The study aforementioned concentrates on gauging the ability of a human to refresh his/her memory by using narration strategies. The researchers are also finding out if there is a chance that an entire memory of a person can be altered in a major way through deception. The researchers are also trying to do such thing aforementioned in a legitimate way.
The authors conducted an extensive research about the bad case of false memories from previous related literature. The hypothesis of the study was to determine that distorted information affects and alters the memory. The researchers are also interested in determining how much detail they can remember and how their subject’s memory compared to the paired relative.
In this research, both qualitative and quantitative analysis is used in gathering data. The researchers have used 24 subjects ranging from 18 to 53 years of age. Three of the subjects are male, and 21 other subjects are female. Each subject is paired with a relative who has knowledge about his or her respective childhood experiences. Subjects were given a five-page booklet with answering instructions and scheduled interviews. The booklet had four short stories related to the subject’s childhood life, which the relatives provided. One of the events in four stories contains a false event of getting lost, which is presented third. There are limitations, as the relatives of subjects did not provide stories that are either too easy to remember or too traumatic for a child to remember. Subjects will write down either what they remembered or what they did not remember at the back of each story read.
Two weeks after completing and mailing the booklet to the researchers, the subjects are to be called for two interview sessions. During the interview, the subjects had a refresher course regarding the four stories mentioned in the booklet. Small details of events are provided as additional information for the subjects to recall. The subjects are also asked how clear their memory for the event is. After rating the clarity, the same method is also used for rating their confidence of getting right about a true event. The method used for such questions is the scale from one (lowest) to ten (highest). The interviewers are asked not to discuss the events with anyone else until after the second interview.
There are 7-day/14-day intervals between the first and second interview. The session and procedures was the same with the previous one. However, the researchers debriefed the subjects about their real intention after the interview, and apologized for the deception afterwards.
According to the research, the 24 subjects have narrated 49 out of 72 true events. However, seven of them recalled the event that is not true. Subjects also used many words when they narrate their memories, regardless of partiality. The usual length of words in describing real memories was 138.0, while the average words mentioned for untrue memories stands at 49.9. Seventeen of the 24 subjects insisted that they had no memory about the false event, but 75% continued to resist the indication of being lost whatsoever. The mean clarity of true events for first and second interviews is the same at 6.3 mean. However, the mean clarity for false events from the first interview (2.8) is lower than the second interview (3.6). The mean confidence rating (both true and false events) from the second interview is slightly lower than the first interview. Nineteen of the 24 subjects correctly chose the getting lost memory as the false one.
After providing the details of their conducted study, the authors cited another research that has the same goal and procedure – which is the study of Hyman and Husband. However, the study of the authors has differences compared to Hyman’s and Husband’s. The false event crafted was the overnight hospitalization for a high fever with possible ear infection. The subjects recalled sixty-four (64) of the 72 true events during the first interview, and memories for three of the 12 events not remembered are provided for the latter part. No subject recalled false events during the first interview, but 4 of the 20 subjects included false information during the latter interview.
Another study of Hyman et al was also mentioned. They tried to implant three false events that are unusual. Still, the methodology was still the same compared to the first study. However, more cues and details are provided (age, event location, actions, people involved, and other necessary information). Three interviews were conducted for each subject. The subjects described 182 out of 205 true events during the first interview. The second interview lets the subjects provide additional information. The final interview had the subjects provide 13 out of 23 events not remembered from the first interview. For the false events, nobody recalled such during the first interview, but twenty-five percent (25%) during the final interview.
The research (and other studied mentioned) has proven that memory distortion and some form of schematic reconstruction can cause one’s memory to be altered via suggestion. In result to that, one can strongly believe that a false event has actually taken place. However, the study proved that people could not easily determine if a certain event in their life is either true or false.
