Creating Memories for False Autobiographical Events in Childhood: A Systematic Review

Abstract

SummaryUsing a framework that distinguishes autobiographical belief, recollective experience, and confidence in memory, we review three major paradigms used to suggest false childhood events to adults: imagination inflation, false feedback and memory implantation. Imagination inflation and false feedback studies increase the belief that a suggested event occurred by a small amount such that events are still thought unlikely to have happened. In memory implantation studies, some recollective experience for the suggested events is induced on average in 47% of participants, but only in 15% are these experiences likely to be rated as full memories. We conclude that susceptibility to false memories of childhood events appears more limited than has been suggested. The data emphasise the complex judgements involved in distinguishing real from imaginary recollections and caution against accepting investigator‐based ratings as necessarily corresponding to participants' self‐reports. Recommendations are made for presenting the results of these studies in courtroom settings. © 2016 The Authors Applied Cognitive Psychology Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Reports of recovered memories of childhood abuse in therapy in France

“…Research has shown that it is also possible, under certain circumstances, to develop false memories for entire events (e.g., Loftus and Pickrell, 1995), including criminal events (Shaw & Porter, 2015; but see also Wade, Garry, & Pezdeck, 2018;Shaw, 2018). Systematic reviews of false memory research have seen rates ranging from 15% (Brewin & Andrews, 2017; but see Otgaar, Merckelbach, Jelicic, & Smeets, 2017;Nash, Wade, Garry, Loftus, & Ost, 2017) to 30% (Scoboria et al, 2017) of participants developing false memories.…”

Scientific evidence versus outdated beliefs: A response to Brewin (2016).

“… We find Brewin’s (2016) critiques of the narratives, power, and coherence measures in Rubin et al, (2015) without merit; his suggestions for a “revised formulation” of coherence are contradicted by data readily available in the target article, but ignored. We place Brewin’s commentary in a historical context and shows that it reiterates views of trauma memory fragmentation that are unsupported by data.…”

Implanting False Autobiographical Memories for Repeated Events

“…Memory researchers have studied how autobiographical false memories could be implanted through suggestive interviewing techniques (Loftus & Pickrell, 1995;Scoboria et al, 2017). However, scholars have criticized these studies on the notion that victims of such false memory cases often recall repeated episodes of child sexual abuse, rather than a single one (Brewin & Andrews, 2017;Blizard & Shaw, 2019). An important feature in these cases of false memory for child sexual abuse is that the alleged adult victims often reported to have been repeatedly sexually abused.…”