Hockenbury Discovering Psychology 5th txtbk

Imperfect Memories257example, some participants vividly remembered that Jack rinsed the car off with ahose or that he put a leash on the dog before taking him to the vet’s office. Neitherof those actions occurred in the story.Forming False MemoriesFrom the Plausible to the ImpossibleKey Theme• A variety of techniques can create false memories for events that neverhappened.Key Questions• What is the lost-in-the-mall technique, and how does it produce falsememories?• What is imagination inflation, and how has it been demonstrated?• What factors contribute to the formation of false memories?Up to this point, we’ve talked about how misinformation, source confusion, and themental schemas and scripts we’ve developed can change or add details to a memorythat already exists. However, memory researchers have gone beyond changing a fewdetails here and there. Since the mid-1990s, an impressive body of research hasaccumulated showing how false memories can be created for events that neverhappened (Loftus & Cahill, 2007). We’ll begin with another Loftus study that hasbecome famous—the lost-in-the-mall study.Imagination InflationRemembering Being Lost in the MallLoftus and Jacqueline Pickrell (1995) gave each of 24 participants written descriptionsof four childhood events that had been provided by a parent or other olderrelative. Three of the events had really happened, but the fourth was a pseudoevent—a false story about the participant getting lost in a shopping mall. Here’s the gistof the story: At about the age of 5 or 6, the person got lost for an extended periodof time in a shopping mall, became very upset and cried, was rescued by an elderlyperson, and ultimately was reunited with the family. (Family members verified thatthe participant had never actually been lost in a shopping mall or department storeas a child.)After reading the four event descriptions,the participants wrote down as many detailsas they could remember about each event.About two weeks later, participants were interviewedand asked to recall as many detailsas they could about each of the four events.Approximately one to two weeks after that,participants were interviewed a second timeand asked once again what they could rememberabout the four events.By the final interview, 6 of the 24 participantshad created either full or partialmemories of being lost in the shoppingmall. How entrenched were the false memoriesfor those who experienced them?Even after being debriefed at the end of theCan Real Photos Create False Memories?Psychologist Stephen Lindsay and his colleagues(2004a, 2004b) had participantslook at their first-grade class photo andread a description of a prank that theywere led to believe had occurred in thefirst grade—putting slime in their teacher’sdesk. After a week of trying to rememberthe prank, 65 percent of the participantsreported vivid, detailed memories of theprank. In contrast, only about a quarter(23 percent) of participants who tried toremember the prank but did not view aschool photo developed false memories ofthe pseudoevent. Viewing an actual schoolphoto, Lindsay believes, added to thelegitimacy of the pseudoevent, making itseem more probable. It also provided vividsensory details that blended with theimagined details to create elaborate andsubjectively compelling false memories.Real photos can lend credibility toimaginary events (Garry & Gerrie, 2005).