False memories: Phenomena, theories, and implications.

@article{Steffens2007FalseMP,
  title={False memories: Phenomena, theories, and implications.},
  author={Melanie C. Steffens and Silvia Mecklenbr{\"a}uker},
  journal={Zeitschrift Fur Psychologie-journal of Psychology},
  year={2007},
  volume={215},
  pages={12}
}
In recent years, there has been an explosion of research on false memories: the subjective experience of remembering something if that something did apparently not happen in reality. We review a range of findings concerning this phenomenon: False memories of details and of whole events by adults and children, as well as false memories of words in laboratory experiments (in the DRM paradigm). We also briefly discuss the converse phenomenon: Evidence of forgetting or repression of significant… 
View via Publisher
uni-trier.de
25 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
2
Background Citations
7

25 Citations

Citation Type

Citation Type

Individual differences in false memory from misinformation: Cognitive factors
TLDR
Findings suggest that people with relatively low intelligence and poor perceptual abilities might be more susceptible to the misinformation effect.
Undoing suggestive influence on memory: The reversibility of the eyewitness misinformation effect
The effects of arousal and attention on emotional false memory formation
Downstream Behavioral and Electrophysiological Consequences of Word Prediction on Recognition Memory
TLDR
Though false alarm rates did not differ by constraint, event-related potentials (ERPs) differed between false alarms to strongly and weakly predictable words, suggesting greater attention and episodic recollection.
“I can Almost Remember it Now”: Between Personal and Collective Memories of Massive Social Trauma
Abstract This article explores the psycho-social space between autobiographical and collective memory concerning massive social traumas. It is conceptualized that there is a third type of memory…
Will your words become mine? underlying processes and cowitness intimacy in the memory conformity paradigm.
TLDR
An earwitness experiment in which some participants were exposed to discrepant cowitness information and provided their recollections repeatedly and under different conditions yielded no evidence for false memory, and the findings clearly argue that informational rather than normative influence plays a dominant role.
Psychophysiological investigation of false memory in amnesiac patients
TLDR
A new false memory task that offers a language-free alternative to the classic Deese- Roediger-McDermot paradigm (DRM) along with some other improvements introduced to bias false memory production is validated and true and false memory ERP signal appeared to be equivalent in localization but different in voltage.
Undoing Suggestive Influence: The Reversibility of the Misinformation Effect
Extensive research has demonstrated that eyewitness testimony can easily be influenced. Presenting inconsistent information about a previously perceived incident typically decreases accuracy of…
Misinformation effects caused by retroactive brand replacement in photographs
By using a modified version of the misinformation paradigm, this thesis examined a new and ecologically realistic domain for the investigation of false memories: Brands retroactively replaced in…
Individual differences in false memory from misinformation: Personality characteristics and their interactions with cognitive abilities
...
1
2
3
...

References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 123 REFERENCES
Trying to recollect past events: confidence, beliefs, and memories.
Creating false memories: Remembering words not presented in lists.
False memories—either remembering events that never happened, or remembering them quite differently from the way they happened—have recently captured the attention of both psychologists and the…
False and Recovered Memories in the Laboratory and Clinic: A Review of Experimental and Clinical Evidence
TLDR
It is suggested that the critical questions are how common is each type of memory phenomenon, what factors lead to the occurrence of each, and under what conditions is each possible and/or likely to occur.
False memory following rapidly presented lists: the element of surprise
This article examines a false memory phenomenon, the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) effect, consisting of high false alarms for a prototype word (e.g., SLEEP) following a study list consisting of its…
False memories of childhood experiences.
We conducted two experiments to investigate if college students would create false memories of childhood experiences in response to misleading information and repeated interviews. In both experiments…
Importing perceived features into false memories
TLDR
Perception may be even more pernicious than imagination in contributing to false memories, as false memories that imported perceived features were subjectively more like memories for perceived events.
Influences of intentional and unintentional forgetting on false memories.
TLDR
The results suggest that forgetting can increase or decrease false memories, depending on whether such forgetting reflects impaired access to an entire episode or retrieval competition among elements of an episode.
The reality of repressed memories.
  • E. Loftus
  • Psychology
    The American psychologist
  • 1993
TLDR
There has been a rise in reported memories of childhood sexual abuse that were allegedly repressed for many years, and people with recently unearthed memories are suing alleged perpetrators for events that happened 20, 30, even 40 or more years earlier.
"Remembering" words not presented in lists: relevance to the current recovered/false memory controversy.
  • J. Freyd, D. Gleaves
  • Psychology
    Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition
  • 1996
TLDR
The present authors urge caution in making such a generalization, arguing that there are critical differences between Roediger and McDermott's findings and contested memories of abuse.
Fuzzy-Trace Theory and False Memory
A key problem confronting theories of false memory is that false-memory phenomena are so diverse: Some are characteristic of controlled laboratory tasks, others of everyday life; some occur for…
...
1
2
3
4
5
...