Memory Implantation

Memory Implantation

Reviewed by Faisal Zaidi

Methods by which a suggested event comes to be reported as remembered.

What it is

Implantation studies suggest a childhood event that did not happen and record what participants later report. Scoboria and colleagues pooled reports from eight such studies with 423 participants and coded them against seven criteria: 30.4 per cent were classified as false memories and another 23 per cent as accepting the event to some degree. With self-relevant information, an imagination procedure and no photo, the rate was 46.1 per cent.

In effect

In the article on how false memories form, it supplies the pooled rate on which the piece ends.

What it does not say

The rates depend on the coding scheme and the procedures used. They do not say how often false memories form outside research settings.

Sources

  1. Scoboria, A., Wade, K. A., Lindsay, D. S., Azad, T., Strange, D., Ost, J., & Hyman, I. E. (2017). A mega-analysis of memory reports from eight peer-reviewed false memory implantation studies. Memory, 25(2), 146-163.