Week 6 Reading; Recovered Memories Flashcards
George Franklin and Eileen Lipsker Franklin
o In 1989 George Frnaklin was arrested for murdering Susan Nason after being accused by his daughter Eileen Lipsker-Franklin 20 years after the crime.
o This was one of many cases often on sexual abuse, about recovered memories that had been brought back into the consciousness through psychotherapy
Memory Wars
a fierce debate between therapists, psychology researchers, victim and the legal system as to whether we repress traumatic memories (more-so than non-traumatic ones) and assess whether memory works differently for traumatic vs ordinary events, whether such memoies are distorted or confavulated by therapeutic process or not.
On the one hand was therapists in support of the psychoanalystic notion of repressed memories (sometimes called dissociated memory or traumatic amnesia). It was also argued that suggestive therapy techniques were necessary to break the barrier of repression. Such therapists viewed the incidence of repressed memories as being high and argued that false memories for traumatic events are unlikely
On the other side was clinical, social and cognitive researchers who had studied the fallibility and suggestibility of memory. This group argued repressed memories are unlikely and the suggestive therapy methods are more likely to be establishing false memories
o Pope and Hudson 1995 “three-pronged evidence” requirements for evidencing repressed memories;
1. Must evidence the abuse took place
2. That it was forgotten and inaccessible
3. That is was later remembered
o Pope and Hudson 1995 “three-pronged evidence” requirements for evidencing repressed memories;
1. Must evidence the abuse took place
2. That it was forgotten and inaccessible
3. That is was later remembered
o Retrospective studies
Individuals are interviewed today asking if they were abused in the past, and get questions assessing the continuity of their memory over time – eg. If they forgot the abuse
In studies on this, some people will say they have forgotten the abuse
These studies are limited as there is
* No validation of the abuse and lack of assessment under the conditions by which the memory was retrieved
o When police etc are able to provide confirmation of some abuse, it doesn’t validate the frequency of this
* Claim of non-memory is uninterpretable
o Eg. Briere and Conte 1993;
Argued of those claiming abuse 59% could not remember the abuse at some stage
But the claim of non-memory is uninterpretable
* Concern of how memory was retrieved
o Eg. Roe and Schwartz 1996
But also those who do then remember, 2/3 came to remember the events during hypnosis
Other concerns are based on idea that episodes of abuse may not have been classed as abuse at the time, so forgetting cannot be regarded traumatic repression
* Eg. One study found that women who reported repression of abuse rated it as having been less upsetting when it occurred than those who had never forgotten (Loftus et al., 1994)
* Eg.
Forgetting is similar to normal forgetting and remembering than repressions
it’s well documented that one can fail to remember a previously remembered abuse event
eg. Women who claimed repressed abuse said later in the interview they had never forgotten
o Prospective Studies
Individuals with a record of abuse in the past are later interviewed to see what they remember
Eg. Williams 1994
* Involved women who reported sexual abuse between 10 months and 12 yrs
* 38% didn’t mention the abuse in an interview 17 years later. But this mightnot mean they are repressed memories
o Eg. Childhood amnesia – due to being so young
o Eg. Not wanting to answer about it
o Participants weren’t asked about specific abuse
o Eg. Normal forgetting occurs for all sorts of events
Eg. Goodman et al., 2003
* Replicated Williams study and found only 8% did not report the abuse
Case Histories/Studies
1/3 of evidence offered to support massive regression is anecdotal cases
These however, require a therapist writing up a case study and often these are subjective and lack objective external verification
Eg. Corwin and Olafson 1997; was videotaped in 1984 discussing abuse from when she was 17, then was videotaped again. This time, she at first did not remember the abuse, and then she did.
* Loftus and Guyer 2002 later found from court documents this was not a proven case of repressed memory. In fact, new evidence raised question if she had been abused at all
This stresses the idea that case histories can be compelling but they are bounded by the motivations and interpretations of the story teller
Summary on Evidence for Repressed Memories
There is little support for the notion that trauma is commonly banished out of awareness and later reliably recovered by processes beyond ordinary forgetting and remembering
o False memories for Real-Life Trauma
> Is evidence for the existence of false memories
Some memories are factually, psychologically, geographically or biologically impossible
False memory for trauma must meet stringent criteria of proof
* 1. The person did have memories for the trauma in question
* 2. The event did actually not happen
There are many case studies of false memories
For children under 3, there is unlikely to be memory as despite encoding and remembering such events these memories tend to be lost
* Alien Abduction
o One of the most frequently reported impossible false memory of trauma
o 17% of Americans believe that aliens have abducted humans
o Many of these false memories occurred in hypnosis or whilst thepatient was subject to other methods used in recovered memory therapy
* Satanic ritual
o 25% of prosecuting attorneys had handled cases involving satanic abuse
o 19% of 1700 cases involving families who reported false allegations of abuse against a family member were about satanic rituals
o 95-100% of the accusors, didn’t have memory of the abuse before therapy
o Retractors
Modal Retractor – sought therapy for depression, later uncovered memories in therapy, then believed memories were the product of therapeutic intervention.
These seem to be the product of suggestive therapy like hypnosis
Retractor report pressure to recover memories
The retractions were based on the experiential qualities of the memories themselves. They didn’t seem real – being too clear and vivid or vague and dreamlike
Lab Research on Malleability of Autobiographical Memory
o Evidence suggest that autobiographical memories can be created
o It’s relatively easy to change details of memories for previously remembered events but it’s also possible to implant entirely false memories
o Familial informant false narrative procedure aka lost in the mall technique paradigm used to impant a false memory
These paradigms tend to elicit 30% production of false memories (partial or complete)
But can be 0% for inplausibel events and up to 50% for mundane events (eg. Wade et al., 2002)
Techniques like guided imagination, suggestive dream interpretation or exposure to doctored photos can produce this outcome
o Critiques of false memory implantation studies
Did they experience the false event?
* Mitigated by Braun et al., 2002 bugs bunny study
Target events are less traumatic than those in recovered therapy
* Whilst it’s unethical to implant memories of trauma, it is possible to implant memories of unpleasant things like medical procedures, near drownings etc
Reconstructive influences of beliefs, goals and self views on autobiographical memory
o Studies concerned with the retrospective bias have shown that reports of our own past attitudes or behaviours are biased by current self-views, goals and beliefs. Similarly recollections of one’s own behaviour tends to change to conform to newly acquired information about how one should behave, so that we remember our behaviour better than it was
o Even condisering the possibility of abuse may exert retrospective bias and in extreme cases have people adopt the mentality of being an abuse survivor.
o False Memory Syndome (Kihlstrom 1998) = a condition in which a person’s identity and interpersonal relationship are centered around a memory of traumatic experience which is objectively false but in which the person strongly believe.. the syndrome may be diagnosed when the memory is so deeply ingrained that it orients the person’ entire personality and lifestyle
o A Priori Assumptions
A dramatic increase in awareness of sexual abuse began in the 80’s accomonapnied by widespread media coverage of abuse and receovered memories as well as a lot of books
This primed the notion of abuse and pressed memories
Among the effects of priming particular schemas are selective attention to relevant information, biased interpretation of relevant information and contructive and reconstructive memory processes that generally consist of confabulation of schema-consistent but false memories and distortion of memories of past events towards consistency with currently activated schemas
o Confirming Biases and Hypothesis Testing;
Confirming biases are likely to manifest in initial interview and assessment processes potentially in both the patient and therapist
This is an example of premature cognitive commitment and is common with patients giving ifno they believe is relevant to their suspected memory repression and therapists looking for confirming evidence too
Can result is discounting of inconsistent evidence
The tole of motivated cognition
* The search for an explanation to one’s problems is common in therapy patients. This makes patients vulnerable to accepting plausible answers
o Plausibility Enhancing Evidence
Biased hypothesistesting strategies are likely to elicit apparently confirmatory evidence.
Schematic processing can result in selective attention to abuse-relvant information, disregard for abuse-irrelevant information and interpretative biases . This includes retrospective biases of interpretation such as hindsight bias – whereby the past is interpreted as consistent with current knowledge
Therapists may also fall pray to the representativeness heuristic; assuming that if a patients symptoms fit those viewed as consistent with abuse, they must have been abused – but there could be a multitude of causes
