Annotated Citation/Reaction 3

Mazzoni, G. A. L., Loftus, E. F., & Kirsch, I. (2001).  Changing Beliefs About Implausible Autobiographical Events: A Little Plausibility Goes a Long Way.  Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 7, 51-59.

            The experimenters did three experiments to yield results on the effect of plausible events on false memories.  The first experiment consisted of manipulating the implausibility of witnessing possession and the plausibility event of choking as a child.  The subjects, all who attended the University of Florence in Italy were convinced to believe that they experienced one of these events (except the control group), when in fact they stated they didn’t before the experiment.  One primary occurrence in this experiment was to make something like witnessing possession which is obviously implausible, seem plausible.  Experiment two examined the role of plausibility manipulation and how likely it was that individuals experienced it.  The third experiment examined the effect of remote content on plausibility and likeliness of occurrence.  Suggestibility can directly impact the creation of false memories considering that before the experiment the subjects concluded that they have never witnessed possession and after some say they did as a child.
            I find this article extremely interesting.  It is surprising to think that something like witnessed possession can be implanted as a memory when someone had never heard or experienced it before in their life.  This demonstrates the flexibility of memory.  Taking this into consideration, it brings up the concern of therapists that suggest to their clients that they were abused as children and sometimes the clients can create false memories from their childhood and claim them to be repressed.

Poole, D. A., & Lindsay, D. S. (2001).  Children’s Eyewitness reports after exposure to misinformation from parents [Electronic Version].  Journal of Experimental Psychology : Applied, 7, 27-50.