Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research and Everyday Experience, 3rd Edition

236 • CHAPTER 8 Everyday Memory and Memory Errors

1. True and false memories in the brain. Can we distinguish
   between true and false memories by looking at activ-
   ity in the brain? One idea, called the sensory reactiva-
   tion hypothesis, is that true memories involve activation
   of sensory areas that were activated when the original
   memory was formed.

Schacter, D. L., & Slotnick, S. D. (2004). The cognitive neuro-

science of memory distortion. Neuron, 44, 149–160.

Sederberg, P. B., et al. (2007). Gamma oscillations distinguish true

from false memories. Psychological Science, 18, 927–932.

Wheeler, M. E., & Buckner, R. L. (2004). Functional-anatomic

correlates of remembering and knowing. NeuroImage, 21,

1337–1349.

Wheeler, M. E., Petersen, S. E., & Buckner, R. L. (2000). Mem-

ory’s echo: Vivid remembering reactivates sensory-specific

cortex. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,

97 , 11125–11129.

2. Social influence, source monitoring and the misinforma-
   tion effect. Source monitoring and the misinformation
   effect can be influenced by social factors.

Assefi, S. L., & Garry, M. (2003). Absolut® memory distor-

tions: Alcohol placebos influence the misinformation effect.

Psychological Science, 14, 77–80.

Hoffman, H. G., Granhag, P. A., See, S. T. K., & Loftus, E. F.

(2001). Social influences on reality-monitoring decisions.

Memory and Cognition, 29, 394–404.

3. Memory distortions caused by personal bias. In a very
   readable book, Daniel Schacter describes a number of
   ways that memory can be distorted. In one chapter he
   discusses how memory can be distorted by biases related
   to personal and social factors, such as how people per-
   ceive themselves and how they think about events in
   their lives.
   Schacter, D. L. (2001). The seven sins of memory. New York:
   Houghton Mifflin.


4. Confabulation. People with damage to their frontal lobes
   often engage in a process called confabulation, which
   involves making outlandish false statements. One char-
   acteristic of confabulation is that the person believes that
   even the most impossible-sounding statements are true. It

has been suggested that this may tell us something about

the role of the frontal lobes in normal memory.

Moscovitch, M. (1995). Confabulation. In D. L. Schacter (Ed.),

Memory distortion (pp. 226–251). Cambridge, MA: Har-

vard University Press.

5. Mechanisms of the misinformation effect. The chapter
   you just read reviews three ideas about the mechanisms
   responsible for the misinformation effect. This paper
   presents another idea, which argues against the memory
   trace replacement hypothesis.

McCloskey, M., & Zaragoza, Z. (1985). Misleading postevent

information and memory for events: Arguments and

evidence against memory impairment hypothesis. Journal of

Experimental Psychology: General, 114, 3–18.

6. Suggestibility in children. We have seen that adults can be
   influenced by suggestion. Young children pose additional
   problems, especially when they are called on to present
   testimony in court.

Bruck, M., Ceci, S. J., & Hembrooke, H. (2002). The nature of

children’s true and false narratives. Developmental Review,

22 , 520–554.

Principe, G. F., Kanaya, T., Ceci, S. J., & Singh, M. (2006).

Believing is seeing: How rumors can engender false memo-

ries in preschoolers. Psychological Science, 17, 243–248.

7. The Moses illusion. The Moses illusion occurs when people
   answer “two” to the question “How many animals of each
   kind did Moses take on the ark?” even though they know
   that Noah was the one with the ark. A number of different
   hypotheses have been proposed to explain this effect.

Park, H., & Reder, L. M. (2004). Moses illusion: Implications

for human cognition. In R. F. Pohl (Ed.), Cognitive illusions

(pp. 275–291). Hove, UK: Psychology Press.

8. Memory distortions in coerced false confessions. Some
   people who confess to crimes they did not commit come to
   believe that they did commit the crime and can even create
   vivid memories of the crime. The following paper describes
   this striking phenomenon in terms of source monitoring.

Henkel, L. A., & Coffman, K. J. (2004). Memory distortions in

coerced false confessions: A source monitoring framework

analysis. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 10, 567–588.

If You WANT TO KNOW MORE

Amygdala, 208
Autobiographical memory (AM), 205
Cognitive hypothesis, 207
Cognitive interview, 232
Constructive nature of memory, 213

Cryptomnesia, 215

Cultural life script, 207

Cultural life script hypothesis, 207

Eyewitness testimony, 226

Flashbulb memory, 209

Memory trace replacement

hypothesis, 224

Misinformation effect, 222

Misleading postevent information

(MPI), 222

Key TERMS

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