Invitation to Psychology

296 ChaPteR 8 Memory

2009). In such cases, we need to consider the

content of the recovered memory and how it was

recovered.

Thus, given what we know about memory,

we should be skeptical if the person says that he

or she has recovered memories from the first

year or two of life; as we will see in the next

section, this is not possible, physiologically or

cognitively. We should be skeptical if, over time,

the person’s memories become more and more

implausible; for instance, the person says that

sexual abuse continued day and night for 15 years

without ever being remembered and without

anyone else in the household ever noticing any-

thing amiss. We should also be skeptical if a per-

son suddenly recovers a traumatic memory as a

result of therapy or after hearing about supposed

cases of recovered memory in the news or read-

ing about one in a best-selling autobiography.

And we should hear alarm bells go off if a thera-

pist used suggestive techniques, such as hypnosis,

dream analysis, “age regression,” guided imagery,

or leading questions, to “recover” the memo-

ries. These techniques are all known to increase

confabulation.

reviews of the research have found no good evi-

dence that early trauma causes such dissociation

(Giesbrecht et al., 2008; Huntjens, Verschuere, &

McNally, 2012).

Of course, it is obviously possible for some-

one to forget a single unhappy or deeply unpleas-

ant experience and not recall it for years, just as

going back to your elementary school might trig-

ger a memory of the time that you did something

embarrassing in front of your whole class. How

then should we respond to an individual’s claim

to have recovered memories of years of traumatic

experiences that were previously “repressed”?

How can we distinguish true memories from

false ones?

Clearly, a person’s recollections are likely

to be trustworthy if corroborating evidence is

available, such as medical records, police or

school reports, or the accounts of other people

who had been present at the time. But in the

absence of supporting evidence, we may have

to tolerate uncertainty, because a person might

have a detailed, emotionally rich “memory” that

feels completely real but that has been unin-

tentionally confabulated (Bernstein & Loftus,

Recite & Review

Recite: Make sure you don’t have amnesia for the preceding material by reciting out loud every-

thing you can about the decay theory, replacement of old information, retroactive and proactive

interference, cue-dependent forgetting, state-dependent memory, mood-congruent memory, am-

nesia, and repression.

Review: Next, go back and reread this section.

Now take this Quick Quiz:

1. Wilma has been a long-time fan of country singer Tim McGraw. Recently, she met an interest-
   ing guy named Tom McGraw, but she keeps calling him Tim. Why?


2. When a man at his 20th high school reunion sees his old friends, he recalls incidents he
   thought were long forgotten. Why?


3. What mechanisms other than repression could account for a person’s psychogenic amnesia?
   Answers:

Study and Review at MyPsychLab

The person could be intentionally 3. The sight of his friends provides retrieval cues for the incidents.2. proactive interference1.

avoiding the memory by using distraction or focusing on positive experiences; failure to rehearse the memory may be causing it

to fade; or the person may be avoiding retrieval cues that would evoke the memory.

autobiographical

Memories

For most of us, our memories about our own

experiences are by far the most fascinating. We

use them to entertain (“Did I ever tell you

You are about to learn...

•    why the first few years of life are a mental blank.

•    why human beings have been called the

storytelling animal.