False memories

Rich false memories

Lost in the mall (Loftus & Pickrell, 1995) 25%

Implanting rich false memories

take photo of hot air balloon (Wade et al., 2002)

Disneyland bugs bunny (Braun et al. 2002) up to 30%

the more you are asked to imagine the more you believe

Brain fills in blind spot in eye

Altering behaviour

Pluto behaving badly - ear licking - pluto souvenir (Berrkkowitz et al. 2008)

sick flavour icecream (Bernstein & Locus 2009)

False memories in lab

Theme sweet (Deese 1959)

False rmbr needle (Roediger & McDermott 1995) but more conscious exp associated with true items

False memories + fMRI

pp watch vidtpae segment present list of associated words. Cabeza et al. 2001

false items elicited more bilateral hippocampus activity than new items. true and false had same amount activity. true and false similar in semantic content but not sensory

Emotions and memory

flashbulb memories

Assassination of pres kennedy (Brown & Kulik, 1977)

why?

1) incidents highly distinctive
2) repeatedly views
3) highly emotional
4) important events

Accuracy

Challenger shuttle, 24 hrs vs 2.5 yrs (Neisser & Harsch, 1992)

Context, degree to which rememberer affected by event e.g. Black people MLK (McCloskey et al., 1998)

Danish resistance flashbulb memory

Confidence

44% saw Princess Diana car crash (Ost et al., 2002)

9/11 first plain strike tower 73% students (Pezdek, 2003)