Research Paper On False Memory
False Memories
When engaging in the cognitive processes of recall and recognition, we rarely focus on how accurate a memory is when retrieved. Instead, we focus on whether we are able to retrieve that memory or not. What many of us do not realize is that it is quite common for us to encode memories differently than the way they occurred. There are also instances where we remember events that never happened, and this is quite critical since many, if not all, of our cognitive processes depend on memory (Roediger & McDermott, 1995). False memories have attracted the attention of many psychologists over the years, which have conducted experiments to understand this phenomenon. One experiment in particular, known as the Deese/Roediger-McDermott …show more content…
They had participants study a list of semantically related words and then later gave them a recognition task. These participants reported remembering words that were not included in the list, demonstrating false memory (Bui, Friedman, McDonough, & Castel 2013). The purpose of this experiment was to understand the limits of memory and ultimately determine the nature of the mental depictions that are most likely to provoke false memory (Roediger & McDermott, 1995). Through their experiments, Deese, Roediger and McDermott wanted to prove that confidence has nothing to do with memory accuracy; no matter how vivid a memory is there is no way deeming it correct without any objective evidence. They hypothesized that if participants were to be put under controlled conditions, they could be biased into remembering things that never happened—exhibiting false memory. I anticipated the same; if participants were presented with a word that is related to the words in the original list but not actually from that list, they should falsely report having seen the new word in the old
When engaging in the cognitive processes of recall and recognition, we rarely focus on how accurate a memory is when retrieved. Instead, we focus on whether we are able to retrieve that memory or not. What many of us do not realize is that it is quite common for us to encode memories differently than the way they occurred. There are also instances where we remember events that never happened, and this is quite critical since many, if not all, of our cognitive processes depend on memory (Roediger & McDermott, 1995). False memories have attracted the attention of many psychologists over the years, which have conducted experiments to understand this phenomenon. One experiment in particular, known as the Deese/Roediger-McDermott …show more content…
They had participants study a list of semantically related words and then later gave them a recognition task. These participants reported remembering words that were not included in the list, demonstrating false memory (Bui, Friedman, McDonough, & Castel 2013). The purpose of this experiment was to understand the limits of memory and ultimately determine the nature of the mental depictions that are most likely to provoke false memory (Roediger & McDermott, 1995). Through their experiments, Deese, Roediger and McDermott wanted to prove that confidence has nothing to do with memory accuracy; no matter how vivid a memory is there is no way deeming it correct without any objective evidence. They hypothesized that if participants were to be put under controlled conditions, they could be biased into remembering things that never happened—exhibiting false memory. I anticipated the same; if participants were presented with a word that is related to the words in the original list but not actually from that list, they should falsely report having seen the new word in the old