-Caveat Lector- Hi ! Here are a few posts about the veracity of recovered memory. Sincerely, Neil Brick From: http://members.aol.com/SMARTNEWS/Sample-Issue-26.htm With an often biased media barrage that the false memory syndrome exists, even those survivors with a great deal of documentation and many years of memories may occasionally doubt their memories. I wanted to share a few quotes from: "Memory, Trauma Treatment, and the Law" by Brown, Scheflin and Hammond," (ISBN 0-393-70254-5) W.W. Norton and Co. New York and London, C 1998 (http://www.wwnorton.com) Page 365-366. The book has excellent information about memory studies and a chapter called "The False Logic of the False Memory Controversy and the Irrational Element in Scientific Research on Memory" (pg. 382) >From chapter 11: "A Critical Evaluation of the Memory Scientific Experiments," section: "WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT MEMORY FALLIBILTY?" "Loftus's claim that human memory in general is fallible (1979a,b) and that therefore memories recovered in psychotherapy are equally fallible (1993) is both overstated and oversimplified (Koss et al., 1995)." The conclusion that "negative emotional arousal hinders accurate...memory" (Loftus, 1980, p.78) is misleading..." Loftus' conclusion only applies "to laboratory simulation studies of memory for complex visual presentations" when a certain type of information is measured. "These simulation studies rarely show memory fallibility with respect to the emotional arousing event itself." Generalizing findings on memory fallibilty are misleading when "certain types of visual information presented in the laboratory" are transferred to the "autobiographical memory of patients in psychotherapy." "....The early studies... led to a distorted view of memory fallibilty because they were biased toward assessing memory performance in terms of" all the information contained in "a complex visual stimulus presentation (Clifford & Hollin, 1981; Clifford & Scott, 1978)" or because they looked for "peripheral background details..." "More sophisticated studies...have clearly demonstrated that memory is well and accurately retained for the gist of a central action... or a negative emotional event even over long retention intervals," where "only the peripheral background details are poorly retained." This compares to "...Bartlett's (1932) original studies on memory for the War of the Ghosts,... gist memory was well preserved while memory for minor details was highly inaccurate." "General, overstated claims about memory fallibility" don't take into consideration "the complex interaction of variables that affect memory performance." From: http://members.aol.com/smartnews/page/Sample-Issue-27.htm The information for the following article came from "Memory, Trauma Treatment, and the Law" by Brown, Scheflin and Hammond, W.W. Norton and Co. New York and London, C 1998 (http://www.wwnorton.com) Page 370-381 and is written by the editor of S.M.A.R.T. The base rates for memory commission errors are quite low, at least in professional trauma treatment. The base rates in adult misinformation studies run between zero and 5 percent for adults and between 3 - 5 percent for children. Out of about seven to 10% of the general population that may be highly hypnotizable, four to 6 percent of high hypnotizable subjects may "produce hypnotic psuedomemories for peripheral details (of a memory) in response to suggestions" in a waking state or hypnotized with controlled situational influence. The 4-6 percent may rise in terms of report rates to 80% under some conditions of social influence. Extreme social influence can be compared to brainwashing or social influence to the following criteria, several of which must happen for the possibility of an untrue memory to occur: patient is highly suggestible (in terms of memory), with low to moderate suggestibility a therapeutic situation must contain a number of the following: patient is quite uncertain about the past event, suggestions of peripheral details (not central plot actions of a memory), source credibility (an authority figure), patient bias (previous information), authority figure bias (has set belief about what happened), systematic misleading (rather than free recall), emotional manipulation (blame or rejection for not producing the desired result or praise for the desired result), behavioral response (individual journal or oral narrative to group of trauma or action against perpetrators), milieu control (total information control in and out of therapeutic or other context) and psychophysiological manipulation (breaking down the subject's defenses, assaults self esteem or person's core or causes subject to regress). "Occasional unwitting misleading suggestions (Yapko, 1994a), even the suggestion of a diagnosis of abuse, cannot adequately explain illusory memories of child sexual abuse." (p. 379) Occasional suggestions about abuse are not generally effective, except in highly suggestible people. Some child abuse interrogations might come close to some of the above conditions. Those that have retracted claims due to influence from their accused families, if they have internalized the systematic information of the FMSF, and were coached by FMSF members may also meet many of the above criteria of social influence. Three to six percent of people possess a trait of high memory suggestibility (related or unrelated to hypnotizability). They may make errors for at least peripheral information, but under the certain social conditions listed before they might make errors for central information also. One to two thirds of people could possibly make memory errors in an interrogatory social interaction with many of the social influence conditions listed before. About one third of the population are resistant to memory commission errors except under extreme conditions. My conclusion is that memory contamination is very unlikely, except under extreme conditions. From the data presented, it sounds like it is almost totally impossible for anyone to make a memory error for the central plot of a memory simply by hearing disinformation. A variety of other factors would have to be in place. Even under hypnosis without several social influence factors, it sounds like it is extremely rare (4-6% of 7-10%, less than one percent of people) may be influenced by disinformation. It sounds like most people would almost have to be in a cult or in a cult like situation or under considerable duress to produce an untrue memory. Theories that claim that an untrue memory can be created simply by hearing an untrue statement or because a person is looking for "filler" to complete the central plot of their memory, are probably false. But, if all the information in the media and society available to most survivors is biased toward the false position that memories of abuse are false and a survivor is manipulated and pressured by their family emotionally and cognitively, it is very possible that a survivor may believe (falsely) that their memories are false. DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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