flawed because a lack of understanding for the event may result in the event not being encoded as a traumatic event. Also flawed due to an inability to prove whether the memory was truly forgotten and inaccessible
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Describe prospective memory studies
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Individuals with a documented history of abuse are asked about the abuse to test their memory
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How are prospective memory studies flawed?
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The interviewee may not be willing to discuss the traumatic event or may refer to a different traumatic event. This cannot be taken as evidence for repression as cannot validate whether the memory was truly forgotten
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Describe case memory studies
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Individual or groups of cases are presented alongside a diagnosis.
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How are case memory studies flawed?
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Flawed because in most cases, one the memory is triggered by experience, it unwinds completely without the assistance of a therapist
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Describe the typical research problems that Williams (1994) encountered
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Williams (1994) conducted a study with participants who had experienced a traumatic event between 10 months and 12 years old. When interviewed, 38% of participants did not report their experience of abuse which was taken as evidence for repression. However, the participants were asked about the events during a time characterised by childhood amnesia as memories don't generally form until about 2-3 years old. Also, participants may be unwilling or embarrassed to discuss the trauma, especially when they were never directly asked about the trauma and instead reported other traumatic events.
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What are the summary of findings for repression
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To date, no strong evidence supports the notion of repression and recovered memories and instead suggests nothing beyond ordinary memory decay and retrieval. Serious methodological concerns exist through repression literature.
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What evidence exists for false memories
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Some memories have been shown to be false psychologically, biologically (eg intact hymens), geographically (person was in a different state) and factually (DNA proof)
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How do retractors provide evidence for false memories
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Many people who had allegedly repressed memories retracted their allegations after releasing that their memories were actually false. Instead they began to sue their therapists for dangerous therapy techniques that implanted false memories
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How can lab research provide evidence for false memories
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By demonstrating the ease with which false memories can be implanted and cause a false belief of an event occurring
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Describe Loftus & Pickerell's (1995) Lost in the Mall Experiment
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Interviewed participants about 4 events they had experienced, 3 were true events and one was false. 3 Interviews were conducted 3 weeks apart and used guided imagery techniques to get the participants to imagine what it would have been like. Initially, the participants had little or no memory for the false event, but by the end of the 3 interviews, 25% had a confident and detailed memory for the false event
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Outline Braun, Ellis & Loftus (2002) Mickey Mouse study?
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Participants were shown ad about Disney world that contained Mickey Mouse and were asked how confident they were that they had shaken Mickey Mouse's hand. Participants who saw the ad had increased confidence about shaking the hand. Another ad was shown, this time depicting Bugs Bunny at Disney world and participants reported greater confidence for shaking Bugs Bunny's hand following viewing the ad. However, this was a false event because Bugs Bunny is a dream works character and therefore, would not be at Disney world. Thus, showing the ease with which a false belief can be implanted and prevents any belief that it could just be jogging a previous memory.
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Outline Wade et al., (2002) hot air balloon study
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Interviewed participants about the events in 4 photos. 3 photos were real and hand been obtained from the participants families, and one photo had been doctored into a false event. Across 3 interviews, participants were asked to explain what had happened. Over 50% of participants developed a complete or partial memory for the doctored image and provided extra details of the event.
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Outline Lindsay et al., (2004) classroom photo study
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50% of participants were given a false narrative paradigm, and 50% were given an additional cue of a classroom photo. 78% of those with the class photo formed a false memory suggesting that the photos could increase the likelihood of false memory formation.
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Outline the recipe for false memory & draw the associated diagram
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Have to consider the event to be personally plausible, have to form a belief that the event occurred and have to construct a memory for the event. A source monitoring error must then occur to think that the false event was an actual memory of the event
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Describe how plausibility and script knowledge influence false memory
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Increasing plausibility can increase the likelihood of a false memory forming because assume that it was possible and they must have just forgotten.
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Describe pezdek et al's study on false memory and plausibility
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A group of Catholic and Jewish were asked about their attendance at a Jewish Sabbath or a Catholic Mass with the intention of implanting a false memory. Results showed that it was practically impossible to implant a false memory for an implausible memory as no Jewish participants believed they could've attended a catholic mass, and very, very few Catholic participants believed they may have attended a Jewish Sabbath. Yet, it was relatively easy to implant a memory that was religiously consistent and therefore plausible.
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According to Garry (1996), how can imagination impact the formation of false memories
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Participants were asked about their confidence that a list of event had occurred and were asked to rate the likelihood of their occurrence. They were then asked to imaine participating in all of the events and then rate the likelihood of occurrence again. They found that imagining an event occurring can result in imagination inflation whereby the confidence that they memory had occurred was significantly increased.
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What do we know about the belief of false memories
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Participants show genuine surprise when debriefed, are happy to say 'oops I made that up', and are happy to report that they don't remember, and develop reasons and justifications for their inability to remember. From this, we understand that participants develop a strong belief in the false memories
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What factors might make a person more vulnerable to false memories?
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The ability to resist, and the motivation to resist
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How might ability to resist impact vulnerability and what is this dependent on
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Participants would have to be able to see flaws in suggestions, which is dependent on self-regulation of attention and working memory - which decreases with stress
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How might motivation to resist impact vulnerability
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Must have the motivation to search for flaw which is dependent on the attachment with the source, the perceived expertise of the source and the perceived helplessness of the patient
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How do alien abduction memories indicate proneness to false memories
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Alien abduction narratives are becoming increasingly common and are often very similar - studies have been conducted on these memories
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Describe Clancy et al (2002) experiment about susceptibility to false memories
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Clancy examined 3 groups; control (no belief of abduction), repressed (belief of abduction, but no memory) & Recovered Memory (belief and memory of abduction). Each participant was presented with a DRM trial, a list of words and when asked to recall (whether the word the was present) a critical lure was added. Participants in the repressed and recovered groups were more likely to say the critical lure was present in the original list compared to the controls.
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What factors does Clancy et al (2002) believe false recall was related too?
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Depressive symptomology, Absorption (to mental imagery, and attentional narrowing), Magical Ideation (belief of greater control, ie superstitions and belief of aliens) and Disociative Experiences (ability to dissociate self from experience, ie daydream)
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How does McNally (2004) suggest that we can disentangle true and false memories & outline the his experiment
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PTSD patients show physiological symptoms when recounting accounts of trauma. Therefore, compared the physiological responses of controls with 'alien abductess' after they had listened to an account of an alien abduction. 60% of the 'alien abductees' showed PTSD-type symptoms
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What overall conclusions are there about repression and false memories
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Research doesn't support the notion of repression or recovered memories, and the evidence for false memories provides a better account for recovered memories. Unfortunately, at this stage we cannot tell the difference between false memories and true memories.
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What is meant by the burden of proof involving claims of false memories
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Still have to be able to prove that the abuse didnt occur and that memory for trauma exists
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Why was the findings from Wade et al (2002) worrying given the therapy techniques at the time
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Because therapists were using photo albums to talk through events yet the photos had been show to increase the implantation of false memories
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What is a false narrative paradigm
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The participants are told a story that is untrue and asked whether they can remember it occurring
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What is a DRM paradigm as used in Clancy et al 2002
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A list of words that are all semantically related to one unspoken word. This word is known as the 'critical lure' and is added into the word list upon recall to test vulnerability to false memory
