Strategies for Verifying False Autobiographical Memories
Author(s): Kimberley A. Wade and Maryanne Garry
Source: The American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 118, No. 4 (Winter, 2005), pp. 587-602
Published by: University of Illinois Press
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Strategies for verifying false
autobiographical memories
KIMBERLEY A. WADE AND MARYANNE GARRY
Victoria University of Wellington
This study examined the types of strategies people use to verify putative childhood memories and the degree to which their preferred strategies are restricted
in typical memory implantation studies. We asked subjects to describe a situation
in which they recalled a false childhood experience and a hypothetical situation
in which they pretended to have developed a false memory after taking part in a
memory implantation study. We also asked them how they did (or would) determine the source of the event. We found that subjects relied primarily on other
people and cognitive strategies to verify their experiences. These results suggest
that laboratory situations cultivate false memories in part because they prevent
people from talking to others about the false event, which causes them to rely on
less optimal strategies.
It has been more than a decade since Loftus (1993) reported "implanting"
false childhood memories in adults and formalized the method in Loftus and Pickrell (1995). Most of the implantation research that followed
adopted Loftus and Pickrell's basic method. They asked subjects to read
detailed descriptions of three genuine childhood events and one false
event about getting lost in a shopping mall. With the help of subjects'
family members, the researchers packed the "Lost in the mall" description
with idiosyncratic details, such as the subject's favorite candy and the local
mall they visited as a child. After working at remembering the event, approximately 25% of subjects reported memories for the false experience.
In the 10 peer-reviewed studies that have followed using some variation of
the "Lost in the mall" paradigm, a weighted mean of 37% of subjects have
"remembered" all or part of the false event (Garry & Wade, 2005; Hyman
& Billings, 1998; Hyman, Husband, & Billings, 1995; Hyman & Pentland,
1996; Lindsay, Hagen, Read, Wade, & Garry, 2004; Loftus & Pickrell, 1995;
Ost, Foster, Costall, & Bull, in press; Pezdek, Finger, & Hodge, 1997; Porter,
Yuille, & Lehman, 1999; Wade, Garry, Read, & Lindsay, 2002).
Loftus and Pickrell (1995) created the implantation method as a laboratory analog to recovered memory therapy (RMT). The procedures used
in implantation studies echo those used in RMT to dredge up long-buried memories of sexual abuse (Loftus, 1993; Poole, Lindsay, Memon, &
AMERICANJOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY
Winter 2005, Vol. 118, No. 4, pp. 587-602
c 2005 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
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WADE AND GARRY
Bull, 1995). For example, implantation studies often involve authoritative
figures, such as experimenters or trustworthy family members, suggesting to subjects that an event occurred and placing pressure on them to
remember the event. Together, suggestion and social pressure work to
create a belief in subjects that the target event actually occurred and to
encourage subjects to develop false memories.
The source monitoring framework (SMF; Johnson, Hashtroudi, 8c
Lindsay, 1993; see also Johnson, Foley, Suengas, 8&Raye, 1988; Mitchell
& Johnson, 2000) can guide our understanding of how suggestion and
social pressure aid the development of false childhood memories. First,
the underlying principle of the SMF is that remembering is a reasoning
process: People evaluate the qualitative characteristics of their memories
to determine the source (Johnson et al., 1993). In general, real memories
contain more perceptual, semantic, contextual, and affective details than
imagined events. However, real memories contain fewer records of the
cognitive processes involved (e.g., rehearsal, thought, and elaboration)
in creating and maintaining them. People use these average differences
between real and imagined events to distinguish reality from fantasy (Johnson et al., 1988).
According to the SMF,under certain conditions people mistake imagined events for genuine memories. If so, subjects in implantation studies
might commit these source monitoring errors because they are exposed to
suggestions. As noted earlier, in implantation studies authoritative figures
suggest to subjects that a fictitious event really occurred. Subjects work at
remembering that event and conjure up images and thoughts that contain
vivid perceptual and conceptual details. These images and thoughts sometimes are mistaken for genuine memories because they feel like genuine
memories. Put another way, suggestion can introduce information that
creates the same type of remembering experience one might expect from
a genuine memory, and that is when false autobiographical memories can
OCCUr.
Second, the SMF emphasizes that under certain circumstances people
adopt less stringent criteria for attributing events to memory (Dodson 8&
Johnson, 1993; Hicks 8cMarsh, 2001; Lindsay 8cJohnson, 1989; Multhaup,
1995). Accordingly, applying social pressure in implantation studies can
lead to the use of lax criteria for source monitoring. When experimenters place pressure on subjects to remember the suggested event, subjects
might lower their criteria for attributing events to memory. If so, they are
more likely to experience false childhood memories.
In addition to the use of suggestion and social pressure, we hypothesize
that a third procedure used in memory implantation studies promotes the
development of false memories. That procedure is asking subjects not to
talk to family members about childhood events while they are participating
VERIFYING
FALSE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL
MEMORIES
589
in the study. We suspect that the instruction not to talk to family members
prevents subjects from gathering additional disconfirming or confirming evidence that they might normally use to verify childhood events.
That is, without family members or other relevant people to refute the
experimenter's suggestion, subjects are left with only a few strategies.
Of course, we do not know how subjects distinguish real and imagined
events in implantation studies because verification is not the focus of these
studies. In this study we had two main goals. First, we wanted to learn how
people go about verifying childhood memories when there are no restrictions placed on the types of strategies they use. To accomplish this goal,
we asked adults about a situation in which they recalled a false experience
and the techniques they used to investigate their memory. Second, we
wanted to determine the degree to which implantation studies restrict
the strategies subjects prefer to verify childhood memories. To that end,
we asked subjects to pretend they were subjects in the Loftus and Pickrell
(1995) "Lost in the mall" study. Subjects pretended they had developed a
memory of being lost in a shopping mall as a child, and their task was to
tell us what steps they would take to verify whether that experience really
happened. Unlike typical implantation studies, our hypothetical study did
not place any restrictions on the type of verifying strategies subjects could
use. Instead, our interest was squarely on determining which verification
strategies subjects would choose to use if they were in an implantation
study. In other words, we asked subjects to engage in two metacognitive
exercises in which they had to remember how they believed they disconfirmed, or would disconfirm, a false autobiographical event.
If subjects reported a preference for relying on family members to verify
their actual false memory (Situation 1) and the hypothetical false memory
(Situation 2), then we would have evidence that the false memories cultivated in implantation studies occur in part because people cannot engage
in their preferred verification strategies.
Although the literature on verification strategies is scarce, we can draw
on the SMF, existing social psychology, and the lie detection literature to
guide our thinking about the strategies people might pursue. For example,
the SMF suggests that people evaluate the qualitative characteristics of
their memories to make judgments about the source of those memories
(Johnson et al., 1993). Therefore, subjects might rely heavily on internal cognitive processes such as concentrating on the event and imagining the event to verify their memories. In addition to using qualitative
characteristics, the SMF suggests that people rely information from the
environment. WhenJohnson et al. (1988, Experiment 2) asked subjects
how they verified autobiographical memories, many subjects reported
searching for memories of converging physical evidence or memories of
conversations with friends. Given that subjects search for memories of
590
WADE AND GARRY
physical evidence and memories of previous and subsequent conversations, it seems reasonable to assume that they might initiate new searches
for physical evidence or new conversations in order to evaluate memories.
Interestingly, extended and deliberate attempts to search for confirming
or disconfirming evidence are one part of the SMF that has not received
much attention.1
We also know from the lie detection literature that people rely on physical evidence and third parties to verify information. For example, Park,
Levine, McCornack, Morrison, and Ferara (2002) asked subjects about a
real-life situation in which they discovered that someone had lied to them.
Subjects were also asked how they discovered the news was a lie. The most
common type of information used to detect lies was information from a
third party (52%), such as friends, colleagues, or roommates. Finding
physical evidence was also a common method for detecting lies (31%).
In addition to the source monitoring and lie detection literature, we
can draw on existing social psychology research to guide our thinking
about the strategies subjects are likely to pursue. For example, in the
social psychology literature, Wegner and colleagues' idea of transactive
memory systems suggests that subjects are likely to consult family members to validate memories (Wegner, 1987; Wegner, Erber, & Raymond,
1991; Wegner, Giuliano, & Hertel, 1985). According to Wegner and
colleagues, information often is shared between members of a group,
such as coworkers or couples. A transactive memory system maximizes
knowledge while minimizing effort, because no one person holds all the
information necessary to solve a problem (Hollingshead, 1998; Wegner,
1987). Similarly, we propose that supporting evidence for a memory is
distributed throughout a family. Many events are remembered in pieces
that are distributed (and later reconstructed) across family members. In
the family, a distributed memory system operates such that older family
members hold autobiographical information about younger members'
life experiences at a time when younger members are unable to do so
(Bruce, Dolan, & Phillips-Grant, 2000). Children learn that these older
family members hold specialized knowledge about them that they can
access when they need to know it. If transactive memory systems operate
within family units, then subjects should rely heavily on family members
to verify childhood memories.
In sum, there are a variety of strategies subjects might pursue to investigate childhood memories. They might rely on remembered information,
such as the qualitative characteristics of memories, or on information from
the environment, such as physical evidence or information from third
parties or family members. The question is, Which strategies are subjects
most likely to pursue? Of course, some of these strategies are not as easy
to pursue as others. On one hand, little effort is needed to use cognitive
VERIFYING
FALSE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL
MEMORIES
591
memory strategies. Likewise, contacting family members does not take
large investments of time and energy. On the other hand, searching for
physical evidence such as photographs and legal documentation or contacting third parties (other than family) may be difficult and expensive. In
other words, it is reasonable to assume that some verification techniques
cost more than others, and subjects might pursue different strategies based
on cost. If cost is a factor, then subjects should rely more on cognitive
strategies and family members to verify their memories than on searching
for physical evidence or contacting third parties.
We aimed to investigate the types of strategies people prefer to validate
childhood memories and the extent to which implantation studies restrict
those strategies. To answer these questions, we asked subjects about two
situations in which false childhood memories can occur and how they
would go about verifying their memories. We expected strong preferences
for relying on cognitive memory strategies and seeking information from
family members.
EXPERIMENT
METHOD
Subjects
Weasked97 undergraduatepsychologystudentsat the Universityof Washington
to participatein a study on how people determine whether a memory is real or
false. Participationwas voluntary,and subjectswere not paid.
Materials and procedure
Subjectswere given 50 min during classto complete a questionnairein which
theyhad to consider four possiblescenariosthatcan lead to false memories.However,only two situationsare relevantto this study (see Appendix).For Situation 1,
the instructionsaskedsubjectsto saywhethertheyhad ever come to rememberan
event that they eventuallyfound out did not happen. If so, they were to describe
the event and the verificationstrategiestheyused to determinewhetherthe event
actuallyoccurred.
For Situation 2, the "Lostin the mall"scenario, we described to subjects the
classicLoftus and Pickrell (1995) paradigm.We askedthem to put themselvesin
the shoes of a subjectwho came to "remember"being lost in the mall and to list
the steps they would take to verifywhether their memory was true or false. Unlike implantation-typestudies, subjectswere allowedto relyon familymembersto
verifytheir memories. However,we warnedsubjectsthatanother person'sanswer
might not be correct. We included this warningfor two reasons. First,without
the warning,we hypothesized thatsubjectswouldreportonly one strategy:asking
another person. Second, we wonderedwhethersubjectswould report relyingon
others to verifytheir memories even though they had been warned of the prob-
592
WADE AND GARRY
lems involved with this verification strategy. Subjects were debriefed in the next
class session, where they learned about the purpose of the study and some of our
hypotheses.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Two of the 97 subjects who completed the questionnaire were eliminated for not following instructions, leaving 95 subjects' data for analysis.
In this section we divide the results into two parts: the data related to the
naturally occurring false memories and the data related to the hypothetical scenario.
Naturally occurring false memories
Recall that the first purpose of our study was to investigate the strategies
people have used to determine whether their memories were authentic.
Fifty-one subjects reported a situation in which they came to remember an
event that they later found out never happened. The memories spanned
a large temporal range, from memories of very recent adult events to very
distant childhood events. Because the focus of this study was childhood
memories, we were interested only in the childhood events. Thus, we
categorized events as childhood events if subjects used phrases such as
"when I was little" or "when I was a kid." Using this method, we determined
that 41 of 95 subjects (43%) remembered a childhood event that never
occurred.
Subjects described a wide range of false events. Some of these events
were based on real people. For example, one wrote that many of her
sister's childhood experiences have "incorporated themselves into" her
own memory. This subject thought she had broken her nose when playing
on a seesaw as a child; however, she later learned that her sister was the one
with a broken nose. Another subject described
an even earlier-but
still
false-childhood experience of falling out of a crib when she was around
2 years old. Other experiences included visits from mythical figures. For
example, "When I was about five years old one Christmas Eve, I could
have sworn that I saw reindeer on my roof. I actually saw them! ... Later
when I was told that Santa Claus did not exist I was confused because I
still have that vision of reindeer on my roofi" Note, however, that there
is no way to determine whether these memories were true or false. Visits
from mythological figures and memories before the age of 2 are likely to
be false, whereas more realistic memories, such as breaking one's nose,
often are difficult to confirm because they rely on retrospective reports
and one person's word.
To investigate what strategies subjects used to verify their memories, we
classified subjects' verification
strategies into one of the five categories
VERIFYING
FALSE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL
MEMORIES
593
we developed when reviewing the data: checked information with family
members; checked information with others, including official witnesses,
doctors, or friends; returned to the location of the event; sought physical
proof such as scars or documentation; or used cognitive memory strategies such as concentrating, imagining, weighing up accounts of the event,
and looking for inconsistencies. Three independent raters were carefully
trained in the classification procedure and agreed on 81% of classifications. Discrepancies were settled via discussion.
Figure 1 summarizes the types of verification strategies subjects used to
investigate their memories. Of the 41 subjects who provided a childhood
example, 36 (88%) reported verification strategies. As predicted, the most
common strategies for verifying whether the childhood event occurred
were the low-cost strategies: asking family members and relying on cognitive techniques. Subjects were significantly more likely to ask another
person than to adopt a cognitive strategy, z = 3.33, p < .01. Figure 1 shows
that 67% of subjects consulted another person; for more than half of the
60
50
40
Subjects
of
30
20
Percentage
10
0
Family
Others Location Physical Cognitive
Strategy
Figure 1. Percentage of subjectsusing verificationstrategiesfor naturallyoccurring childhood memories
594
WADE AND GARRY
subjects (56%), this other person was a family member. For example,
one subject wrote that she remembered dropping her infant sibling on
the floor when she was a child herself. When the subject confessed this
accident to her father, he reassured her that the event never happened.
More than a quarter (28%) relied on cognitive memory strategies, including imagining the event occurring and recalling corroborating facts
about the event. For instance, one subject concluded that his memory
was false after thinking about the event and being unable to "connect it
to any other memories." This example nicely illustrates the tenet of the
SMF: that source monitoring sometimes involves attempts to retrieve related memories and metamemory beliefs. In this case, the metamemory
belief is that real memories are more consistent and connected than false
memories.
Only 3% reported returning to the location at which the event happened, and 3% searched for physical evidence to help verify the memory.
Two subjects reported using a secondary strategy to verify their memory,
and both were classified as cognitive memory strategies.
There are two points worth emphasizing about these findings. First,
subjects showed a strong reliance on family members to evaluate their
memories. One possible explanation for why verification from family
members was a common strategy is that childhood events often involve
family members. Consistent with this idea, 76% of subjects who reported
false childhood memories said their memory involved siblings, parents,
or extended family members. An additional explanation is that there is
little cost associated with asking family members. Therefore, the finding
that many subjects relied on family members may result from a desire to
use the most cost-efficient strategy for corroborating memories. Finally,
as we noted earlier, relying heavily on other people maximizes the information held in the system while minimizing the load on any individual
in the system (Hollingshead, 1998; Wegner, 1987). Perhaps asking family
members is a reliable and cost-effective means for verifying memories.
Yet we also know that people's memories of their experiences can be
notoriously inaccurate (Loftus, Miller, & Burns, 1978; Neisser & Harsch,
1993). As Wegner et al. (1985) suggested, an obvious entry point for error comes at the level of individual memory inaccuracies, through each
person's naturally occurring distortions. Ross (1997) also warned of several
other consequences of relying on others to verify a memory, such as difficulties in evaluating the accuracy of another person's memory report.
Indeed, research shows that a variety of factors can influence how believable another person's memory is (Bell & Loftus, 1988;Johnson, Bush, &
Mitchell, 1998; Schooler, Gerhard, & Loftus, 1986). For instance,Johnson
et al. (1998, Experiment 1) asked subjects to judge whether first-person
memory reports of common events (such as visiting a doctor) were pro-
VERIFYING
FALSE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL
MEMORIES
595
vided by people who had actually experienced the event or by people who
had not experienced the event. Believability judgments were swayed by
the amount of perceptual and emotional detail contained in the memory
reports. Therefore, relying on family members--subjects' most preferred
strategy-is not foolproof. Given the fragility of human memory and the
problems inherent in evaluating another person's memory, it is somewhat
surprising that people rely on a system that introduces as many opportunities for error as there are people in the system.
The second point worth emphasizing is that relying on one's own cognitions as a means of gathering information about an experience often can
lead to error. For example, one way in which false childhood memories
can be created is the confusion of imagination, thoughts, and other counterfactual scenarios with information about real childhood experiences.
Because imagined memories contain weak perceptual detail-similar to
genuine childhood memories-people can come to believe that imagined
information is a memory for a real childhood experience (Johnson et al.,
1988). Indeed, the memory implantation effect undoubtedly capitalizes
on the similarity between imagined memories and genuine childhood
memories. For example, Hyman and Pentland (1996) found that an explicit instruction for subjects to imagine a false experience produced more
false reports than a vague instruction to "think about" the false event,
results suggesting that imagination has a role in creating false childhood
memories. More recently, Mazzoni and Memon (2003) found that asking subjects to briefly imagine a fictitious childhood event increased the
clarity of their false memories. In short, many reality and source monitoring studies show that evaluating the characteristics of one's own mental
experience may result in false memories.
To summarize the data from Situation 1, when subjects came to remember fictitious childhood events, they were most likely to rely on other people and on cognitive memory strategies to verify their memories.
They seldom used more effortful, and possibly rigorous, strategies such as
searching for physical evidence or returning to the scene of the event.
Implanted false memories
The second purpose of our study was to investigate the degree to which
implantation studies restrict subjects' ability to verify memories. To address this question, we asked subjects to hypothetically place themselves
into Loftus and Pickrell's (1995) "Lost in the mall" study and to indicate
how they would verify a memory in this situation.
Of the 95 subjects, 7 did not follow instructions or failed to provide
strategies, leaving 88 (93%) subjects' data for analysis. Independent raters agreed on 87% of the strategy categorizations, and discrepancies were
settled via discussion. Figure 2 shows the distribution of the strategies
596
WADE AND GARRY
60
PrimaryStrategy
Secondary Strategy
50
40
Subjects
of
30
20
Percentage
10
0
Family Others Location Physical Cognitive
Strategy
Figure 2. Percentageof subjectsusing verificationstrategiesfor "Lostin the mall"
memories
subjects would use to validate a "lost in the mall" memory. The black bars
represent subjects' primary verification strategies, and the white bars represent subjects' secondary verification strategies. Recall that we warned
subjects not to assume that another person's memory was correct, an
instruction that should have encouraged them to report two verification
strategies and reduced their reliance on family members.
Figure 2 shows that unlike in Situation 1 (in which the most preferred
strategy for verifying memories was consulting family), in Situation 2 subjects equally preferred cognitive memory strategies (49%) and consulting
family (41%), z < 1. Only 3% said they would rely on others. The most
common secondary strategy was consulting family members (40%), followed by cognitive memory strategies (30%). Of the subjects who said they
would consult family members first, 57% said they would use a cognitive
memory technique as their secondary strategy. The remaining 10% of
subjects reported returning to the location, asking others involved, or
VERIFYINGFALSEAUTOBIOGRAPHICAL
MEMORIES
597
looking for physical evidence. In short, as in Situation 1, the naturally
occurring false memories, subjects showed a strong preference for relying
on family members and cognitive memory strategies.
Of course, there is no way to determine whether the lesser reliance on
asking family members and other people in Situation 2 was driven by the
warning we gave subjects or by the change in the event. However, we do
know that 37% of subjects in implantation studies have generated memories about a false event when they were prevented from talking to others
about that event. Additionally, it is possible that instead of preventing
subjects from relying on others to validate their memories, our warning
may have made this strategy more salient and biased subjects to use it.
Such a mechanism would suggest that our data have inflated subjects'
natural tendency to rely on others. Such a counterexplanation seems
unsupported by the data, however, because a reliance on family members
was still high in Situation 1, even without the warning.
It is reasonable to conclude that people prefer to rely on others to
validate memories and that implantation studies restrict one of the most
preferred verification strategies. As a result, these data suggest that when
subjects
cannot
rely on other people
to gather information
about an
event, they may rely on their own cognitive strategies, a behavior known
to contribute to false memories.
Summary
There were two major goals in this study. Our first goal was to determine what strategies subjects used to discover a naturally occurring false
childhood memory. Our second goal was to determine what strategies
people would use to discover false memories in an implantation study.
Most notable was the fact that in both scenarios, subjects relied on family
members and on cognitive memory strategies to validate their memories.
Taken together, these results led us to conclude that people naturally prefer to gather information from family members to verify an event involving others. When they cannot do so, they may rely on internal, cognitive
strategies.
Our results fit with the literature on transactive memory systems, which
shows that important information is shared between members of a group
(Wegner et al., 1985, 1991). Our findings are also consistent with the SMF
literature that shows that subjects use cognitive or reasoning processes to
distinguish reality from fantasy (Johnson et al., 1988). However, unlike
Park et al.'s (2002) lie detection research, in which subjects often relied on
physical evidence to validate information, our results showed that subjects
rarely used physical proof to validate childhood memories. One explanation for why our subjects were unlikely to search for physical evidence is
598
WADE AND GARRY
that the memories theyverified-in both Situation 1 and Situation 2-were
inconsequential compared with the lies Park et al.'s subjects verified. For
instance, our subjects reported scenarios in which they misremembered
whether a childhood toy belonged to them or whether a certain friend
attended a party. By contrast, Park et al.'s subjects reported situations in
which their partners lied about adulterous relationships and friends let
them down after making promises. It may be that when people are motivated to verify information, they go to extra lengths such as searching
for physical evidence to ensure that they have the right information.
If talking to others and engaging in cognitive activities are both fallible verification techniques, why would we rely on these two strategies at
all? The perception action literature may help to answer this question.
It shows that our perceptual systems are tuned toward maximizing gains
while minimizing effort (Holt, Hamill, 8&Andres, 1991; Shaw & KinsellaShaw, 1988). For example, Warren (1984) asked people to look at stairs
of various riser heights and to rate them for climbing comfort. Then he
had them actually climb stairs with similar characteristics. The stairs that
subjects predicted would be the most comfortable to climb-simply as a
result of looking at them-were the ones that exacted the least metabolic
cost when subjects actually climbed them. Although stairs with steep risers
make for a shorter route, we eschew them in favor of more comfortable
routes. In other words, we tend to maximize the goal-directed action when
minimizing metabolic cost.
Shaw and Kinsella-Shaw (1988) took a similar approach to understanding how we tackle more cognitive problems. They proposed a general
theory of goal-directed activity in which we operate so as to balance progress toward the goal and effort expended, always keeping in mind that
each step-whether a physical step or a psychological step-has a cost.
Put another way, we gauge the energy needed to complete a particular
task or subtask before engaging in the task (Sparrow & Newell, 1998),
and our perceptual systems naturally guide us toward an information-cost
trade-off. In the case of verification strategies, the low effort involved in
relying on family members and cognitive memory strategies also comes
at the cost of accuracy. The notion of an information-cost trade-off is
similar to the SMF assumption that we tend to use heuristic processes,
which are automatic and effortless, when the consequences are minor.
By contrast, we tend to adopt strategic processes, which are deliberate
and effortful, when the consequences are more significant and accuracy
is more important (Johnson et al., 1993).
Future research should explore the relationship between people's preferred memory verification strategies and the information-cost tradeoff.
VERIFYING FALSE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORIES
599
Appendix. Verifying memories questionnaire
Situation 1: A false or real experience?Have you ever come to remember an event
that you eventually found out did not happen? For instance, you may have come
to believe a childhood experience happened and later found out it did not. You
might have met up with an old friend and swapped those "remember the time
that we .. ." stories and started to remember
something
that you later realized
did not occur.
If you have had an experience like this, and it did not involve alcohol, please
describe the event. Also describe the steps you went through in trying to determine
whether it was a true or false memory.
Situation 2: Lost in the mall. One of the first studies to demonstrate that people
can come to remember an event that never really happened to them was the
"Lost in the Shopping Mall" study, done here at the UW byJacquie Pickrell, Jim
Coan, and Elizabeth Loftus. If you were a subject in this study, your older sibling
or cousin would be an accomplice and would provide us with descriptions of, say,
three events that happened when you were a child. The accomplice would also
help us construct one false memory. Here's the false memory: You were about 5
years old, you were in the mall with family members, and you wandered off and
got lost. Eventually you were found by an elderly lady who helped reunite you.
You were very upset, even crying, and one of your parents yelled at you never to
do that again. You would read descriptions of these events (three true, one false),
thinking they all really happened. Then in a couple of weeks, we would ask you
to tell us about each event. We'd ask you to retell your story another time, too,
to see whether you elaborated or remembered more about the shopping mall
experience. At the end of a few weeks, we would tell you that one of the events
never happened and ask you to decide which one was the false one.
Yourtask. Suppose you were one of the subjects who came to remember having
been lost in the mall. You can remember details of this experience, you recall being very scared, you remember the elderly woman, and it seems very real. How do
you go about trying to determine whether this event actually happened to you?
Please list the steps you would go through. Important: If you ask someone else
to verify the event (e.g., "I'd ask my parent"), then don't assume that their answer
is necessarily correct. For instance, if you remembered your mom being there,
and she says, "No that never happened" it's possible that she's mistaken or that
you really did get lost but maybe your mom wasn't there.
This question requires a lot of thought. You can write your answer and accompany it by a diagram, flowchart, or decision tree if you wish.
Situation 3: Alcohol-inducedmemoryor real experience.In Situation 3 we examined
memory distortions created by alcohol. Subjects were asked whether they had ever
remembered an event that never occurred as the result of consuming too much
alcohol. If so, they were to list the steps they went through in trying to determine
whether the memory was true or false.
Situation 4: A dreamor a real experience.In Situation 4, we asked subjects whether
they had ever woken up and been unsure as to whether they had dreamed about
an event or whether it had really happened. Subjects were asked to describe the
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event and the steps they went through in trying to determine whether it was a
true or false memory.
Notes
We are grateful for research support from the Royal Society of New Zealand,
Marsden VUW025. We thank MarciaJohnson, Peter Frost, Elizabeth Loftus, Stefanie Sharman, Deryn Strange, Seema Clifasefi, and Rachel Sutherland for their
helpful comments on earlier versions of the manuscript, to Justine Cornwall for
coding data, and to Helene Hembrooke for conversations that led to this work.
Kimberley Wade is now at the University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom. Correspondence about this article should be addressed to Kimberley Wade,
Department of Psychology, University of Warwick, CV4 7AL, Coventry, United
Kingdom (e-mail: [email protected]). Received for publication August 27,
2004; revision received February 28, 2005.
1. We thank MarciaJohnson for this observation.
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