> Clancy, S. A., Schachter, D. L., McNally, R. J., & Pitman R. K.
> (2000). False recognition in women reporting recovered memories
> of sexual abuse. Psychological Science, 11, 26-31.
> The authors report that those women who reported recovered memories
> of sexual abuse were more prone to false recognition in other memory
> tasks and suggest that these women as a group may be more
> susceptiple to memory illusion.
This is a nicely designed study. I'm especially impressed by the
choice of comparison groups. Women with recovered memories of abuse
were more prone to false recognition than: 1) women with never-
repressed memories of abuse and 2) women who were possibly still
repressing memories of abuse. The difference in rates of false
recognition didn't seem attributable to cognitive impairment induced
by stress (across groups, the rate of false recognition was
uncorrelated with degree of current stress; r=-.01).
My chief concern is with the word-list task used to elicit false
recognition. The sort of false recognition we're talking about is:
ACTUAL EVENT:
The list contained "orange," "lime," and "grapefruit."
FALSE MEMORY:
The list contained "orange," "lime," "grapefruit," and "lemon."
As regards memories of childhood abuse, what's being modeled here?
I'm not sure anything is being modeled, unless it's what Clancy et al.
call "gist" memory. I suppose an example of gist memory would be:
ACTUAL EVENT:
Professor Plum made no attempt to intervene while Colonel Mustard
abused me with the candlestick in the conservatory.
FALSE MEMORY:
Professor Plum pleasured himself with the lead pipe while Colonel
Mustard abused me with the wrench in the dining room.
I don't think that this sort of "memory illusion" gets at the heart of
the recovered-memory controversy. We need a task that models a
scenario such as:
ACTUAL EVENT:
Professor Plum, Colonel Mustard, and I had a pleasant conversation
in the conservatory.
FALSE MEMORY:
Professor Plum pleasured himself with the lead pipe while Colonel
Mustard abused me with the wrench in the dining room.
What sort of task could model this? Perhaps a modified version of the
word-list task, as suggested by Freyd & Gleaves (1996):
ACTUAL EVENT:
The list contained "orange," "lime," and "grapefruit."
FALSE MEMORY:
The list contained "orange," "lime," "grapefruit," and "penis."
Clancy et al. demonstrate familiarity with the Freyd & Gleaves (1996)
paper by citing it. However, they do not mention the modified
word-list task, much less use it. Had they used it and still shown
some especial proneness toward false recognition in their recovered-
memory group, I would be signing up right now for membership in the
FMSF.
--David Epstein
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reference:
Freyd JJ and Gleaves DH. "Remembering" words not presented in lists:
relevance to the current recovered/false memory controversy. Journal
of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 22(3):
811-813, 1996.
