Week 10 Recovered Memories Flashcards
What are recovered memories?
Adults report “recovering” forgotten memories of childhood sexual abuse (CSA)
- The memory was “repressed,” but is now recovered in therapy
- Profound emotional and legal consequences
What spike occurred in the 1990s?
A big spike in cases of people in therapy recovery memories of CSA?
What type of therapy methods were used to recover memories of CSA?
- Drug Therapies
- (sodium amytal or “truth serum”)
- Hypnosis
- (imagery, suggestive questioning, & repetition)
- Guided Imagery
- (imagine that you were abused . . .)
What was the memory wars?
- Therapist argued that memories for CSA were repressed and they needed to be surface to deal with issues in patients lives
- Psychologists argued that memories for CSA were created during therapy and thus were false memories
What are psychological questions regarding recovered memories in therapy?
- Could some of the recovered memories be false?
- Can people repressed memories of CSA?
What are implanted memories?
False memories implanted from an external source
- Can be intentional or unintentional
How can memories be implanted?
- Repeated interviews and which participant is instructed to try to remember
- Uses suggestion, social pressure, and other persuasion techniques
- Ex. Lost in Mall study
- Often encouraged imagine the event as a way to recover the hidden memories
How does imagination affect memory?
Imagination increases ratings of likelihood that an event occurred
- Source monitoring error
What is imagination inflation?
Implanted memories are more likely when people are encouraged for mental images during recall attempts
- Seeing photographs and/or viewing pictures of yourself
What is an example of imagination inflation?
Memories of bugs bunny at Walt Disney World
What is an issue with studies that try to implant false memories? How can this be mitigated?
- implanted memories could’ve actually happened for a real experience
- Instead try to implant memories for events that would be implausible or even impossible
- Ex. alien abduction
- Psychologist can understand why some people might be more prone to have memories that are completely false using this method
What is memory repression?
Memory for CSA buried in unconsciousness until safe to remember.
What is the evidence for repression?
- Cognitive psychologist have not found reliable evidence for mechanism that repress is traumatic memories
- Evidence suggests that most peoples memories of traumatic experiences are long lasting
- Memories of abuse are forgotten in the same way as other memories
What is the forget-it-all-along mechanism?
It appears that in the context of an emotional recollective experience, individuals may underestimate their prior knowledge about an event.
- People who have authentic recovered memories have a propensity to forget prior occurrences of remembering
- Evidence of having previously mentioned CSA but forgot about events for some period of time
If a person did experience CSA are some potential reasons for forgetting the experience?
- Although emotional events are typically less prone to forgetting CSA may not have been experienced as emotionally traumatic at the time of the event such that children have a different understanding than adults do
- There were absent reminders of the abuse instead of constant reminders
- Retroactive interference occurred
- People deliberately tried not to think about the abuse
- Motivated forgetting
