Elizabeth Loftus and Jacqueline Pickrell's 1995 study tested whether a wholly fabricated childhood memory could be implanted through suggestion alone. Participants received booklets describing several real childhood events supplied by family members, plus one fabricated event, getting lost in a shopping mall around age five and being rescued by an elderly stranger, and were asked to recall details of each over several days. The technique and its later extensions have drawn methodological criticism.
Facts
Disputed
Key FindingAbout twenty-five percent of the twenty-four participants came to report remembering the fabricated lost-in-the-mall event as a real childhood memory, sometimes adding invented sensory detail, demonstrating that suggestion alone can implant a false autobiographical memory. 1 That a fabricated, mundane childhood event was implanted as a memory in a quarter of participants is not disputed; what is contested is how far that result generalizes to memories of genuinely traumatic events. Cross-Tradition Connections
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Sources
1. Wikipedia: Lost in the Mall Technique
Wikimedia FoundationMethod and CriticismQuote, Method and Criticism
He assembled booklets containing four short narratives describing childhood events, and instructed them to try to remember as much as possible about each of the four events, and to write down those details over the course of six days.
1. Wikipedia: Lost in the Mall Technique
Wikimedia FoundationIn Branch: Forensic Psychology, Origin and creators sectionQuote, In Branch: Forensic Psychology, Origin and creators section
It was first developed by Elizabeth Loftus and her undergraduate student Jim Coan, as support for the thesis that it is possible to implant entirely false memories in people.
Dissenting Readings (1 dissenting reading)
Key Finding
Kathy Pezdek and other memory researchers have challenged the study's generalizability, arguing that implanting a mundane, plausible false memory (getting lost in a mall) does not establish that the same technique can implant memories of genuinely traumatic or distressing events, and cautioning against applying the finding directly to disputes over recovered memories of childhood abuse.
A dissenting reading, from Kathy PezdekWikipedia: Lost in the Mall Technique, Wikimedia Foundation
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