Annotated Citation/ Reaction 5

Brainerd, C. J., Reyna, V. F., Wright, R., & Mojardin, A. H.  (2003).  Recollection rejection: False-memory editing in children and adults.  American Psychological Association, 110, 762-784.

    Childhood Sexual Abuse (CSA) and proposed that people who report repressed and recovered CSA memories are prone to think that experiences like dreams and images are actual events.  These people probably have experiences like nightmares more than average people do, thus confusing reality and imagination.  They also assume they found a link that the development of false memories of CSA in correlation with having a deficit in reality monitoring arising from low sensitivity or response bias.  The participants were put into four different groups, the Continuous memory group, consisting of whom have never forgotten their CSA.  The second group was the Recovered memory group, those who recovered forgotten memories of CSA.  The third, Repressed memory group, those who believe they had been sexually abused during childhood and the fourth group, the Comparison group, consisted of people who reported no CSA.  This was used as a control group.  All participants were given Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire, the Dissociative Experiences Scale and the Absorption Scale.   The findings of this study are that individuals, who experience difficulty discriminating between memories and fantasies like the repression group, were more likely to score lower than the continuous group on sensitivity.  Unfortunately the results were not statistically significant for the VVIQ and the DES.

            I find this article to be interesting.  The fact that people can potentially confuse reality with fantasy in terms of memory show how flexible and easily manipulative memory can be.  I also question whether people who report uncovered horrible childhood abuse could be unable to distinguish whether those memories stem from dreams or their real perception.  The consequences I would think it takes on family is devastating, if someone’s child were to report being sexually abused as a child with uncovered memories, what if those memories were false.  It would undoubtedly ruin families, and sometimes for no reason.

Ghetti, S., Qin, J., & Goodman, G. S.  (2002).  False memories in children and adults: Age, distinctiveness, and subjective experience.  Developmental Psychology, 38, 705-718.

McNalley, R. J., Clancy, S. A., Barrett, H. M., & Parker, H. A.  (2005).  Reality monitoring in adults reporting repressed, recovered, or continuous memories of childhood sexual abuse.  Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 114, 147-152.