TIPSters with good memories may recall the fanfare in the press ("Freud
was right about repression") in 2001 after Michael Anderson and Collin
Green had published an article in "Nature" claiming findings that "support
a suppression mechanism that pushes unwanted memories out of awareness, as
posited by Freud", with a special article in the same issue acclaiming the
findings by Martin Conway of Bristol University.However on 18 May 2004 Stephen Black wrote >I'm pleased to announce that TIPS' very own Maryanne Garry has a cogent >critique of the Anderson (2001, 2004) alleged experimental demonstration >of Freud's concept of repression, the subject of a TIPS thread some time >ago. Neither has it escaped my notice that the co-author is a >distinguished professor of psychology & social behavior, and of >criminology, law & society named Elizabeth Loftus. >The article is called "I am Freud's Brain", and fittingly, it's published >in the Skeptical Inquirer (May/June issue). I find it particularly >interesting that they cite Bulevich et al (2003) as reporting at a >conference two failures to replicate the Anderson Stnmeffect. In a commentary in response to a target article by Matthew Erdelyi in the current issue of "Behavioral and Brain Sciences" Harlene Hayne, Maryanne Garry, and Elizabeth Loftus report the upcoming publication of an article by Bulevich et al. in which the authors report the failures to replicate Anderson's findings despite several attempts to do so. (That leaves aside that, as Hayne et al. argue, along with many others, Andersons experimentally findings do not have the implications that he claimed for them.) Watch out for the press reports that attempts to replicate Anderson's much publicized findings have not met with success. Or perhaps not. References Bulevich, J.B., Roediger, H.L. III, Balota, D.A. & Butler, A.B. (in press). Failures to find suppression of episodic memories in the think/no think paradigm. Memory and Cognition. Erdelyi, M.H. (2007). "The unified theory of repression", plus commentaries. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 29, 499-551. Hayne, H., Garry, M., and Loftus, E.F. (2007). On the continuing lack of scientific evidence for repression. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 29, 521-522. Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London http://www.esterson.org/ --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
