False memories: formation, characteristics, and psychological impacts

¶ … false memories. Research indicates that many subjects of abuse or other traumatic occurrences often develop false memories. They remember events either differently than they actually occurred, or they forget them entirely. One study by Doctors Roediger & McDermott in looked at undergraduates and how they processed memories. Deep and shallow encoding was used to help them remember lists of words. Some remembered the words correctly, while others remembered them falsely. The deeper encoding method provided more reliable results. Many scientists and psychologists have studied the formulation of false memories and why they occur. False memories can create problems with a person's view of the past and their view of themselves, and most experts believe for a person to be "whole again," they must reconstruct these memories or their psyche will be split in several directions.

Past research began as early as 1932 on false memories, although literature and study has increased in the past few decades. The broad base of literature on the topic offers several studies of false memories and why they occurred. Many studies center on past sexual or violent abuse that the victim remembers wrong or simply blocks out the memory entirely. Many studies also seek to find why people create these false memories. In the Roediger & McDermott study, they attempted to study undergraduate students to see how and why they remembered lists of associated words differently. They write, "Most evidence has been collected in paradigms that use sentences, prose passages, slide sequences, or videotapes" (Roediger & McDermott, 1995, p. 803). Their study is different because it used lists of words, and because of the way the scientists constructed their list. It is interesting to note that their research closely follows an earlier list study done in 1959 but largely overlooked by current researchers.

They cite previous studies and what they found, and compare their study to these prior studies. They believe their study is different because it used different techniques and that it showed that their participants were quite confident their responses were correct, and they saw them as remembered responses, something other studies have not accomplished.

There has been much study on false memories throughout the past few decades, largely because there have been reports of more false memories from psychiatrists and psychologists. This study helps bring greater understanding to the arena of false memories because instead of looking at memorization or "cued recall," it looks at free recall and the development of false memories. It is also important because it does show that there is a high rate of false recall in situations like this. The doctors write, "The false-alarm rate for the critical nonpresented items was much higher than for other related works that had not been presented" (Roediger & McDermott, 1995, p. 806). In addition, there were great numbers of students who were entirely confident that their false memories had indeed appeared on the lists, even when they had not appeared at all.

This study does give a new understanding to the existing literature, and it indicates a deeper level of research on false memories. In a sense, it recreates the 1959 research done by Doctor Deese, because it uses the word lists he developed for his study. It also uses the lists that his study showed provided the most false memories, so in a sense, the study could be seen as skewed, since the scientists had prior results knowledge and used that in the study.

The study focuses on several aspects of false memories and how they are generated. It also focuses on the confidence of the participants that their memories are actually correct, which is very interesting. The results of the first experiment led the doctors to create a second experiment that would build on the results of the first. This second experiment was much more detailed and used many more lists than the first experiment, and recall was immediately following hearing the list for some, while time occurred after hearing the list for others. The findings were especially interesting. This experiment provided even stronger false-recall results than the first experiment did. The students also reacted to whether they "remembered" the information or "knew" it, something the first study did not include. Those results were interesting, as well. They note, "The highest rates of false recognition and the highest proportion of remember responses to the critical nonstudied items occurred for those items that had been falsely recalled" (Roediger & McDermott, 1995, p. 809). They also discuss their theory of how these false memories occur, whether they are conscious or not, and what implications they have for the study of false memories in the future. They believe these memories may develop unconsciously, and it is not necessary for the subject to think consciously about another, false memory, that it can happen without their awareness, which may explain why the subjects were so confident in their memories.