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Overview
The last decade has seen a flurry of experimental research into the neurocognitive underpinnings of illusory memories. Using simple materials and tests (e.g., recalling words or pictures), methods such as the famed Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) task have attracted considerable attention. These tasks elicit false memories of nonstudied events that are vivid, long lasting, and difficult to consciously avoid. Additional research shows that these memory illusions are fundamentally related to more complex memory distortions. As a result, this rapidly expanding literature has generated a great deal of excitement - and even some controversy - in contemporary psychology.Associative Illusions of Memory provides an ambitious overview of this research area. Starting with the historical roots and major theoretical trends, this book exhaustively reviews the most recent studies by cognitive psychologists, neuropsychologists, and cognitive neuroscientists. The strengths and limits of various experimental techniques are outlined, and the large body of existing data is meaningfully distilled into a few core theoretical concepts.
This book highlights the malleability of memory, as well as the strategies and situations that can help us avoid false memories. Throughout the review, it is argued that these basic memory illusions contribute to a deeper understanding of how human memory works.
Synopsis
The ability to remember the seemingly infinite episodes of our lives is a miracle of the human mind. But memory is not always accurate, and we sometimes think that an event that never happened actually did. Such false memories can be benign, as when we entertain each other (and our own egos) with embellished stories that have been exaggerated across retellings. Other times they can have grave implications, as when an eyewitness falsely recognizes an innocent person as a murderer.
Over the past decade, there has been a boom in the systematic investigation of certain types of false memories. These are false memories of events that did not occur but are in somehow related, via associations or similarity, to events that did occur. Hundreds of researchers have contributed to these investigations, using a variety of tools from cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, neuroscience, and social psychology. This volume reviews and assesses the fruits of this vast research enterprise.
In addition to elucidating the occurrence of false memories, the paradigms that cognitive psychologists have developed are becoming increasingly popular as tools and methods for a variety of applications (e.g. individual differences, neuropsychological profiles, and neuroimaging investigations). This volume will therefore be of interest to a large number of cognitive psychologists not only researching in human memory, but also psychologists with a variety of different research interests.
Editorials
From the Publisher
“In Associative Illusions of Memory, David Gallo brings together a huge literature showing people misremembering events that are related to real events. The key memory distortion paradigm has been used with young and old, smart and not-so-smart, drunk and sober. We’ve learned a stunning amount about illusory recollection from this body of work, all meticulously and thoughtfully reviewed in one place. A bravura contribution to the memory field.” — Elizabeth Loftus, Distinguished Professor at University of California, Irvine, and author of Eyewitness Testimony
“Research on memory illusions has exploded during the past decade, and the field badly needs an integrative treatment of the topic. David Gallo has filled that need with this scholarly, well written, and timely volume. Rich in analysis and insight, this important book is required reading for anyone involved in research on memory or memory illusions.” — Daniel L. Schacter, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of The Seven Sins of Memory