Reference Information
Title: Opening Skinner's Box
Author: Lauren Slater
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company (2008)
Chapter 8: Lost in the Mall (23 pages)
Summary
Slater discusses the "false memory" experiments conducted by Elizabeth Loftus. Loftus was able to implant false memories into her test subjects. She observed that the memories could be changed over time or through some convincing. In the "Lost in the Mall" experiment, her subjects read 4 accounts of their childhood written by their loved ones. 3 were real, 1 was falsified (being lost in a mall). She found that a quarter of the subjects vividly remembered this event as if it really happened and was able to describe them in good detail. She also talks about traumatic memory and how it can be repressed/stored differently in the brain.
Discussion
My girlfriend's dad recently had a stroke and can't create new short term memories. He is in his 60's but thinks that he's playing college football. I've been thinking about memory a lot lately and how it's kind of like a big hard drive. When you do a quick format of the hard drive, you essentially break the link that holds all the information together. It's not gone, it's just jumbled up. That's kind of how I see him right now. All his connections are broken. It's sad.
Slater discusses the "false memory" experiments conducted by Elizabeth Loftus. Loftus was able to implant false memories into her test subjects. She observed that the memories could be changed over time or through some convincing. In the "Lost in the Mall" experiment, her subjects read 4 accounts of their childhood written by their loved ones. 3 were real, 1 was falsified (being lost in a mall). She found that a quarter of the subjects vividly remembered this event as if it really happened and was able to describe them in good detail. She also talks about traumatic memory and how it can be repressed/stored differently in the brain.
Discussion
My girlfriend's dad recently had a stroke and can't create new short term memories. He is in his 60's but thinks that he's playing college football. I've been thinking about memory a lot lately and how it's kind of like a big hard drive. When you do a quick format of the hard drive, you essentially break the link that holds all the information together. It's not gone, it's just jumbled up. That's kind of how I see him right now. All his connections are broken. It's sad.
No comments:
Post a Comment