Spence (1984) We have come a long way from the naïve illusion that recalling the past is a simple act of going back to an earlier time and place and reading off the content of the scene that emerges. More than we realized, the past is continuously being reconstructed in the analytic process.

Bartlett’s (1932) “The War of the Ghosts” study (demo) Found that people’s memory over time for meaningful material does not reproduce the original passage in any strict sense. Instead, he argued, we construct a memory by combining elements from the original material together with existing knowledge. Bartlett’s explanation for this effect was in terms of schema, which he defined as “an organization of past reactions or past experiences”, basically a stored framework or knowledge about some topic.

According to this view, Memory is an interpretive process. The information that is entered into memory reflects our understanding of an object or event. Perceptual information is also coded, but such information is less critical to the memory function and tends to be lost more quickly than meaning content.

Given this functioning of memory it is not surprising that DISTORTIONS occur! The Deese-Roediger-McDermott Paradigm (The “sweet” demo) content borrowing Memory Implantation, e.g., Loftus & Pickrell (1995) lost in a shopping mall 25% of subjects generated a false memory! Garry et al (1996) imagination inflation based on imagining low-likelihood childhood events Rate-imagine-rate again Lindsay et al (2004) and Garry & Wade (2005) show that photos & narratives can induce false memories

Implications for eye-witness testimony Can be distorted during encoding Can be reconstructed using schema that may involve stereotypes Can be influenced by questioning, interviews Can be influenced by looking at photos of possible perpetrators Implications for Confessions False memories can be created by repeated suggestion Implications for Defendant’s False Accusations Therapeutic suggestions or encouragements to imagine an event, particularly during hypnosis

Dodson & Schacter’s Constructive Memory Framework 1)A feature-binding process 2)Pattern separation to keep episodes separate 3)Focusing using a specific cue 4)Pattern completion (successful reconstruction) 5)Criterion setting (did this really happen?) Source Memory Problems source monitoring : e.g., Real vs imagined? Which episode? children & dreams, confabulation, etc. Enhancing source monitoring through distinctiveness decreases false memories Social Influences Roediger et al (2001): the contagion effect Principe et al (2006): Preschoolers’ responses to rumors