错误的记忆是指“记住”从未真正发生过的事物的现象。错误的记忆可能很小,例如事件的错误细节,或者它们可以包含从未实际发生的整个事件。经历虚假记忆的人们通常认为记忆是真实的,并且经常经历感官细节和情感,就像真实的记忆一样。
内存如何工作
并非所有的记忆都是平等创造的
记忆并不完美。它不像录音机或摄像机那样录制。相反,人们倾向于从自己的经验中存储一些信息。这些内存的部分容易受到失真的影响,因为内存是一个重构过程。人们每次记住某些东西时都会从大脑中的大脑中存储的各种信息创造回忆。在此过程中,有时会更改细节或添加大量新材料。
记忆不完美的另一个原因是,人们倾向于将事件的要旨存储在记忆中而不是细节中。并非所有人经历的事件最终都被存储为长期记忆。日常生活的许多方面都没有注意到或很快被遗忘。例如,当被要求描述美国的一分钱时,人们会惨败,因为细节,例如亚伯拉罕·林肯(Abraham Lincoln)的面临方式以及日期在一分钱上的位置,还不够重要,无法记住。
Time is also important to people’s ability to recall information. Memories fade as time passes and become more prone to distortion. Also, the phenomenon of infantile amnesia makes it difficult for people to remember events from when they were very young.
成年人通常不记得在2岁之前发生的事件,即使事件非常重要或创伤。
Distortion in Memory
How does memory distortion occur? One important influence on memory is called a schema. Schemas are ways of organizing knowledge into predictable patterns or expectations. For example, people have schemas about how certain types of people are expected to behave (stereotypes) and about how events are supposed to happen (such as how to behave in a restaurant). By providing a “script” for how events are supposed to unfold, schemas act as energy savers that allow the mind to take shortcuts when processing information.
通常这些快捷方式效果很好,但有时它们会误导记忆。例如,当人们向人们提供包括床,休息和梦想的单词列表,而不是“睡眠”一词,并且他们被要求回忆起所有介绍的单词,人们经常错误地将“睡眠”一词报告为列表。之所以发生这种情况,是因为单词列表形成了一个与睡眠高度一致的脚本。由于人们的记忆受到图式影响的影响,因此他们有时会“记住”与事件剧本一致的事物,即使没有发生这些事件。
False memories also occur when people make mistakes about the source of certain information. For instance, someone could mistakenly recall an event happening to him or her when in reality the person merely dreamed or imagined it. Source monitoring errors occur when information is recalled correctly, but the source is not.
Psychologists previously believed that certain highly emotional memories of great personal importance—flashbulb memories—were impervious to distortion or forgetting. However, even these memories are prone to distortion. In one psychological investigation, people were asked the day after the Challenger explosion in 1986 to write an account of how they had first learned about the event. Three years later, these same people were asked to describe again how they had learned about the tragedy. A surprising amount of memory distortion was present in these recollections, even for those people who reported intense emotional reactions to the event. In fact, 25% of the participants had completely false memories of learning about the explosion. No one recalled the incident without some distortion of facts, and only 7% recalled the episode with close to perfect accuracy. When shown their earlier written accounts, those individuals with false memories expressed surprise at the discrepancies and remained unable to remember the true details of the event.
How to Create False Memories
如挑战者研究中,可以自然发生虚假的事件记忆,也可以通过另一个人的行为来创造它们。可以创建虚假记忆的一种方式是通过一种称为错误信息效应的现象。当一个人有关于事件的误导性信息时,就会发生这种情况。在一个实验中,参与者观看了一次幻灯片表演,其中涉及停车标志或产量标志的车祸。然后,他们被问到包含有关标志的信息,这些信息与他们实际所看到的一致或不一致(例如,“另一辆汽车停在停车标志上时是否经过了红色的Datsun?”)。当显示事故的两张幻灯片并要求选择他们看到的是哪些幻灯片时,被问到包含有关标志一致信息的问题的人中有75%选择了正确的幻灯片。在误导问题之后,他们只有41%的时间是正确的。由于他们可以在50%的时间里正确猜测,这表明有力的影响错误可能会对记忆产生。
暗示性和主要问题也会扭曲内存报告。一个问题,例如“汽车互相撞到彼此时的速度有多快?”可以带领事故证人回想起比用命中击中的命中率提出的同一问题更高的速度。多个主要问题可能特别危险。
尽管研究人员使用这些方法故意在参与者中造成记忆失真,但现实世界中存在类似的影响。例如,一位证人可能会无意间给出另一名证人关于犯罪的错误信息。然后,第二个证人可能会错误地记住这些信息是真实的。此外,研究和最近的错误定罪案件表明,嫌疑犯可能会错误地承认他们在接受某些审讯惯例时没有犯下的罪行。警方通常会在审讯过程中向嫌疑人提供错误的信息,在某些情况下,这可能会导致嫌疑犯造成犯罪的错误记忆。
临床环境中的虚假记忆
治疗技术
Some practices in clinical settings may enhance the likelihood of developing false memories. Attempts to recall “repressed” memories can be particularly dangerous. Repressed memories refer to memories that a person has suppressed out of conscious awareness, but that are thought to exist still whole and unchanged deep in the mind. There is little empirical support for the notion of repressed memories. Instead, research demonstrates that techniques used to aid recall of memory can create false memories. Techniques that encourage the client to imagine how events might have occurred, or rely on dream interpretation, are particularly prone to source-monitoring errors. Hypnosis and the use of “truth serum” drugs, such as sodium amytal, also place clients in suggestive states in which they are susceptible to memory distortion.
法律意义
虚假记忆可能对患者,家庭成员和临床医生造成有害后果。在某些州,延迟的发现法允许一个“恢复”虐待记忆的人在正常限制法规结束后几年对他或她的虐待者提出指控。如果这些记忆是错误的,这些法律程序可能会导致针对无辜者的诉讼或刑事定罪。恢复治疗记忆并后来拒绝这些记忆的客户有时会起诉治疗师的渎职。就Burgus诉Braun(1997)而言,一个妇女和她的两个孩子就归属于撒旦邪教的记忆,其中包括他们被迫吃成千上万的婴儿。没有证据支持这些古怪的说法。最终,一家人起诉,并获得了1000万美元的和解。
避免记忆
上述类型的严重错误记忆很少见,著名的临床医生采取了措施减少其发生。他们避免了暗示性的问题和治疗技术,而有利于开放式和平衡的讨论和活动。警告人们有虚假记忆的可能性,并要求他们专注于信息来源,以降低记忆扭曲的速度。最大程度地减少虚假记忆的可能性的一种方法是意识到它们的存在,并了解哪些因素有助于记忆准确性以及是什么可能使记忆容易受到失真的影响。
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