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WIKIBOOKS
DISPONIBILI
?????????

ART
- Great Painters
BUSINESS&LAW
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ARTICLES IN THE BOOK

  1. Active recall
  2. Alzheimer's disease
  3. Amnesia
  4. Anamonic
  5. Anterograde amnesia
  6. Atkinson-Shiffrin memory model
  7. Attention versus memory in prefrontal cortex
  8. Baddeley's Model of Working Memory
  9. Barnes maze
  10. Binding problem
  11. Body memory
  12. Cellular memory
  13. Choice-supportive bias
  14. Chunking
  15. Clive Wearing
  16. Commentarii
  17. Confabulation
  18. Cue-dependent forgetting
  19. Decay theory
  20. Declarative memory
  21. Eidetic memory
  22. Electracy
  23. Emotion and memory
  24. Encoding
  25. Engram
  26. Episodic memory
  27. Executive system
  28. Exosomatic memory
  29. Explicit memory
  30. Exposure effect
  31. Eyewitness memory reconstruction
  32. False memory
  33. False Memory Syndrome Foundation
  34. Flashbulb memory
  35. Forgetting
  36. Forgetting curve
  37. Functional fixedness
  38. Hindsight bias
  39. HM
  40. Human memory process
  41. Hyperthymesia
  42. Iconic memory
  43. Interference theory
  44. Involuntary memory
  45. Korsakoff's syndrome
  46. Lacunar amnesia
  47. Limbic system
  48. Linkword
  49. List of memory biases
  50. Long-term memory
  51. Long-term potentiation
  52. Lost in the mall technique
  53. Memory
  54. Memory and aging
  55. MemoryArchive
  56. Memory consolidation
  57. Memory distrust syndrome
  58. Memory inhibition
  59. Memory span
  60. Method of loci
  61. Mind map
  62. Mnemonic
  63. Mnemonic acronym system
  64. Mnemonic dominic system
  65. Mnemonic link system
  66. Mnemonic major system
  67. Mnemonic peg system
  68. Mnemonic room system
  69. Mnemonic verses
  70. Mnemonist
  71. Philip Staufen
  72. Phonological loop
  73. Picture superiority effect
  74. Piphilology
  75. Positivity effect
  76. Procedural memory
  77. Prospective memory
  78. Recollection
  79. Repressed memory
  80. Retrograde amnesia
  81. Retrospective memory
  82. Rosy retrospection
  83. Self-referential encoding
  84. Sensory memory
  85. Seven Meta Patterns
  86. Shass pollak
  87. Short-term memory
  88. Source amnesia
  89. Spaced repetition
  90. SuperMemo
  91. Synthetic memory
  92. Tally sticks
  93. Testing effect
  94. Tetris effect
  95. The Courage to Heal
  96. The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two
  97. Tip of the tongue
  98. Visual memory
  99. Visual short term memory
  100. Visuospatial sketchpad
  101. VTrain
  102. Working memory


 

 
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    ENGLISHGRATIS.COM è un sito personale di
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THE THEORY OF MEMORY
This article is from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory

All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License 

False memory

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 


 

A false memory is a memory of an event that did not happen or is a distortion of an event that did occur as determined by externally corroborated facts.

Background

It is common experience that human memory may be unreliable to some degree, whether by failing to remember at all or by remembering incorrectly.

Our sense of identity, of who we are and what we have done, is tied to our memories, and it can be disturbing to have those challenged. Amnesia, Alzheimer's disease, and post-traumatic stress disorder (also known as “shell-shock”) provide examples of dramatic loss of memory, with devastating effects on the sufferer and those around them.

Memory is a complicated process, only partly understood; but research suggests that the qualities of a memory do not in and of themselves provide a reliable way to determine accuracy. For example, a vivid and detailed memory may be based upon inaccurate reconstruction of facts, or largely self-created impressions that appear to have actually occurred. Likewise, continuity of memory is no guarantee of truth, and disruption of memory is no guarantee of falsity. Finally, memory is believed to be a reconstructed phenomenon, and so it can often be strongly influenced by expectation (one's own or other people's), emotions, the implied beliefs of others, inappropriate interpretation, or desired outcome.

Discussion

If a person remembers an event that lacks another witness or corroborative physical evidence, the validity of the memory may be questioned—but not dismissed. It might be said that absence of evidence does not in fact constitute the non-existence of evidence, but validation has the highest priority. For instance, one might say that they have witnessed scores of an enemy army over the hillside. As difficult as it may be to disprove such a statement outright, the statement cannot be validated until the enemy army is actually validated by corroborating witnesses.

Complications arise when a memory involves trauma inflicted by another. If it is in a reputedly involved third party's interest to deny an incriminating memory, the memory cannot be dismissed merely on the strength of such a denial. Likewise, the memory alone does not warrant an accusation of the third party—hence need for external corroborative evidence.

The origin of false memories is controversial. Hypnosis can be used to form false memories because this technique can lead to fantasizing and can increase the subjective certainty of fantasy. Research suggests that at least some false memories are formed through rehearsal, or repetition, of an event that has been confirmed as fantastic: after repeatedly thinking about and visualizing an event, a person may begin to “remember” it as if it had actually occurred. Upon questioning, such a person might confidently recall the event when in fact it is merely previous visualizations that make it seem familiar. Rehearsal is the strongest mechanism of moving short-term memory into long-term memory. Naturally, the rehearsal of incorrect information leads to the formation of an incorrect long-term memory. This applies to both implanted and real memories. For example, many people have experienced the phenomenon of learning that a childhood memory actually happened to a sibling.

Research suggests that memory involves reconstruction, not just recall. For example, a child remembers standing beside a fence overlooking an eerie looking valley. As an adult, the real eerieness of the valley may be falsely remembered as containing a dead body, when in fact the child witnessed a homeless man sleeping under the trees. This particular memory would represent an inaccurate reconstruction.

Many proponents of recovered memories emphasize the importance of distinguishing between ordinary and traumatic memory. Studies show that memories can be implanted, but we lack studies on implanted traumatic memories and their related effects—such as post-traumatic stress disorder and dissociative identity disorder—because such studies would be unethical.

False memory syndrome

False memory syndrome (FMS) is the term for the hypothesis describing a state of mind wherein sufferers have a high number of highly vivid but false memories, often of abusive events during their childhood. This condition has been studied, and sufferers have confessed to “entirely made up stories.” However, the DSM-IV does not recognize FMS, although the forgetting of traumatic events constitutes several of the manual's diagnostic criteria for PTSD. The debate over FMS centers largely around the topic of child abuse, wherein alleged victims are said to experience dissociation, which causes repression of the traumatic memory until later in life, when the memory resurfaces either naturally or with the aid of a professional. Many advocates of FMS argue against both methods of memory recovery, claiming that such professionals as therapists and psychiatrists accidentally implant false memories. Specific therapies considered by some to be pseudoscientific, such as past lives therapies have been explained with reference to false memory syndrome. The term and concept were popularized, though not invented, by the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF).

The Courage to Heal is a book that has received much controversy over the years, as some believe it encourages the recovery of repressed memories as a healing technique. Some retractors have blamed the book for encouraging them into memory confabulation.[1]

Ultimately, it is undeniable that true memories are often forgotten. The difficulty comes in deciding whether a memory which has been recovered or spontaneously recollected, is accurate and correctly interpreted, or not.

Prominent examples

Sexual abuse

False memory has figured prominently in many investigations and court cases, including cases of alleged sexual abuse. There is no scientific way to prove that any of these recollections are completely accurate.

In the 1980s, day care sexual abuse hysteria based on recovered memories resulted in the imprisonment of some of the accused parents. Most of these convictions were reversed in the 1990s, and there are cases in which recovered-memory therapists have been successfully sued by former clients for implanting false memories. [2]

Many individuals who were led to believe in things that they later were able to show did not happen have retracted allegations of such abuse (for instance, [3]). Known as "retractors" they are sometimes vilified as being "in denial" about the "real abuse they suffered and want to forget about" by advocates of recovered memory therapy (see below), a suggestion which many find offensive.[4]

Alien abduction and reincarnation

Other reputed instances of therapist-implanted false memory involve alien abductions and reincarnation therapy. These cases are cited as proof that certain methods can induce false memories. Psychologist Stephen Jay Lynn conducted a simulated hypnosis experiment in 1994, asking patients to imagine they had seen bright lights and experienced lost time. 91% of subjects who had been primed with questions about UFOs stated that they had interacted with aliens. [5]

Harvard University professor Richard McNally has found that many Americans who believe they have been abducted by aliens share personality traits such as New Age beliefs and episodes of sleep paralysis accompanied by hypnopompic hallucinations. These experiences prompted the individuals to visit therapists, who would frequently suggest alien abduction as a cause. The individuals readily accepted the explanation and in laboratory experiments exhibited stress symptoms similar to those of Vietnam veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.[6] The experiment led McNally to conclude, "Emotion does not prove the veracity of the interpretation."[7]

Satanic ritual abuse

In the United States, in the 1980s, a wave of false allegations erupted as a result of the use of recovered memory techniques in cases of satanic ritual abuse. Hundreds of psychotherapists began teaching that adult stress was a sign that a person was sexually abused by their parents and neighbors. Using putative techniques to "recover" these lost memories, hundreds of people eventually were convinced by their therapists that they were abused by Satanic priests, these Satanists being their own family or kindergarten teachers. Hundreds of people were convicted of these "crimes" and put in jail. From the late 1990s onward a skeptical reappraisal of these recovered memory techniques has shown that these were not recovered memories at all, but rather created memories. Most of the people convicted on such charges have since been freed.

Criticisms of recovered memory therapy

Although there is genuine concern that important memories may be buried and need uncovering, there is concern that the goal of neutral truth may be forgotten, compared to the belief that they must exist and be found, and that lives are therefore devastated by the pressure to find such memories when such events often may not have happened, or may be misinterpreted.

Critics, such as FMS advocates, claim that recovered memory therapists often have a non-neutral interest in proving that such experiences happened, and use techniques similar to those used by cults and interrogators which are known to produce mental confusion such as:

  • keeping information from their clients that could place their recovered memories in doubt
  • assuming by default that repressed memories exist in the client
  • relying upon techniques based upon suggestibility rather than ones which neutrally explore the client's experience
  • mentally isolating people from their previous social support (families and so on)
  • viciously attacking opponents, insinuating that they are practitioners of Satanic ritual abuse or that they endorse the sexual abuse of children

Critics of recovered memory therapy, like Richard Ofshe, Ethan Watters (Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy, And Sexual Hysteria) and Elizabeth Loftus (The Myth of Repressed Memory), view the practice of "recovering" memories as fraudulent and dangerous. They base this assertion on several claims:

  • Traumatic experiences which obviously have happened, such as war time experiences, are not "repressed"—they are either forgotten or remembered clearly in spite of attempts to suppress them.
  • The "memories" recovered in RMT are highly detailed. According to RMT literature, the human brain stores very vivid memories which can be recalled in detail, like a video tape. This belief contradicts virtually all research on the way memories work.
  • The patient is given very extensive lists of "symptoms" including sleeplessness, headaches, the feeling of being different from others etc. If several of these symptoms are found, the therapist suggests to the patient that they were probably sexually abused. If the patient denies this, they are "in denial" and require more extensive therapy. This is a form of Catch-22.
  • During the questioning, patients are openly encouraged to ignore their own feelings and memories and to assume that the abuse has happened. They then explore together with this therapist, over a prolonged period of many months or even years, how the abuse happened. The possibility that the abuse has not happened at all is usually not considered.

According to these critics, RMT techniques used for "reincarnation therapy" or "alien abduction therapy" are comparable to the techniques used in Satanic ritual abuse therapy. To verify the false memory hypothesis, researchers like Elizabeth Loftus have successfully produced false memories of various childhood incidents in test subjects. This is viewed as further evidence that comprehensive false memories can be produced in therapy. The false memories in these studies, however, are ordinary memory (like convincing people they were lost in a mall as a child) and not traumatic memories. It would be highly unethical to subject people to traumatic experiences for experimental purposes when studying traumatic memory.

References

  • Amos, Jonathan. "Alien 'abductees' show real symptoms", BBC News, 2003-2-18. Retrieved on 2005-12-26.
  • Ceci, S.J., Huffman, M.L.C., Smith, E., & Loftus, E.F. (1994) Repeatedly thinking about non-events. Consciousness and Cognition, 3, 388-407.
  • Hyman, I.E., Husband, T.H., & Billings, F.J. (1995) False memories of childhood experiences. Applied Cognitive Psychology 9, 181-197.
  • Loftus, E. & Ketcham, K. The Myth of Repressed Memory: False Memories and Allegations of Sexual Abuse, St. Martin's Griffin, 1996. ISBN 978-0312141233.
  • Ofshe, Richard and Watters, Ethan Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy, and Sexual Hysteria, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1994
  • Pendergrast, Mark. Victims of Memory: Incest Accusations and Shattered Lives, Upper Access,Inc, 1995. ISBN 0-942679-16-4.
  • Perina, Kaja. "Alien Abductions: The Real Deal?", Psychology Today, March/April 2003. Retrieved on 2005-12-26.
  • Roediger, H.L. & McDermott, K.B. (1995). Creating false memories: Remembering words that were not presented in lists. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition. 21, 803-814. Full Text (PDF).

See also

  • Bridey Murphy
  • Body memory
  • Confabulation
  • Lost in the mall technique
  • McMartin preschool trial
  • Michelle Remembers
  • Kern county child abuse cases
  • Memory bias

External links and references

  • Memory distortion in decision making
  • American Psychological Association: Study of false memory
  • New methods in police lineups
  • Whitfield, Charles L. (1995) Memory and abuse: remembering and healing the effects of trauma.
  • Skeptic's Dictionary on false memories
  • False Memory Syndrome Foundation
  • British False Memory Society
  • Demonstration of a "false memory" test at Northwestern (uses Macromedia Flash, requires audio)
  • Jim Hopper's scientific research and scholarly resources page
  • Article about Marcia Johnson's research on memory distortion
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory"