False Memories

[AnthonyClifton]

Well, after a heavy day of phone calls, I was finding things out of place all over the kitchen, going to do something and finding it was done, etc. It's like my brain was on auto-pilot, and picked up on all the things I had wanted to do, but I was not aware of it because of the phone calls. It seems multi-tasking can really have some surprising results.

When it comes to talking on the phone or watching television, I'm the exact opposite. I must either pay complete attention to the thing or give up and do something else entirely. I find it utterly impossible to multitask in that way.

On the other hand, I tend to take a drawing or painting class or two at the local art museum every semester and find that I can sit and have animated conversations with other students while idly painting. When the conversation ends and I turn my full attention back to the painting, I discover that I've painting something that I would otherwise consider beyond my ability. And I can't recall having done it.

Similarly, I think it's a common occurance for a person to have driven several blocks or even miles and then to suddenly 'wake up' as from a trance and realize that they can't recall stopping at traffic signals, avoiding other vehicles, etc.

When this happens to me, I find it terrifying to think that I might have run stop signals, barely missed nuns and school children and obliviously driven through all manner of mayhem like Mr. Magoo. :shock:

 

[AnthonyClifton]

Isn't it fascinating to think of near-autonomous parts of your own brain, the kind of mischevious, fascinating things you see in dreams, being able to play around in your memories? Disquieting too...

There seems to be less about it in the media now, but this reminds me of the 'repressed memory' scandals where so-called professionals were 'implanting' false memories in people's minds. I recall that much of the time these professionals weren't deliberately doing this, it was just a combined effect of suggestive and leading questions and possible a desire to please on behalf of the patient.

What always bothered me about the implanted memory 'scandals,' was that, if one professional could implant a memory of [for example] being molested in a child's mind, why couldn't another professional similarly alter a child's mind to remember NOT being molested and implant a memory of another professional implanting a memory of BEING molested?

It seems to be that a 'defense' team would have far greater motive [protecting a guilty person from responsbility] to erase a memory of an actual event and then implant a memory of the prosecution team implanting a false memory of the event than would a prosecution team to simply implant a false memory to convict an innocent person.

 

[Anonymous]

Perhaps dental fillings are to blame. According to this website, they claim mercury/silver dental fillings can cause a very wide variety of health problems, including memory loss.
If it can cause memory loss, perhaps the mercury can cause false memories also.
Very interesting.

http://www.dldewey.com/columns/amalgf.htm

 

[Anonymous]

False memories and 'implanting' memories is a facet of psychology often employed by so-called regressive hypnotists and cults such as scientology. I remember one case being reported where a woman regressed back to her birth and described the hospital room in a great deal of detail. After the session she swore it was completely accurate and how she remembered it.

The only problem was that a lot of the kit she described wouldn't have been around when she was born and more closely resembled the kind of room you would see on an episode of ER. The suggestion was that she wanted to remember, so filled in the blanks and this became 'real' to her. The same goes with past-life regression. Once someone wants to believe, their imagination does the rest of the work and this eventually becomes a 'real' memory rather than the imagined fiction that it is. I think its been noted also that alien sightings always seem to resemble the popular view of what aliens or spaceships MAY look like at the time in popular culture, which backs up this theory to some extent too.

The same thing happens with dreams. I had a dream once where I heard about a football player being sold on the radio news. At work later that day, I swore this information was true but it wasn't and there was no record of such a news item anywhere.

I think the vast majority of paranormal reports or recollections are a mixture of false memories, filling in the blanks or half-awake dreams (look at how many reports are where its late at night or early morning, where someone has been asleep immediately prior to the event, where events were from childhood or events where someone has been under the influence at the time).

I'm not saying people are lying - they are not. These are memories for whatever reason have been adjusted to create a much more exciting event than the far more mundane likely reality.

Its very fascinating though

 

[shah_aoul]

A few years ago my partner and I moved from the UK to Sydney. We live in the suburbs surrounding the city, but rarely go into the CBD. In the five years that my partner and I have been together I have met her father four times. He lives in Adelaide. I have a distinct and very vivid memory of being in Sydney with my partner and having to meet her father at a certain time outside the Queen Victoria building. I can recall many aspects of this event - the weather, the time, even the American tourists that stopped and asked my partner's father for directions. He responded that he was unable to help them as he wasn't from Sydney.

The thing is, this event never actually happened. I discussed it with my partner thoroughly and we both agree that we and her father have never been into the city together. I certainly have not gone to the city with him. This is a totally false memory (there is no way that this could have ever occured), yet in my mind it is as real and vivid as any other memory.

 

[Anonymous]

I just wanted to add one of my own "false memories" or whatever it might be called.
At one time, in the house I lived in, there was a small oddly shaped little drawer in the kitchen, the drain pipe came through the ccorner of the room, and the kitchen cabinets in the corner were shaped to curve around the pipe, as was this little drawer. It was too small to be of much use, but I kept a few little odds and ends in there, a pair of scissors, some needles and thread, and some emergency candles and matches.
Anyway, it appears I am the only person who remembers this little drawer.. not too surprising.. but I recently found a picture of that kitchen.. and there is no such drawer in the picture ..Now I remember reaching into it during a power failure and getting out the candles and matches, for one thing. And I remember taking out the scissors once and dropping them, so they stuck in the floor, creating a small cut in the lino which got worn larger with time. In the picture there is a small spot, in the spot I remember the scissors dropping.
I don't know whether this is a false memory, or if somehow, sometimes, perhaps, things change over time. Perhaps we sometimes move to other dimensions and small details change.

 

[Sadescha]

My parents and my sister always accused me of remembering things that never happened (can't think of an example off the top of my head, though). I wonder how much truth there was to that?

Sometimes, I also find myself having trouble distinguishing whether or not something I was thinking about actually happened, or if I just thought it up. For instance, if I am daydreaming about, say, beating up the school bully, I find myself shortly afterwords wondering if I really *did* beat up the school bully or just imagined it. I suppose that just means I have an overactive imagination, right? Regardless of the reason for it, I find it disturbing how easily my thoughts and memories can be tampered with even on accident :shock:

 

[Anonymous]

Isn't it fascinating that so many people seem to have some incident that they can mention here?

It also makes me wonder how many of our memories which we assume to be true really are, simply because we've never discussed them with anyone to verify them.

I think the 'commingling' thing happens an awful lot. For example, when I think of my lessons at school (ten years ago or more), I get a 'generic' memory of what each class looked and more importantly felt like. It's a more useful memory than retaining a perfect memory of what I studied on each lesson. Maybe that's why I never got top marks!

As for the clay theory - yes, I think the concept of memories being 'hardened' is actually standard neurological theory now. I might be wrong, though... or made it up in my head, of course!

An interesting sideline is what happens when paranormal phenomena is 'experienced' by more than one person. Memory is malleable after the event by insistent proddings, as we've established with hypnotists.

Can a single person who thinks they've seen something convince others that they saw something too? I'd suggest yes. The Mary of Fatima springs to mind here. Weren't there two or three children involved, but only one who sounded like it was really happening to her?

 

[gridban]

Wow - I can really relate to all this. I can't think of a specific example but many times I've remembered an incident, involving myself and a friend, which the friend *swears* never happened - not merely that they don't remember it, but that they're *sure* it didn't happen. Now that could merely mean I have a better memory than them, but I'm not so sure, especially after reading this thread. One thing I do remember (or do I?), not exactly a false memory but interesting, is in the living-room of the house I grew up in there was a large (say two-foot in circumference) glass vase with dried flowers in it, I asked my mother about it and she said we only had it for about a week, but in my memory of that room it's always there.

I think it's interesting that we seem to have little control over our memories, we don't choose what we remember or forget, some unconscious part of our brain seems to do the selection for us - many things I want to remember I forget, while remembering other things I'd much rather forget...

 

[Dingo667]

Sometimes the people who tell you that it never happend might be wrong.
Whe I was very small, about 2yrs. I used to open the drawers of my mums bedside cabinet a lot. In it was a skin coloured blob, about the ize of an adult toe. I remember my mum calling it a "Chrischan" [an old german colloquial for toe!]. Now I really have no idea what the heck it was, only that it seemed medical in some form. I was fascinated by that thing and a few years ago, when my mum and I spoke about the old flat, I mentioned it to her. She then told me that we never ever had a thing like that. I was adamant but she said that she would remember a strange thing like that.
Fast forward another cuple of years and we are talking about the same thing again. This time I tell her that I very probably made this thing up.
Guess what. She suddenly remembered it. Still didn't really know what it was for [she thought it might have been for her bunion] but at least she remembered, or did she?
Maybe my account sounded so detailed when I asked her the first time round that the second time she might have had a mental image.
I still think that I saw it, but reading this thread I'm not so sure.

This goes also for my best friend. When we remember old times and my memory is different from hers, who is right? Why is the one that says: "It didn't happen" usually more believed than the other?

Didn't Brians mum in "The life of Brian" say: "...Its a great big animal with huge... Or did I dream it?"
I agree that memory is pretty mallable at first but if two people believe strongly that their memory is the right one, who is to say they are right or wrong. If noone was observing the incident apart from these two, then both memories are equally likely to have happend, even if these memories include weird phenomena. Unless we go back and replay and watch the incident, there is absolutely no way to "force" one memory to be the truth.

 

[Anonymous]

I have this one strange memory like that.

I distinctly remember falling into a swimming pool that had a plastic cover over it (like the one in that movie, Unbreakable) when I was 4 or 5 years old.
It's weird because I remember it so clearly, even though I was only young. I remember the plastic wrapping around me and then someone pulling me out.

But my mother and father tell me that it never happened.

 

[Anonymous]

I have had memories from childhood that turn out to be wrong, but they are so vivid, to vivid for a dream to be confused with reality, but after having so many (like i have had) you just learn to live with it and not dwell over it

 

[mossy_sloth]

two bits of weirdness this morning that I am attributing to the false memory syndrome.

Went out into the living room this morning to find the armchair positioned across the door to my study. Now it was in this position for a couple of days as I was looking after a baby bird that I had found and wanted to keep the dog out of that room (she can open the sliding door with her nose). But I distinctly remember moving the armchair back to its normal position when the little bird died, as I had to make sure the phone cord wasn't caught up and I lined up the chair so it covered a crack in the wall.

So I asked my partner if he had moved it back across the door, and he said, no, I must be mistaken.

However, then he went to feed the dog, and came back asking if I had already done it, as her dish was inside. I definitely hadn't as I had just woken up. He says he definitely fed her outside last night, and there is no reason why the food dish should be inside.

The funny thing is, the armchair would have been in that position two days ago, when I had the bird. And the dish would also have been left inside two days ago as it rained and the dog was fed inside.

So my reasoning... either both my partner and myself have shown uncharacteristic absentmindedness, and don't really remember what happened yesterday... or there is some false memory thing happening with both of us...or...someone is playing silly buggers *glares suspiciously*

 

[Muva1]

I recently had tonsillitis, and when I told my brother in an e-mail letter ( he lives abroad)he replied that he remembered me having my tonsils removed when we were children - an operation neither I nor anyone else in the family have had. In fact, until last year I had never spent a night in Hospital except to have babies.

 

[ramonmercado]

Having false memories is a real phenomenon
16 Nov 2005

Children and adolescents - even adults for that matter - may report with all sincerity that they had been sexually abused in the past or witnessed a murder or other crimes. But sometimes the person, though earnest, is wrong: The memory is a false one.

Having false memories - "recalling" events that did not happen - is a real phenomenon that is vitally important to law and medicine. Since it has only been readily recognized since the early 1990s, the science of false memory is a complex and burgeoning field.

A new book, "The Science of False Memory" (Oxford University Press, 2005) by two Cornell University professors, Charles Brainerd and Valerie Reyna, brings together and makes accessible to the general reader the decade or so of intensive research on false memory.

"False memories are a hot topic in psychological research and a major issue for society," says Daniel L. Schacter, professor of psychology at Harvard University. "'The Science of False Memory' provides a compelling scholarly analysis that ranges from laboratory studies to cases in the courtroom. Written by two leaders in the field, this book is must reading for memory researchers, psychologists and anyone else interested in understanding why people sometimes remember events that never happened." Elizabeth Loftus of the University of California adds, "This is the definitive work on false memories … everything you might want to know about them and more."

"In the past few years, there's been a broad-based outpouring of research on the circumstances in which normal people are possessed of positive, confident memories of things that never happened to them," says Reyna, professor of human development at Cornell. "The flood of new data has stimulated comparable advances in our theoretical understanding of these false-memory phenomena, though this fact is not yet widely appreciated."

To further those understandings among more people, the book explores four major topics: theories of false memory, adult experimental psychology of false memory, false memory in legal contexts and false memory in psychotherapy.

Part I covers the history of the science of false memory, reviews the varied methods that have been used to study false memory and discusses research regarding age changes in false memory and theories that have been used to explain and make predictions about false memory. Part II reviews the basic science of false memory, including theoretical explanations of false memory and laboratory research with adults, adolescents and children. Part III covers the applied science of false memory, discussing false memory in criminal investigations, both with children and adults, as well as in psychotherapy, including recovered memories of previous lives. Part IV considers emerging areas for experimentation, including work to build on mathematical models, aging effects and cognitive neuroscience.

The book is intended not only for researchers in experimental and clinical psychology, but also for child protective services workers, clinical psychologists, defense attorneys, elementary and secondary teachers, general medical practitioners, journalists, judges, nurses, police investigators, prosecutors and psychiatrists.

Susan Lang
[email protected]
Cornell University News Service
http://www.news.cornell.edu

 

[Muva1]

Hmm..The thunderbird photo is a classic example.

 

[highog123]

What's the Thnderbird photo?

 

[Muva1]

So, how do we explain this weird phenomena of a photograph that so many remember seeing and yet no one can seem to find? Author Mark Hall believes that the description of the photo creates such a vivid image in the mind that many people who have a knowledge and an interest in curious and eclectic things begin to think the photo is familiar. It literally creates a “shared memory” of something that does not exist. We think we have seen it, but we actually have not.

http://www.prairieghosts.com/tbirdaz.html

 

[browja]

hmmm, strange...

 

[river_styx]

Who can say for sure when a memory is false or not?

All of your memories could be false. You might only have popped into existence five minutes but have a whole lifetime stored in your head.

 

[ramonmercado]

All of your memories could be false. You might only have popped into existence five minutes but have a whole lifetime stored in your head.

How many of us are replicants with planted false memories? Do we run from the Blderunner or fight back?

 

[Mal_Adjusted]

greets

Ramon -

many thanks for posting details of the brainerd and reyna book.

review to follow

 

[river_styx]

All of your memories could be false. You might only have popped into existence five minutes but have a whole lifetime stored in your head.

How many of us are replicants with planted false memories? Do we run from the Blderunner or fight back?

Well it makes you wonder how many of these 'stories' such as The Matrix or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, are clues left behind by people who've found their way out of what we consider to be reality.

Taking into account Phillip K. Dick's experimentation with certain exotic substances. Perhaps they're illegal because they free us from the control of whatever it is controlling us?

Afterall, the best way to keep people enslaved is to convince them that they're free.

 

[Anonymous]

This essay pertaining to the subject is interesting.

 

[henry]

Ms Sloth -

There are three questions Id like to ax in regard to your original post (re:telephone position):

1. Could there have been a window or mirror in the room oriented in such a way that visually you appeared (in reflection) to be beside the refrigerator rather than the door?

2. Since you were in conversation at the time, you would have been concentrating on the matter at hand rather than the position of objects in the room. Could it have been that whilst talking you were mostly looking across the room at the fridge and have made a subconscious connection between the phone, the conversation and the fridge?

3. Do you recall the subject matter of the conversation you had on the telephone, and who you spoke to? Were there a series of calls you made/took at that house or one specific occasion?

 

[mossy_sloth]

HenryFort, interesting questions...

1. There was a glass sliding door next to the phone, but such that if you were on the phone you would not be able to see the fridge reflected in it. There WAS something hanging on the other wall, it may have been a mirror but I seem to recall it being a print of a famous painting. I can see it in my mind but I can't remember who did it. I don't think there was glass in the frame though.

2. I like this idea. This one seems quite plausible to me. THe only problem is that my memory includes me looking down on the rubbish bin, which wass next to the fridge. I could not have seen the bin from that angle from across the room. Still, I think this idea has definite possibilities.

3. I was only a kid when I used to go to this house, it was a family friend's house so I used to stay there quite often, as they had a daughter my age and we were good friends. On this occassion I was staying there and my mother had called to check upon me. I don't recall what the conversation was about, but I know it was definitely my mother who I spoke to. I don't specifically remember using the phone at their place on any other occasion, but I suppose I probably did from time to time..

Your questions really made me stretch my memory! Hope the answers helpled...

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

Just digging around and I pulled up these which show through laboratory tests that a rnage of techniques (guided imagery, hypnotic regression, etc.) can create false memories:

----------------
Clancy S.A., McNally R.J. & Schacter, D.L. (1999) Effects of guided imagery on memory distortion in women reporting recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse. Journal of Traumatic Stress. 12 (4). 559 - 69.

Abstract

We tested whether having participants imagine unusual childhood events inflates their confidence that these events happened to them, and tested whether this effect is greater in women who report recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse than in women who do not. Participants were pretested on how confident they were that certain childhood events had happened to them before being asked to imagine some of these events in the laboratory. New confidence measures were readministered. Although guided imagery did not significantly inflate confidence that early childhood events had occurred in either group, the effect size for inflated confidence was more than twice as large in the control group as in the group with recovered memory. These data suggest that individuals can counteract memory distortions potentially associated with guided imagery, at least under some conditions.

Whats interesting in this study is that those in the recovered memory group caught on to what the tests were aimed to show but that other tests they did that were less obvious showed that memories could be implanted easily.

Its why they had to move on and try other tests on less emotive fields like alien abdcution:

---------------
McNally, R.J. (2003) Recovering Memories of Trauma: A View From the Laboratory. Current Directions in Psychological Science. 12 (1). 32 - 3.

Abstract:

The controversy over the validity of repressed and recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) has been extraordinarily bitter. Yet data on cognitive functioning in people reporting repressed and recovered memories of trauma have been strikingly scarce. Recent laboratory studies have been designed to test hypotheses about cognitive mechanisms that ought to be operative if people can repress and recover memories of trauma or if they can form false memories of trauma. Contrary to clinical lore, these studies have shown that people reporting CSA histories are not characterized by a superior ability to forget trauma–related material. Other studies have shown that individuals reporting recovered memories of either CSA or abduction by space aliens are characterized by heightened proneness to form false memories in certain laboratory tasks. Although cognitive psychology methods cannot distinguish true memories from false ones, these methods can illuminate mechanisms for remembering and forgetting among people reporting histories of trauma.

------------------
McNally R.J., Lasko N.B., Clancy S.A., Macklin M.L., Pitman R.K. & Orr S.P. (2004) Psychophysiological Responding During Script-Driven Imagery in People Reporting Abduction by Space Aliens. Psychological Science. 15 (7). 493 - 7.

Abstract:

Is recollection of highly improbable traumatic experiences accompanied by psychophysiological responses indicative of intense emotion? To investigate this issue, we measured heart rate, skin conductance, and left lateral frontalis electromyographic responses in individuals who reported having been abducted by space aliens. Recordings of these participants were made during script-driven imagery of their reported alien encounters and of other stressful, positive, and neutral experiences they reported. We also measured the psychophysiological responses of control participants while they heard the scripts of the abductees. We predicted that if “memories” of alien abduction function like highly stressful memories, then psychophysiological reactivity to the abduction and stressful scripts would be greater than reactivity to the positive and neutral scripts, and this effect would be more pronounced among abductees than among control participants. Contrast analyses confirmed this prediction for all three physiological measures (ps<.05). Therefore, belief that one has been traumatized may generate emotional responses similar to those provoked by recollection of trauma (e.g., combat).

Its interesting that the recollection of alien abduction was at least as as stressful as recollection of other traumatic events that we know for certain did happen.

 

[Mal_Adjusted]

Hi

finally finished and submitted review of the brainerd and reyna book "the science of false memory".

brief summary - it's not for the faint-hearted. it summarises approx 800+ experiments on aspects of false memory. it's horrendously expensive - £49 in uk and $79.95 in USA (RRP). but it is the definitive work on how much we know about false memory in both children and adults. and yes you can implant false memories. and certain forms of psychotherapy coupled with suggestible clients can give rise to some spectacular cases involved MPD, childhood abuse and (by implication - as they don't report on the subject directly) alien abductions. also canned is hypnotic regression to discover past lives. lots on flase memory in police interviews etc too. very dense text but worth ploughing through if you are at all interested in the subject. (degree in experimental psychology may help!) get your local library to order a copy for you.

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

The book:

The Science of False Memory: An Integrative Approach
by C.J. Brainerd (Editor), V.F. Reyna (Editor)

Book Description
A decade or so of intensive research on false memory has revealed much that is not well understood outside the circles of scientists who specialize in such research. However, this research has produced findings that have major implications for a number of fields that are central to human welfare, such as medicine and the law. This book has been written to make those findings accessible to a much wider audience than research specialists including child protective services workers,
clinical psychologists, defense attorneys, elementary and secondary teachers, general medical practitioners, journalists, judges, nurses, police investigators, prosecutors, and psychiatrists. For that reason, the book assumes little or no background knowledge in the techniques of memory research. The volume begins with a consideration of progenitors of the modern science of false memory and notes the remarkable degree to which core themes of contemporary research were anticipated by historical
figures such as Binet, Piaget, and Bartlett. It continues with an account of the varied methods that have been used to study false science of false memory, with the coverage revolving around three topics: theoretical ideas, both old and new, that have been used to explain false memory and to make predictions about it; research findings and predictions about age changes in false memory between early processes conceptions of false memory, is stressed. In Part II, attention shifts to the
falsifiability of eyewitness identifications of suspects; false-memory reports in abuse crimes; and false memory in psychotherapy, including recovered memories of previous lives. Although Part II is concerned with applied research, we again emphasize the unifying trends are explored, with attention being focused on three expanding areas of false-memory research: mathematical models, aging effects, and cognitive neuroscience.

Synopsis
A decade or so of intensive research on false memory has revealed much that is not well understood outside the circles of scientists who specialize in such research. However, this research has produced findings that have major implications for a number of fields that are central to human welfare, such as medicine and the law. This book has been written to make those findings accessible to a much wider audience than research specialists including child protective services workers, clinical psychologists, defense attorneys, elementary and secondary teachers, general medical practitioners, journalists, judges, nurses, police investigators, prosecutors, and psychiatrists. For that reason, the book assumes little or no background knowledge in the techniques of memory research. The volume begins with a consideration of progenitors of the modern science of false memory and notes the remarkable degree to which core themes of contemporary research were anticipated by historical figures such as Binet, Piaget, and Bartlett. It continues with an account of the varied methods that have been used to study false science of false memory, with the coverage revolving around three topics: theoretical ideas, both old and new, that have been used to explain false memory and to make predictions about it; research findings and predictions about age changes in false memory between early processes conceptions of false memory, is stressed. In Part II, attention shifts to the falsifiability of eyewitness identifications of suspects; false-memory reports in abuse crimes; and false memory in psychotherapy, including recovered memories of previous lives. Although Part II is concerned with applied research, we again emphasize the unifying trends are explored, with attention being focused on three expanding areas of false-memory research: mathematical models, aging effects, and cognitive neuroscience.

www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/01951 ... ntmagaz-21
www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195154 ... enantmc-20

As Mal says it is expensive but it is hardback - one can only hope a paperback version is in the pipeline. If anyone spots it let us know - I'm certainly very interested as I'm sure are a lot of people. I'm looking forward to reading the review too (although I suspect its glowing ).

 

[Quake42]

Memory is a strange thing. I have a distinct memory of seeing as a small child a box of COLD SORES (no joke) in a corner shop window. I mentioned it to my mother a couple of years ago and she explained what actually happened was that the shop proprietor did not speak very good English and had an ordinary tub of COLESLAW on display but with a sign saying Coldsores, 25p (or whatever). I must have remembered the joke and my brain had filled in the rest.

Similarly, an Aussie friend of mine used to go to a local beach every weekend when she was small. A disabled man also frequented the beach - he had Downs Syndrome and was large and boisterous. She was terrified of him and says she has a clear memory of him having large black circles round his eyes like a panda! Logically she knows this cannot possibly be true but the memory is there.