 We construct memories while we encode them but we also alter our memories as we retrieve them.  We infer our past from stored information but also from what we saw, heard, expected and imagined.  Information gathered after an event can change the memory of an event.

 Elizabeth Loftus has worked on research involving memory and the effects of misinformation. One of her most famous experiments involves eyewitness memory of a car accident. Loftus and John Palmer (1974) showed the participants film footage of a car accident and then quizzed them about what they had seen. The participants asked “How fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?” gave higher estimates of speed than did those asked “How fast were the cars going when they hit each other?”.

 The researchers (about a week later) asked both sets of participants if they recalled seeing any broken glass in the film. The participants that had heard “smashed” were more than twice as likely to report having seen glass fragments. The film showed no broken glass.  The participants are examples of the misinformation effect. The misinformation effect is incorporating misleading information into one’s memory of an event.

 There have been many additional experiments involving the misinformation effect. In these experiments, people witness an event and are then either exposed to or not exposed to misleading information. After which they take a memory test. The experiments show that many people misremember, after being exposed to misinformation.

 Loftus (1992) showed that people misrecall a variety of things, including: a yield sign as a stop sign, a hammer as a screwdriver, Coke cans as peanut cans, Vogue as Mademoiselle, cereal as eggs and a clean shaven man as a man with a mustache.  Another experiment showed people digitally altered photographs of themselves taking a hot air balloon ride. They saw the picture three times over a two week period. Half of the participants recalled the hot air balloon ride, often with great detail, even though it was a nonexistent event.

 Loftus has researched this concept for much of her career. She points out that the main questions of interest for researchers are as follows:  1) When are people susceptible to misinformation? (when time allows a memory to fade, when not forewarned, forewarning someone of a misleading narrative allows them to resist)  2) Who is susceptible to misinformation?(young children are particularly susceptible)  3) What happens to the original memory?(some have argued that the original memory traces are changed by post event information)  4) Do people genuinely believe the misinformation?(misleading information can turn a lie into memory’s truth, it can cause people to believe that they saw things that never really existed or that they saw things differently from the way they actually were)

 The misinformation effect is so strong that we may find it difficult to differentiate between our memories of real or suggested events.(Schooler,1986)  We may fill in the gaps of our memories with reasonable answers. As we retell it, we recall the guessed details as if we had actually experienced them.

 Goff & Roediger, 1998/ Seamon, et al,2006 imagining events can cause people to believe they actually did the things (imagination inflation)  Imagination inflation occurs because visualizing something and experiencing it activate the similar brain areas(Gonsalves, et al, 2004)  The more vividly we imagine things the more likely we are to inflate them into memories( Loftus,2001/Porter, et al, 2000)  Clancy, 2005/ those that believe that they have been transported to alien ships tend to have more powerful imaginations and are more susceptible to false memories  Clancy, et al, 2000 & McNally, 2003/ those who believe they have recovered memories of child sexual abuse tend to have vivid imaginations and score high on false memory tests  Wiseman, 1999/ had participants attend séances (8 each attended by 25)the medium (actor) suggested that the table was levitating. Afterward (2 weeks) 1 in 3 actually recalled that the table had levitated.

 Source amnesia is attributing to the wrong source an event we have experienced, heard about, read about or imagined. It can also be called source misattribution. Source amnesia is responsible for some cases of false memories.  Poole and Lindsay(1995,2001,2002) studied source amnesia in preschool children. The children interacted with “Mr. Science” who engaged them with some cool science activities. Three months later, on three days, their parents read to them a story describing some of the things that they had experienced with “Mr. Science” and some things that they had not. When a new interviewer, asked them about things that they had done with “Mr. Science”—4 out of 10 recalled things that had only been in the story.

 How do we discern between true and false memories? We cannot rely on how real it feels because unreal memories feel very real.  Halberstadt and Niedenthal(2001) researched whether people’s initial interpretations influence their perceptual memories. The participants were invited to view morphed faces, that expressed mixed emotions (anger & happiness). They were asked to imagine and explain why the person felt happy or angry. Later, the participants were asked to use a sliding bar to morph the face to match the earlier seen face. The participants that had explained anger, morphed the face to angrier than those that had explained happy.

 Can we judge the reality of a memory by its persistence? No. researchers Charles Brainerd and Valerie Reyna (1995,1998,2002) discovered that real memories from real events have more detail than memories from imagined events. Imagined event memories are more based on the gist of the event not the detail. Gist memories are more durable than detail memories, this means that, especially as we age(because gist is better processed as we mature) our false memories may outlast our real memories.

 In experiments with eyewitness testimony, the research has consistently shown that the most confident and consistent eyewitnesses are the most persuasive, but are often not the most accurate. Research also shows that eyewitnesses, whether right or wrong, express similar levels of self assurance.(Bothwell et al, 1987; Cutler& Penrod, 1989; Wells & Murray, 1984)  Memory construction explains why 79% of 200 convicts exonerated by DNA evidence had been misjudged based on faulty eyewitness testimony. (Garrett,2008)

 In criminal investigations, these issues can lead to difficulty. A group made up of Ronald Fisher, Edward Geiselman and their colleagues have trained police officers/interviewers to ask less suggestive and more effective questions. The detectives have learned to activate retrieval cues by asking the witnesses to visualize the scene. This includes, weather, lighting, time of day, sounds, etc. Then the witness recounts the event without interruption, every detail they can remember, no matter how mundane. Only then does the interviewer ask more evocative questions.

 Several researchers have examined the area of children’s susceptibility. Stephen Ceci and Maggie Bruck have researched this concept several times. In 1993 & 1995, using anatomically correct dolls they asked 3 year old children to indicate where the pediatrician had touched them. 55% of the children who had not received genital or anal examinations indicated that they had.  In a different experiment, Ceci and Bruck (1999,2004) found that by using suggestive questioning techniques most preschoolers and even many older children could be induced to report false events, like seeing a thief stealing food at their daycare.

 In another study Ceci and Bruck had children choose from a deck of cards with possible events on them (like getting a mousetrap on your finger and going to the hospital). An adult would read them the card “Think real hard, and tell me if this ever happened to you;…”After 10 weekly interviews with the same adult asking the children to think about several real and fictitious events, a new adult interviews them. The new adult asks the same questions and 58 % of preschoolers produced false stories (often with vivid detail) about events they had never experienced. Because the stories were so vivid and seemed so authentic, professional psychologists were often fooled. They could not tell the difference between real and imagined memories and neither could some of the children.

 So, can children be trusted as eyewitnesses? Yes, if questioned about the events in neutral words that they understand. Children can often recall accurately what happened and who did it. Children are especially accurate when they have not talked with an involved adult prior to the interview and when their disclosure is made in a first interview with a neutral person who asks non-leading questions.

 There are two tragedies connected to adult recollections of child abuse. 1) trauma survivors may not be believed when telling their secret 2) innocent people being falsely accused. So, where does this lead trained psychologists in the area of adults recovering memories?  In an American survey, the average therapist estimated that 11% of the population have repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse.

 In another survey, British and American doctoral level therapists, 7 in 10 said they had used techniques like hypnosis or drugs to recover repressed memories of sexual abuse.  To try and come to some consensus about what to do a public statement has been made by the following organizations: American Medical Association, American Psychological Association, Australian Psychological Society, British Psychological Society, Canadian Psychiatric Society.

 1) Sexual abuse happens.  2) Injustice happens.  3) Forgetting happens  4) Recovered memories are commonplace  5) Memories of things happening before age 3 are unreliable  6) Memories recovered under hypnosis or the influence of drugs are especially unreliable  7) memories, whether real or false, can be emotionally upsetting

 1) Study repeatedly: use distributed practice  2)Make the material meaningful: build a network of retrieval cues  3) Activate retrieval cues  4) Use mnemonic devices  5) Minimize interference  6) Sleep more  7) Test your own knowledge, both to rehearse and to assess