![]() However, this is not to imply that false memories never occur. That this study has been used to argue that individuals who admitted to abusing children are suffering from false memories is highly questionable (Freyd, 1996) 2. There is a huge difference between believing that one may have accidentally damaged by a computer by pressing a wrong key, which many people can some extent relate to, and somehow being lead to falsely believe that one sexually abused their own child for years. The actual study was about pressing the wrong key on a computer and damaging it. Individuals such as Loftus have represented the study behind this idea as somehow applying to false confessions of childhood sexual abuse. However, these studies are often misinterpreted and misrepresented, especially by the media, as support of the more common use of the term "false memory " that is, of support that entirely false memories can be constructed (Freyd, 1996) 2.Īnother case of research being misapplied to "support" the existence of entirely fabricated memories is the idea that 90% of individuals will confess to a crime which they did not do if told that someone saw them do it. If an individual was abused throughout their childhood and later falsely remembered experiencing abuse closely related to that which they experienced, it would not be productive to label this a "false memory" due to the political nature of the term, yet it is this that more closely matches what such studies find. There are also extremely important differences between remembering words that are strongly related to presented words and remembering incidents which are allegedly (according to false memory syndrome proponents) entirely unrelated to anything that the individual actually experienced. There are important differences between remembering individual words and remembering entire episodes. Labeling them support of false memories may greatly confuse the issue. Previously, false endorsement of these items would have been attributed to intrusion errors, commission errors, or false alarms (Pezdek & Freyd, 2008) 1. These studies present lists of related words and then ask participants if related but not presented words were included. ![]() For example, some individuals apply the term "false memory" to studies that utilize the Deese, Roediger, and McDermott paradigm. However, this latter definition can cause confusion when it's used to apply findings of normal mistakes in memory to arguments about cases of recovered memories (Freyd, 1996) 2. It was first used by Elizabeth Loftus while attempting to generalize findings about false memories of being lost in a mall to recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse (Pezdek & Freyd, 2008) 1.Ī false memory can also refer to any memory that is significantly inaccurate. The term "false memories" was coined to describe memories of events that never occurred. ![]()
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