A New Examination of Recovered Memory

[luchog]

http://scienceblogs.com/mixingmemory/2006/12/recovered_memories_forgetting_1.php

Interesting article about recovered memory. According to the author, "recovered" memories aren't actually 4ecovered, but in fact have been there all along. It's not that the original memory is forgotten, is the fact that we remember that's forgotten.

This issue rose to the fore when Schooler et al.2, in the process of documenting several cases of recovered memories, discovered two interesting cases. People close to two individuals who had recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse reported that those individuals had discussed their abuse prior to "recovering" memories of it. It seems that they may have forgotten that they'd actually remembered the abuse all along. Several studies have since shown that under certain conditions, people do have a difficult time remembering what they've remembered.

And it turns out that instances of remembering "recovered" memories, even when they're about actual abuse, may be forgotten even more quickly.

In sum, then, the Geraerts et al. study shows that, while everyone has trouble recalling whether they've remembered information when the contexts in which that information is remembered over time are varied, but individuals with recovered memories of childhood abuse are particularly bad at it. This suggests that individuals with recovered memories of abuse may be more likely to forget abuse that they've remembered all along. Now, this research doesn't say anything about the accuracy of their "recovered" memories, or even that all cases of recovered memories can be explained as instances of people forgetting what they've remembered all along, but it does provide a new route for studying recovered memories. The next questions for researchers, then, are why do individuals with recovered memories do worse in these tasks when contextual information is varied, and then, can this really explain at least some cases of recovered memories?

If this proves to be an accurate assessment, it would seem to indicate that those with "repressed" and "recovered" memories fall into two categories. Those whose "recovered" memories are real, but who have time remembering that they remember, and thus the memories were never repressed after all; and those whose "recovered" memories are manufactured by the therapist and/or mental illness, and which are typically "remembered" more strongly and consistently. So it may even be possible to differentiate to some degree which "recovered" memories are real, and which are not.

 

[Soapy Sam]

Interesting article about recovered memory. According to the author, "recovered" memories aren't actually 4ecovered, but in fact have been there all along. It's not that the original memory is forgotten, is the fact that we remember that's forgotten.

Talk me through this slowly. What's the functional difference between a memory not existing and forgetting the memory exists? You can't access it either way.
I see that if you later remember the memory exists, then you remember the memory. I just don't see the difference.
At least I don't think I do. Maybe I do but just don't realise it.

 

[Big Al]

Sounds like gobbledegook to me. I think the whole concept of represssed memories is nonsense.

I can't see natural selection favouring critters that can't remember bad things that've happened to them. It doesn't make sense. Sort of screams, "Lunchtime, Leo!"

If you'd lived through the London Blitz, you might not remember a particular unexceptional bombing raid of the thousands that took place, but you wouldn't forget the whole lot, or live the rest of your life oblivious to having been there.

 

[chriswl]

I guess this means that the memories are just gradually forgotten in the normal way rather than suddenly repressed immediately after the incident. I can see that might be true for less traumatic incidents.

 

[Earthborn]

I think the whole concept of represssed memories is nonsense.

That's the position of this researcher as well. More here.

 

[Dave1001]

My (non-scientific) understanding is that memory functions through repetition and association. Remembering something random probably is mostly the result of association. To remember something traumatic, I think all someone would need to do is to associate the memory with a range of other easily accessible ideas that you're constantly reencountering: your best friend (or offspring's) name, the experience of flushing your toilet, the experience of laying your head on you bed pillow, etc.

But it seems plausible to me that a manufactured (fake) recovered memory would be easier to keep on remembering than a recovered forgotten memory. It was probably forgetten about and difficult to retrieve because it lacked association with other life experiences. Thus is may not be the trauma, but the lack of association to other memories that made the memory difficult to retrieve. In contrast, there will be a lot of associative cues, probably, with a fake "recovered memory" invented in the therapist's office, under their guidance/implantation.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

According to the author, "recovered" memories aren't actually 4ecovered, but in fact have been there all along. It's not that the original memory is forgotten, is the fact that we remember that's forgotten.

Sounds to me like a restatement of the erroneous understanding of memory as a sort of videotape. Everything you experience is somehow recorded and you just need hypnosis (or whatever) to replay the tape for you to remember it.

Oh yeah--and, since memory can span incarnations, the tape is obviously not in the brain but in a higher dimension. . .er vibrations. . energy. . .and uh like that.

 

[Crazycowbob]

Memory is just such a facinating thing. While I am highly skeptical of work with "repressed" memories, the structure behind how our memory works is just so enigmatic.

What a person remembers, and why they remember it is up to an almost infinate number of variables. What was being focused on at the time, and how much attention was given to it versus other things? I can think back to things that happened last year, and remember specific events, yet at the same time not be able to say how the room was arranged at that point in time (we like to move furniture around now and then :-D).

I have to wonder if repressed memories that have been "recovered" are really more like something specific being remembered, then having a whole scene added to it from yourself or an outside source, even though the only thing you really "remembered" is the one specific thing.

An example:
I remember as a young child looking out my bedroom window and seeing what looked like some kind of glowing object out in the yard. I remember being in bed, and sitting up to look out the window, and legos being on the floor, and even getting up to check on my little sister.

However, if I sit back and analyse the memory, here's what I come up with:
I remember seeing a glowing object in the yard from my bedroom window.

The rest of the memory, for all I know, could be my own fabrication of details.
For a while, my bed was next to the window, and I often sat up to look out, but for a long while it was not, and it's just as probable that I was out of bed that night.

Legos on the floor? I played with legos all the time, and matchbox cars about as much, so I naturally would think that there were some out. However, looking back I can't say for sure. For all I really know, the floor was clean that night, and I'm just putting the memory of another night together with this one.

Checking on my sister, this was again not a completely rare occurance. I certianly remember checking on my sister at night, but to be honest, I really can't say for sure if it happened that night.

However, I'd wager, with the guidance and affirmation of a regressionist, I could be made to believe that what I described at first was what really happened, no questions asked, and with no doubts about my own recollection of events.

 

[bpesta22]

Sounds to me like a restatement of the erroneous understanding of memory as a sort of videotape. Everything you experience is somehow recorded and you just need hypnosis (or whatever) to replay the tape for you to remember it.

Oh yeah--and, since memory can span incarnations, the tape is obviously not in the brain but in a higher dimension. . .er vibrations. . energy. . .and uh like that.

Actually, I think everything is encoded like a videotape to some level. It's the retrieval failure part / misattributing the source of the memory that leads to errors.

Some things we can remember are useful even if we don't retrieve the source of the info-- for example, you are retrieving from memory all of the words that appear on this screen as I type now and you try to make sense of it. You don't need to remember the first time you ever saw a "bird" and labelled it as a "bird" to retrieve the concept "bird" from memory and know what a bird is.

But, other things we can remember are only useful if we indeed retrieve the source / time stamp as well. Remembering where you parked your car yesterday isn't going to help you find it today.

All of the false memory tasks and research I am familiar with involves people misattributing the source of a memory (versus outright making it up).

For example, the eyewitness might remember that the car was indeed speeding, not because he/she is retrieving the memory of the actual accident, but because the police officer who interviewed him 4 hours later suggested the car might have been speeding.

So, we have the memory of the original event, tagged with anything else related to it. As time passes, it's hard to separate the original memory (of the car accident) from those other things that were tagged with it (whatever leading questions the cop asked you 4 hours after the accident; your recreation of the event later that night when you told your wife, and then again the next morning when you told people at work).

There's a real world example of a guy who robbed a bank, held the tellers hostage for several hours and then escaped. The tellers later falsely identified someone else. It turns out, the someone else was vaguely familiar to them because he would stop by the bank once a month to cash a check.

So, I think memory does operate like a video tape (all we perceive is recorded to some level) but the purpose is not so we can play it all back when needed. The purpose is to integrate current experience with everything we already know that's relevant to understanding the current experience, while keeping info that's irrelevant to understanding the current experience turned off.

I have a paper showing false memory for mutiplication answers which I think illustrates the above quite nicely.

If I asked you to solve: 3 x 8 = ?? it would take you about a second to answer 24, but your retrieval process wouldn't stop there. You would also "activate" other answers that were table related (3 x 7 and 3 x 9) to the presented answer. You would not however be retrieving table unrelated answers (e.g., 11 x 4).

If I presented a longer list of multiplication problems, where all the problems were table related (near neighbors) of an answer that was not in the list, you would likely misremember having solved for that answer. For example, solving this list here leads to pretty strong false memory of the answer 24 (because all of the answers here are tabled neighbors of 24, even though 24 doesn't appear in the study list):

3 x 7=
3 x 9 =
2 x 11=
2 x 13=
6 x 3=
6 x 5=

 

[luchog]

Talk me through this slowly. What's the functional difference between a memory not existing and forgetting the memory exists? You can't access it either way.
I see that if you later remember the memory exists, then you remember the memory. I just don't see the difference.
At least I don't think I do. Maybe I do but just don't realise it.

It's not entirely intuitive.

Basically, what the researcher is stating is that the "recovered" memory was not repressed. That the subjects did, in fact, remember the abuse fairly regularly, as evidenced by testimony by close aquaintances. That each time they remembered the memory, they were less likely to be aware that they had remembered it on previous occasions; and thus were more likely to believe that they had "repressed" the memory, and only just now remembering it for the first time via the assistance of the therapist.

It also seems to imply that the strongest and most consistent "remembering"
of "repressed" memories were most likely to be false memories, created as part of the therapy process, than to be real memories that they had truly not remembered.

 

[luchog]

Sounds to me like a restatement of the erroneous understanding of memory as a sort of videotape. Everything you experience is somehow recorded and you just need hypnosis (or whatever) to replay the tape for you to remember it.

No, you're seriously misunderstanding the article. The entire point is debunking of the "recovered memory" phenomenon; by showing that the memories were never actually repressed to begin with; but that they were either were there all the time, or that they were manufactured by the therapist.

Oh yeah--and, since memory can span incarnations, the tape is obviously not in the brain but in a higher dimension. . .er vibrations. . energy. . .and uh like that.

And this is just complete ex rectum nonsense that had nothing whatsoever to do with the article.

 

[Dancing David]

Warning this is hopeless self advertisment to the google search i did on another thread
For more on repressed memories read here:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=70037

recently someone on this Forum ( I blame Mercutio ) stated that memories are not really recalled in a recent model , they are reconstructed.

 

[Earthborn]

No, you're seriously misunderstanding the article.

It would of course have helped enormously if you had linked to it.

 

[luchog]

But it seems plausible to me that a manufactured (fake) recovered memory would be easier to keep on remembering than a recovered forgotten memory. It was probably forgetten about and difficult to retrieve because it lacked association with other life experiences. Thus is may not be the trauma, but the lack of association to other memories that made the memory difficult to retrieve. In contrast, there will be a lot of associative cues, probably, with a fake "recovered memory" invented in the therapist's office, under their guidance/implantation.

That does appear to be the gist of the article, and a very good explanation for the "recovered memory" phenomenon. The fact that some of the worst sort of trauma occurs in settings that don't have strong associative characteristics, or in which associations may be misplaced, or occur at an age where memories are formed differently, or due to a subsequent avoidance by the victim of associative triggers.

For example, if the memory of a particular trauma, say childhood sexual abuse, is associated with a certain place, such as a room in a childhood home, the victim may consciously and knowingly avoid the place because of the memories it triggers; and eventually stop remembering why they're avoiding it, since the memory has become dormant through loss of associative triggers and a lack of desire to recall. Or the victim may simply lose contact with the association entirely (eg. moving to another house), and again the lack of association and desire will allow the memory to become dormant. The individual may occasionally remember the trauma in a more diffuse form, due to secondary associations, and even communicate it others; but forget they had done so due to the weaker associative triggers and deliberate lack of desire to recall ("it happened, but I don't want to talk about it"). The recall is not as strong, and therefore not as likely to make strong mnemonic associations.

This could eventually in a "recovered" memory in a therapy session, when stronger associations are made with other childhood memories, and the victim has forgotten the previous weaker recall of the memory. Which would lead the victim to ascribe a disproprotionate greater weight to the memory during the therapy than they would to the previous recalls.

Since memories are reinforced through repetition, and recalled through patterns of association, this scenario would be far more likely to occur with single-incident or short-term trauma than with long-term patterns of similar traumatic events. I would think it highly unlikely that anyone undergoing, say, long-term sexual abuse would be at all likely to fail to remember, considering the likelihood of much more frequent and reinforced associations. So "recovered" memories of long-term systematic child abuse (eg, SRA) are far more likely to be implanted during therapy than truly recalled.

As an aside: this is one of the things that has bothered me for so long about the whole SRA thing. How there can be this enormous conspiracy that is capable of leaving not the slightest trace of physical evidence, and of silencing without a trace any hostile witnesses; but for which so many people have such detailed and precise memories so much longer after the events allegedly occurred. If these conspirators had that kind of almost inhuman cunning and resourcefulness, how is it that they left so many witnesses to blab their secrets on national television, without any attempt at disguising their own identity, and without needing to go into some sort of witness relocation program? Not one seemed to see the logical contradiction in their claims, nor willing to even consider the fact that their "memories" were more likely delusional fantasies -- or even drug-induced hallucinations, considering the number of alleged SRA "survivors" involved in illicit drug use during their youth.

 

[luchog]

It would of course have helped enormously if you had linked to it.

Oops, I thought I had. Must have accidentally deleted the link during one of my pre-submission edits. My bad. Sleep dep and massive amounts of overtime are clearly taking their toll on my brain.

 

[stamenflicker]

I think its interesting that we think we can determine between a "recovered memory" and a "constructed memory." I think its all hogwash.

Ian Hackings book Rewriting the Soul: Multiple Personality and the Science of Memory is a recommended read. Although be warned, the APA hacks slapped it up with bad reviews. After all, they can't have their professions threatened by reason.

 

[UserGoogol]

Sure we can. Recovered memories are usually things that happened, while constructed memories are very often fiction. Therefore logically, all we need to do is traumatize a bunch of kids, (it might be possible to rework this step so it's not horribly unethical) wait until some of them forget, and then mix them up with up with control kids who were never traumatized and then try to go off recovering in a double bland test. If the traumatized kids are the ones who remember, then it's recovered, if all the kids remember evenly or the controls are somehow more likely to remember, then it's constructed, and if there's some proportion in between, then something complicated is going on.

(Of course, if you mean that we can't tell whether a particular memory is real or not without knowledge of whether what they are remembering really happened, then yeah.)

 

[Jeff Corey]

I'm sorry, but I had to laugh at the "double bland test". How could a study where you go about traumatizing kids be bland at all?

 

[Big Al]

Sure we can. Recovered memories are usually things that happened, while constructed memories are very often fiction. Therefore logically, all we need to do is traumatize a bunch of kids, (it might be possible to rework this step so it's not horribly unethical) wait until some of them forget, and then mix them up with up with control kids who were never traumatized and then try to go off recovering in a double bland test. If the traumatized kids are the ones who remember, then it's recovered, if all the kids remember evenly or the controls are somehow more likely to remember, then it's constructed, and if there's some proportion in between, then something complicated is going on.

(Of course, if you mean that we can't tell whether a particular memory is real or not without knowledge of whether what they are remembering really happened, then yeah.)

I saw a cartoon once, with a mugger holding a guy at gunpoint, and saying, "And now, to prevent you remembering this, I'm going to have to sexually abuse you."

Like I said, natural selection would seem to favour people who remember the causes of bad things rather than mentally brushing them under the carpet.

 

[Cuddles]

Sure we can. Recovered memories are usually things that happened, while constructed memories are very often fiction. Therefore logically, all we need to do is traumatize a bunch of kids, (it might be possible to rework this step so it's not horribly unethical) wait until some of them forget, and then mix them up with up with control kids who were never traumatized and then try to go off recovering in a double bland test. If the traumatized kids are the ones who remember, then it's recovered, if all the kids remember evenly or the controls are somehow more likely to remember, then it's constructed, and if there's some proportion in between, then something complicated is going on.

Studies along these lines have been done, but without the trauma. Psychologists (or possibly psychiatrists) can make children remember things that could not possibly have happened, I believe the example used was meeting Bugs Bunny at Disneyland (although personally I would consider this pretty traumatic). In fact the child had not even been to Disneyland, but the memory was otherwise plausible and was believed entirely and recounted as true (for those not up to speed with their cartoons, Bugs Bunny is not a Disney character). This does not prove that no memories are repressed, but the fact that fake memories can be created using exactly the tools psychiatrists claim to un-repress them does raise some pretty big questions to those claims.

Edit : Found a link http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg17924114.700