Abstract
SummaryUsing a framework that distinguishes autobiographical belief, recollective experience, and confidence in memory, we review three major paradigms used to suggest false childhood events to adults: imagination inflation, false feedback and memory implantation. Imagination inflation and false feedback studies increase the belief that a suggested event occurred by a small amount such that events are still thought unlikely to have happened. In memory implantation studies, some recollective experience for the suggested events is induced on average in 47% of participants, but only in 15% are these experiences likely to be rated as full memories. We conclude that susceptibility to false memories of childhood events appears more limited than has been suggested. The data emphasise the complex judgements involved in distinguishing real from imaginary recollections and caution against accepting investigator‐based ratings as necessarily corresponding to participants' self‐reports. Recommendations are made for presenting the results of these studies in courtroom settings. © 2016 The Authors Applied Cognitive Psychology Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Highlights
The early 1990s saw a well-documented concern that some psychotherapy patients might be wrongly convinced by their therapists that they had experienced sexual abuse in childhood and recover corresponding memories of events that had not occurred (Lindsay & Read, 1994; Loftus, 1993)
The results of studies using all three paradigms have been highly variable. These observations suggest the value of applying an explicit framework to the existing data in order to evaluate the literature. We describe such a framework grounded in the previous work of autobiographical memory researchers and apply it to the results of the three major methods of suggesting false childhood memories
While autobiographical belief is a component of memory, we suggest that a ‘full’ memory for an event, whether true or false, should ideally rest on the combination of the second and third elements
Summary
The early 1990s saw a well-documented concern that some psychotherapy patients might be wrongly convinced by their therapists that they had experienced sexual abuse in childhood and recover corresponding memories of events that had not occurred (Lindsay & Read, 1994; Loftus, 1993). Experiments were designed that showed false memories of childhood events could be created under laboratory conditions. The success of these experiments has been widely accepted, summarising their results accurately is complex because different paradigms and memory measures have been employed, and the findings have been very variable. This may explain why to date there have been no systematic reviews of the research on creating false childhood memories in adults despite undoubted professional and public interest in the topic, as illustrated by a recent special issue of Applied Cognitive Psychology titled ‘Reshaping memories through conversations: Considering the influence of others on historical memories of abuse’. The review should be of benefit to researchers, experts testifying in legal settings and psychotherapists attempting to evaluate the status of childhood memories in a therapeutic context
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