False and Recovered Memories

Question 1

definition of repressed memories (CITE)

Answer 1

memories that are repressed or dissociated from consciousness and recovered at a later time (Madill & Holch, 2004)

Question 2

pseudomemory

Answer 2

memories recovered in therapy should be viewed with skepticism, false memories can be manufactured by therapists

Question 3

implications of repressed memories

Answer 3

high stakes: justice and safety for victims, prevent perpetrators for harming others, protection from false charges

Question 4

the discovery process

Answer 4

in both civil and criminal cases, an expert witness is called to focus on whether or not they have been planted

Question 5

current clinical thinking on repressed memories

Answer 5

repression refers to the psychological process of keeping something out of awareness
loss of memory or traumatic amnesia
partial fragmenting memory

Question 6

Loftus & Ketcham (1994) The shopping mall experiment

Answer 6

asked subjects to try and remember childhood events that had been told to researchers by their parents, older siblings, or other close family members
3 events were real, 1 was false
29% remembered a false event

Question 7

recovered memory therapy

Answer 7

repeated questionning
dream interpretation
journalling
hypnosis
group therapy

Question 8

psychogenic dissociative amnesia

Answer 8

access to episodic memory is impeded
results from a nonorganic cause, no structural brain damage or lesion
inability to recall personal information of a traumatic or stressful nature
memory disorder characterised by sudden retrograde autobiographical memory loss said to occur from hours to years

Question 9

selective memory

Answer 9

adaptive strategy that maximised functioning

Question 10

phenomenon of avoidance

Answer 10

forgetting can minimise impairment on psychic wellbeing

Question 11

iatrogenic effect

Answer 11

the tendency of clinicians to unintentionally engender symptoms or recollections in their patients
clinicians show a strong propensity to interpret a variety of behaviours as symptoms of sexual abuse

Question 12

infantile amnesia

Answer 12

implicit memories can be retained, but explicit memories only go back to around age 3 in most people
this is because the hippocampus is one of the last areas to develop in humans

Question 13

the link between intense emotions and intense memories

Answer 13

emotions trigger rise in the stress hormones, which triggers amygdala
this increases memory forming activity and engages the frontal lobes and basal ganglia to tag memories as important
memories are then stored with more sensory and emotional details
these details can trigger a rapid, unintended recall of the memory

Question 14

reconstructive theory of memory

Answer 14

memory is continually vulnerable to revision
reconstruction introduces errors in specific descriptions of the event

Question 15

magnussen & melinder, 2012

Answer 15

63% believed most recovered memories are real

Question 16

patihis et al, 2014

Answer 16

81% of undergrads agreed that traumatic memories are often repressed
70% agreed to some extent that repressed memories can be accurately retrieved in therapy
86% indicated that CSA is conceivable in the case where a person has emotional problems and needs therapy even if they have no memory of such abuse

Question 17

ornstein, ceci, loftus (1998)

Answer 17

not everything gets into memories

Question 18

encoding

Answer 18

the information goes into our brains in a way that allows it to be sorted

Question 19

storage

Answer 19

the information is made in a way to allow it to be retrieved later

Question 20

retrieval

Answer 20

the information is reactivated and recalled in a way that is similar to the way it was encoded