Loftus and Pickrell

LOFTUS &PICKRELL

BACKGROUND/CONTEXT:

• Interested in how and why memory fails
• Aptly noted, memories do not exist in a vacuum
• Continually disrupt each other through a mechanism - interference
• Retroactive -tendency of newly learned memories impedes the recall of previous ones
• Proactive - tendency of previously learned memories impedes the recall of later ones
• Receipt of new misleading information in some ways result in people making error when report what they saw [RETROACTIVE]
• Central goal =Understanding how people are tricked by revised data

Early Designs:

1. Participants witness complex event (e.g. simulated violent crime)
2. ½ participants presented with misleading information about event
3. ½ do not get any information
4. All attempt to recall original event
5. E.g. a) Participants saw video depicting a killing in crowded a town square

b) Received written information about killing

       c) Some misled (e.g. critical blue vehicle referred as white vehicle)

       d) Those not presented with phony information recall more accurately

       e) Misleading post-event information can alter a person’s recollection

in powerful ways

AIM/HYPOTHESIS: To investigate whether it is possible to implant an entire false memory for something that never happened.

Early Designs: (Lost In a Shopping Mall)

1. 14-year-old boy named Chris
2. Description of 3 true and 1 false (Jim helped to construct)
3. Instructed to write about all 4 events for 5 days
4. False event: 5 years old; lost at University City shopping mall; family often went shopping at; crying heavily; rescued by elderly man; reunited with family
5. Over 5 days, Chris remembered more and more about getting lost
6. False memory given rating 8; true memories given rating 1, 10, and 5
7. Hard time believing memory being lost was the false one

OVERVIEW OF STUDY:

• Subjects thought they were participating in a study of the “kinds of things you may be able to remember from your childhood”
• Three true events; one false “lost” event.
• Interviewed on two separate occasions.

METHOD: Experiment with self-report (semi- structured) interviews

VARIABLES: IV- three stages of booklet completion, Interview 1 and Interview 2; DV- percentage of participants recalling true and false events at all 3 stages, ratings of clarity of memory 1 to 10, ratings of confidence in ablility to recall more details 1 to 5

DESIGNS: Repeated measures (all participants completed conditions of IV)

SAMPLE: 3M/21 F aged from 18-53. Recruited by University of Washington students (opportunity sampling). Include subject and subject’s relative. Primarily parent-child pair or sibling pair (youngest at least 18). Relative knowledgable about childhood experience of the subject which is the younger member of the pair.