Imagination inflation: Imagining a childhood event inflates confidence that it occurred
Garry, Manning, Loftus and Sherman, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 3(2), 1996, 208-214. Participants rated their confidence that a set of childhood events had happened to them, later imagined some of those events, and then rated their confidence again. Imagining an event inflated confidence that it had occurred in childhood, for every target event. The authors discuss what this means for using imagination to recover lost memories.
Garry, Manning, Loftus and Sherman, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 3(2), 1996, 208-214. Participants rated their confidence that a set of childhood events had happened to them, later imagined some of those events, and then rated their confidence again. Imagining an event inflated confidence that it had occurred in childhood, for every target event. The authors discuss what this means for using imagination to recover lost memories.
Written from the abstract via the publisher's article page (Crossref record confirmed), 2026-11-12.
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Garry, M., Manning, C. G., Loftus, E. F., & Sherman, S. J. (1996). Imagination inflation: Imagining a childhood event inflates confidence that it occurred. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 3(2), 208-214. doi:10.3758/BF03212420 https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03212420