Abstract
A central issue in the recovered memory debate is whether it is possible to “remember” a highly emotional incident which never occurred. The present study provided an in-depth investigation of real, implanted, and fabricated (deceptive) memories for stressful childhood events. We examined whether false memories for emotional events could be implanted and, if so, whether real, implanted, and fabricated memories had distinctive features. A questionnaire was sent to participants' parents asking about six highly emotional, stressful events (e.g., serious animal attack) which the participant may have experienced in childhood. Next, across three sessions, interviewers encouraged participants (N = 77) to “recover” a memory for a false event using guided imagery and repeated retrieval attempts. In the first interview, they were asked about one real and one false event, both introduced as true according to their parents. In two subsequent interviews, they were reinterviewed about the false event. Finally, after the third inquiry about the false event, participants were asked to fabricate a memory report. Results indicated that 26% of participants “recovered” a complete memory for the false experience and another 30% recalled aspects of the false experience. Real, implanted, and fabricated memories differed on several dimensions (e.g., confidence, vividness, details, repeated details, coherence, stress). These findings have important implications for the debate over recovered and false memories.
Similar content being viewed by others
REFERENCES
American Psychological Association. (1996). Working Group on Investigation of Memories of Childhood Abuse final report. Washington, DC. Author.
Bass, E., & Davis, L. (1988). The courage to heal: A guide for women survivors of child sexual abuse. New York: Harper & Row.
Berliner, L., & McDougall, J. (1997). Agenda for research: Clinical approaches to recollections of trauma. In J. D. Read & D. S. Lindsay (Eds.), Recollections of trauma: Scientific evidence and clinical practice (pp. 523–530). New York: Plenum.
Brown, D., Scheflin, A. W., & Hammond, D. C. (1998). Memory, trauma treatment, and the law. New York: Norton.
Ceci, S. J., & Bruck, M. (1993). Suggestibility of the child witness: A historical review and synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 113, 403–439.
Courtois, C. A. (1997). Informed clinical practice and the standard of care: Proposed guidelines for the treatment of adults who report delayed memories of childhood trauma. In J. D. Read & D. S. Lindsay (Eds.), Recollections of trauma: Scientific evidence and clinical practice (pp. 337–370). New York: Plenum.
Ekman, P. (1992). Telling lies (2nd ed.). New York: Norton.
Ekman, P., & O'Sullivan, M. (1991). Who can catch a liar? American Psychologist, 46, 913–920.
Freud, S. (1922). Introductory lectures on psycho-analysis. London: Allen & Unwin.
Horowitz, S. W. (1991). Empirical support for Statement Validity Analysis. Behavioral Assessment, 13, 293–313.
Husserl, E. (1929). Cartesianische Meditationen. The Hague: Nihoff.
Hyman, I. E., & Billings F. J. (1998). Individual differences and the creation of false childhood memories. Memory, 6, 1–20.
Hyman, I. E., Husband, T. H., & Billings, J. F. (1995). False memories of childhood experiences. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 9, 181–197.
Hyman, I. E., & Pentland, J. (1996). The role of mental imagery in the creation of false memories. Journal of Memory and Language, 35, 101–117.
Jane Doe et al. v. Joseph Maskell et al. (1996). No. 102 Court of Appeals (Maryland 29).
Johnson, M. K. (1988). Reality monitoring: An experimental approach. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 117, 390–394.
Johnson, M. K., & Raye, C. L. (1981). Reality monitoring. Psychological Bulletin, 88, 67–85.
Kassin, S. M., & Kiechel, K. L. (1996). The animal psychology of false confessions: Compliance, internalization, and confabulation. Psychological Science, 7, 125–128.
Knapp, S. J., & Vandecreek, L. (1997). Treating patients with memories of abuse: Legal risk management. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Kohnken, G., Schimossek, E., Aschermann, E., & Hofer, E. (1995). The Cognitive Interview and the assessment of the credibility of adults' statements. Journal of Applied Psychology, 80, 671–684.
Landry, K., & Brigham, J. (1992). The effect of training in Criteria-Based Content Analysis on the ability to detect deception in adults. Law and Human Behavior, 16, 663–676.
Lindsay, D. S., & Read, J. D. (1994). Psychotherapy and memories of childhood sexual abuse: A cognitive perspective. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 8, 281–338.
Loftus, E. F. (1993). The reality of repressed memories. American Psychologist, 48, 518–537.
Loftus, E. F. (1997a). Creating false memories. Scientific American, 277, 70–75.
Loftus, E. F. (1997b). Dispatch from the (un)civil memory wars. In J. D. Read & D. S. Lindsay (Eds.), Recollections of trauma: Scientific evidence and clinical practice (pp. 171–198). New York: Plenum.
Loftus, E. F. (1997c). Memory for a past that never was. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 6, 60–65.
Loftus, E. F., Coan, J. A., & Pickrell, J. E. (1996). Manufacturing false memories using bits of reality. In L. Reder (Ed.), Implicit memory and metacognition (pp. 195–220). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Loftus, E. F., & Pickrell, J. E. (1995). The formation of false memories. Psychiatric Annals, 25, 720–725.
Lynn, S. J., Lock, T. G., Myers, B., & Payne, D. G. (1997). Recalling the unrecallable: Should hypnosis be used to recover memories in psychotherapy? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 6, 79–83.
Marxsen, D., Yuille, J. C., & Nisbet, M. (1995). The complexities of eliciting and assessing children's statements. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 1, 450–460.
McCann, J. T. (1998). Malingering and deception in adolescents: Assessing credibility in clinical and forensic settings. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Memon, A., Vrij, A., & Bull, R. (1998). Credibility assessment: Psychology and the law. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Olio, K. A. (1989). Memory retrieval in the treatment of adult survivors of sexual abuse. Transactional Analysis Journal, 19, 93–100.
Payne, D. G., Neuschatz, J. S., Lampinen, J. M., & Lynn, S. J. (1997). Compelling memory illusions: The qualitative characteristics of false memories. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 6, 56–60.
Pezdek, K., Finger, K., & Hodge, D. (1997). Planting false childhood memories: The role of event plausibility. Psychological Science, 8, 437–441.
Pezdek, K., & Roe, C. (1997). The suggestibility of children's memory for being touched: Planting, erasing, and changing memories. Law and Human Behavior, 21, 95–106.
Poole, D. A., Lindsay, D. S., Memon, A., & Bull, R. (1995). Psychotherapy and the recovery of memories of childhood sexual abuse: U.S. and British practitioners' opinions, practices, and experiences. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 63, 426–437.
Pope, K. S. (1996). Memory, abuse, and science: Questioning claims about the false memory syndrome epidemic. American Psychologist, 51, 957–974.
Porter, S. (1998). An architectural mind: The nature of real, created, and fabricated memories of emotional childhood events. Doctoral dissertation, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
Porter, S., & Marxsen, D. (1998). Challenging the eyewitness expert: An update considering memory for trauma and false memories. In J. Ziskin (Ed.), 1997 Supplement to coping with psychiatric and psychological testimony (5th ed., pp. 112–129). Los Angeles: Law and Psychology Press.
Porter, S., & Yuille, J. C. (1995). Credibility assessment of criminal suspects through statement analysis. Psychology, Crime, and Law, 1, 319–331.
Porter, S., & Yuille, J. C. (1996). The language of deceit: An investigation of the verbal clues to deception in the interrogation context. Law and Human Behavior, 20, 443–458.
Porter, S., Yuille, J. C., & Bent, A. (1995). A comparison of the eyewitness accounts of deaf and hearing children. Child Abuse and Neglect, 19, 51–61.
Pynoos, R., & Nader, K. (1989). Children's memory and proximity to violence. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 28, 236–241.
R. v. Francois (1994). 2 S.C.R. 827.
Raskin, D. C., & Esplin, P. W. (1991). Assessment of children's statements of sexual abuse. In J. Doris (Ed.), The suggestibility of children's recollections (pp. 153–164). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Read, J. D., & Lindsay, D. S. (1997). Preface. In R. D. Read & D. S. Lindsay (Eds.), Recollections of trauma: Scientific evidence and clinical practice (pp. v–vi). New York: Plenum.
Rogers, R. (1997). Clinical assessment of malingering and deception (2nd ed.). New York: Guilford.
Ruby, C. L., & Brigham, J. C. (1997). The usefulness of the criteria-based content analysis technique in distinguishing between truthful and fabricated allegations: A critical review. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 3, 705–737.
Schacter, D. L. (Ed.). (1995). Momory distortion: How minds, brains, and societies reconstruct the past. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Schacter, D. L. (1996). Searching for memory: The brain, the mind, and the past. New York: Basic Books.
Schooler, J. W., Gerhard, D., & Loftus, E. F. (1986). Qualities of the unreal. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 12, 171–181.
Schooler, J. W., & Hyman, I. E. (1997). Veridical and non-veridical memories of trauma. In J. D. Read & D. S. Lindsay (Eds.), Recollections of trauma: Scientific evidence and clinical practice (pp. 531–540). New York: Plenum.
Spanos, N. (1996). Multiple identities and false memories. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Spanos, N., Menary, E., Gabora, N., DuBreuil, S., & Dewhirst, B. (1991). Secondary identity enactments during hypnotic past-life regression: A sociocognitive perspective. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 308–320.
Wagenaar, W. A., & Groeneweg, J. (1990). The memory of concentration camp survivors. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 4, 77–87.
Williams, L. M. (1994). Recall of childhood trauma: A prospective study of women's memories of child sexual abuse. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 62, 1167–1176.
Yuille, J. C., & Daylen, J. (1998). The impact of trauma on eyewitness memory. In C. P. Thompson, D. J. Herrmann, J. D. Read, D. Bruce, D. G. Payne, & M. P. Toglia (Eds.), Eyewitness memory: Theoretical and applied perspectives (pp. 155–178. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Yuille, J.C., Hunter, R., Joffe, R., & Zaparniuk, J. (1993). Interviewing children in sexual abuse cases. In G. Goodman & B. Bottoms (Eds.), Child victims, child witnesses: Understanding and improving children's testimony: Clinical, developmental, and legal implications (pp. 95–115). New York: Guilford.
Yuille, J. C., Tymofievich, M., & Marxsen, D. (1995). The nature of allegations of child sexual abuse. In T. Ney (Ed.), Allegations of child sexual abuse: Assessment and case management. New York: Brunner/Mazel.
Zaparniuk, J., Yuille, J. C., & Taylor, S. (1995). Assessing the credibility of true and false statements. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 18, 343–352.
Zaragoza, M. S., & Mitchell, K. J. (1996). Repeated exposure to suggestion and the creation of false memories. Psychological Science, 7, 294–300.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
About this article
Cite this article
Porter, S., Yuille, J.C. & Lehman, D.R. The Nature of Real, Implanted, and Fabricated Memories for Emotional Childhood Events: Implications for the Recovered Memory Debate. Law Hum Behav 23, 517–537 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022344128649
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022344128649