Premium
False Memories in the Laboratory and in Life: Commentary on Brewin and Andrews (2016)
Author(s) -
McNally Richard J.
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
applied cognitive psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.719
H-Index - 100
eISSN - 1099-0720
pISSN - 0888-4080
DOI - 10.1002/acp.3268
Subject(s) - false memory , psychology , autobiographical memory , dissociation (chemistry) , traumatic memories , false belief , sexual abuse , cognition , developmental psychology , psychiatry , cognitive psychology , injury prevention , poison control , theory of mind , medical emergency , medicine , chemistry
Summary Reviewing laboratory experiments, Brewin and Andrews (this issue) conclude that memory implantation techniques induce full‐blown false autobiographical memories in only 15% of subjects. Does this imply that guided imagery and related methods are unlikely to generate false memories of childhood sexual abuse in adult psychiatric patients? Not necessarily. Although these methods alone may seldom produce false memories, additional factors common in clinical settings are likely to amplify their capacity to do so in psychiatric patients (e.g., belief that repressed memories of trauma can cause symptoms; belief that these methods can recover repressed memories; high scores on dissociation measures). Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.