Creating False Memories. Elizabeth F. Loftus In 1986 Nadean Cool, a nurse's aide in Wisconsin, sought therapy from a psychiatrist to help her cope with her reaction to a traumatic event experienced by her daughter. During therapy, the psychiatrist used hypnosis and other suggestive techniques to dig out buried memories of abuse that Cool herself had allegedly experienced. In the process, Cool became convinced that she had repressed memories of having been in a satanic cult, of eating babies, of being raped, of having sex with animals and of being forced to watch the murder of her eight-year-old friend. She came to believe that she had more than 120 personalities-children, adults, angels and even a duck-all because, Cool was told, she had experienced severe childhood sexual and physical abuse.
The psychiatrist also performed exorcisms on her, one of which lasted for five hours and included the sprinkling of holy water and screams for Satan to leave Cool's body. False Childhood Memories Imagination Inflation. How Often Should We Trust Our Intuition? By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on January 5, 2011 For many, our gut response helps us make the call when confronted with a difficult decision. But is this always the correct course of action? A new study exploring the decision-making process finds the abiliity to make hunch decisions varies considerably: Intuition can either be a useful ally or it can lead to costly and dangerous mistakes. Research findings, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggest the trustworthiness of our intuition is really influenced by what is happening physically in our bodies.
“We often talk about intuition coming from the body — following our gut instincts and trusting our hearts,” said Barnaby D. To investigate how different bodily reactions can influence decision-making, Dunn and his co-authors asked study participants to try to learn how to win at a card game they had never played before. Journaling Before Exam Can Relieve Test Anxiety.
By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on January 14, 2011 Right or wrong, in our current educational, professional and vocational environments test performance is critical. For students prone to test-taking anxiety, the stakes are high. New research finds that students were able to improve their high-stakes test scores by nearly one grade point after they were given 10 minutes to write about what was causing them fear. The writing exercise allowed students to unload their anxieties before taking the test and accordingly freed up brainpower needed to complete the test successfully — brainpower that is normally occupied by worries about the test, explained the study’s senior author, Dr. Beilock is an expert on “choking under pressure” — when talented people perform below their skill level during a particularly challenging experience. To test those ideas, researchers recruited 20 college students and gave them two short math tests.
Journaling Before Exam Can Relieve Test Anxiety. False Memories from Simply Observing Others. By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on September 15, 2010 Have you ever wondered if you really did something, or did you just remember the event because you watched someone else perform the action? If so, don’t feel bad. Experts continue to gather evidence that memory is not always reliable. Interestingly, the insight came as a team of psychologists were studying imagination, a recognized method by which false memories can be created. In an experiment, psychologists found that people who had watched a video of someone else doing a simple action — shaking a bottle or shuffling a deck of cards, for example — often remembered doing the action themselves two weeks later. “We were stunned,” says Gerald Echterhoff, of Jacobs University Bremen.
In each experiment, participants performed several simple actions. Two weeks later, they were asked which actions they had done. Source: Association for Psychological Science APA Reference Nauert, R. (2010). Memory Improved 20% by Nature Walk. New study finds that short-term memory is improved 20% by walking in nature, or even just by looking at an image of a natural scene. I’m sitting in front of the computer and I’ve been working too hard for too long without a break. My brain feels like it’s filling with wet cardboard. In fact what I’m doing isn’t writing any more, it’s just typing. I go to the kitchen, stand there for a moment, can’t remember what I’ve come in for, feel foolish, then eat a biscuit. It doesn’t help. Time for a walk.
But where to? Most of us are aware that a quick walk around the block does wonders for the mind. Communing with nature Marc G. The results showed that people’s performance on the test improved by almost 20% after wandering amongst the trees. In the second study participants weren’t even allowed to leave the lab but instead some stared at pictures of natural scenes while others looked at urban environments. Attention Restoration Theory Trees and fields: the ultimate cognitive enhancers?
Do Brain Exercises Prevent Memory Loss? By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on February 18, 2009 The debated issue of whether brain activities can prevent memory loss continues be a hot topic. A just released study supports the value of participating in certain mental activities. The study suggests activities like reading magazines or crafting in middle age or later in life may delay or prevent memory loss. Investigators studied 197 people between the ages of 70 and 89 with mild cognitive impairment, or diagnosed memory loss, and 1,124 people that age with no memory problems.
Both groups answered questions about their daily activities within the past year and in middle age, when they were between 50 to 65 years old. People who watched television for less than seven hours a day in later years were 50 percent less likely to develop memory loss than people who watched for more than seven hours a day. “This study is exciting because it demonstrates that aging does not need to be a passive process. Topic of Daydreams Determine Memory Loss. By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on July 27, 2010 Have you ever found yourself daydreaming and had difficulty remembering what you were doing before the temporary escape?
If the answer is yes, then you are normal. Now, new research finds that the memory loss is more pronounced if your mind drifts farther — to memories of an overseas vacation instead of a domestic trip, for example, or a memory in the more distant past. Psychologists have known for a while that context is important to remembering. If you leave the place where a memory was made — its context — it will be harder for you to recall the memory. Previous studies had also found that thinking about something else — daydreaming or mind-wandering — blocks access to memories of the recent past.
In the new study, psychological scientists wanted to know if the content of your daydreams affects your ability to access a recently acquired memory. Next, the participant was shown a second list of words. How Much of Your Memory Is True? Meanwhile, doubts about the standard theory of memory were piling up in the world outside the neuroscience lab. In the early 1990s many people began reporting what seemed to be long-buried memories of childhood sexual abuse. These traumatic recollections frequently surfaced with the help of recovered-memory therapy techniques like hypnosis and guided imagery, in which patients are encouraged to visualize terrible experiences.
Cognitive scientists suspected that some of these memories were bogus, the unwitting product of suggestion by the therapist. In support of this view, psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, then of the University of Washington, proved how easy it is to implant a false memory, especially one that is plausible. In a famous experiment, she gave volunteers a booklet narrating three true stories of events from their own childhood along with an invented tale that described their getting lost in the mall at age 5.
Immediately reconsolidation became a fighting word. Scans reveal how we change memories › News in Science (ABC Science) News in Science Friday, 1 July 2011 Clare PainABC Changing memories Reminiscing about old times with your friends is fun, but it may rewrite history according to a new study. Research reported in this week's edition of the journal Science suggests that comparing memories with other people sometimes alters the stored memory in the brain. Micah Edelson, a PhD student, and Professor Yadin Dudai at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel carried out the work with scientists from University College London in the United Kingdom.
It has been known for some time that, when people reminisce in a group, an error in memory held by one group member may be transferred to others in the group. Sometimes, people genuinely believe the new erroneous version of events, a process known as 'rewriting'. "Humans are very social animals," says Edelson. Edelson divided 30 volunteers into small groups to watch a TV documentary. Changes in the brain Not always a bad thing. Memories Can Be Distorted Over Time. September 20, 2012 Connie K. Ho for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online Researchers from the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University recently discovered that a memory of an event can change with each retelling. The team of scientists found that the modification of the memory of an event is due to an adjustment in brain networks that changes the placement of the memory. “A memory is not simply an image produced by time traveling back to the original event — it can be an image that is somewhat distorted because of the prior times you remembered it,” explained lead author Donna Bridge, a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, in a prepared statement.
The results of the study may pinpoint some of the issues that witnesses may have when giving a testimony for a trial. “Maybe a witness remembers something fairly accurately the first time because his memories aren´t that distorted,” noted Bridge in the statement. Source: Connie K. Your Memory Isn't What You Think It Is. Who hasn’t experienced something like this with old friends? ‘That was a great day in the park.’ ‘No, it was the beach.’ ‘It rained.’ ‘There was sun.’ ‘We wore overcoats.’ ‘We went without shoes.’ It is our friend’s memory that is faulty, not ours we say. Now Daniela Schiller, of Mt. Not only are our memories faulty (anyone who has uncovered old diaries knows that), but more importantly Schiller says our memories change each time they are recalled. Schiller says that memories are malleable constructs that are reconstructed with each recall. What we remember changes each time we recall the event. One implication of Schiller’s work is that memory isn’t like a file in our brain but more like a story that is edited every time we tell it.
Schiller says, “My conclusion is that memory is what you are now. In his MIT Technology Review article about this work, Stephen S. How Our Brains Make Memories | Science. Sitting at a sidewalk café in Montreal on a sunny morning, Karim Nader recalls the day eight years earlier when two planes slammed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center. He lights a cigarette and waves his hands in the air to sketch the scene. At the time of the attack, Nader was a postdoctoral researcher at New York University. He flipped the radio on while getting ready to go to work and heard the banter of the morning disc jockeys turn panicky as they related the events unfolding in Lower Manhattan. Nader ran to the roof of his apartment building, where he had a view of the towers less than two miles away. He stood there, stunned, as they burned and fell, thinking to himself, “No way, man.
This is the wrong movie.” In the following days, Nader recalls, he passed through subway stations where walls were covered with notes and photographs left by people searching desperately for missing loved ones. Nader believes he may have an explanation for such quirks of memory.