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meroberts's picture

False memories

Submitted by meroberts on Sat, 04/10/2010 - 3:58pm.

Interesting point, Michelle. Not only are the eyewitness accounts faulty because of information that is edited out (or in) by the brain, but they are also faulty because of the time that elapses between seeing something and then being asked to recall it. Evidence shows that most eyewitness accounts are really just false memories conjured up by leading questions from the interviewers, as in the case of a study conducted by Dr. Elizabeth Loftus at University of California, Irvine:

http://www.acfnewsource.org/science/false_memories.html

Dr. Loftus wrote this paper quite a while ago describing how false memories sometimes are planted during therapy sessions, especially when hypnosis is involved:

http://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/Articles/sciam.htm

The section in this paper titled "Impossible Memories" is very interesting to me because my aunt believes that she remembers being born and that's impossible.

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