David F. Bjorklund’s book, False-Memory
Creation in Children and Adults: Theory, Research, and Implications,
represents as its title suggests a comprehensive look at the extensive research
concerning false-memories. This is an edited volume, with individual chapters
being written by many of the leading memory researchers.

Brown, Goldstein, and Bjorklund
begin with a concise historical overview of the repressed memory and false
memory debate (or, if you prefer, debacle). While painting a largely accurate
picture of the rise and fall of the recovered memory movement, they do not
offer a balanced acknowledgement of the claims of “other side” and so this book
is likely to be rejected by those who perhaps should most read it. The
introductory chapter concludes by remarking, “It is our hope that in the future
therapists and scientists can more easily share their ideas and data in an
environment that is free from the polarizing polemics that characterized the
previous decade.” (p. 26). As noted, this book is unlikely to be welcomed by
those clinicians who already mistrust the scientific literature on memory. It
is my opinion that there is much to be offered by science to those who work
with survivors of trauma, and that the lack of cross-over between the two
communities may result from a tendency for books on science to rarely include a
chapter on treatment, and vice-versa.

Nevertheless, in providing
excellent coverage of the research, this book indirectly sheds light on the
nature of true memory and the implications that research has for clinicians
working with the recollection of experienced events, including traumatic
events. In chapter two, Tsai, Loftus and Polage present their false-memory
creation research and their current imagination inflation model. Next, Oakes
and Human briefly present a less well known but compelling model of the
creation of a “false self” that can help to bridge the gap between lab studies,
such as their own, which create isolated false memories, and the complete
life-histories that some individuals may have created, such as those who report
repeated abduction by UFOs. In chapter four, Pezdek and Taylor present a good
overview of research on Statement Validity Assessment and Criteria Based
Content Analysis, a technique for differentiating true and false statements.
While willfully false statements are a different matter than believed-in false
recollections, SVA may have application for both. Chapter five by Brainerd,
Reyna, and Poole covers fuzzy-trace theory and the applications of this memory
theory in expert testimony in the courts. Chapter six covers the neuroscience
of constructive memory, and is authored by Schacter, Norman, and Koustaal, but
does not cover the literature on the neuroscience of traumatic memory. Chapter
seven by Ceci, Bruck, and Battin covers suggestibility in children, and finally
chapter eight by Ornstein and Follmer Greenhoot covers the fate of distant
memories of experienced events.

This book has two significant
shortcomings. The first is an omission of the scientific literature about the
encoding of traumatic events. The experience of repeated trauma has been shown
to lead to neurological changes that may also affect memory or retrieval. While
not relevant per se to false memory creation, it would have made the present
volume more attractive to those clinicians who believe that anything labeled
“memory research” ignores the lives of survivors of real trauma. PTSD is not
even in the index.

Also significant is the second
shortcoming: little coverage of what science has to say regarding interviewing
children. True, this is touched on tangentially in several chapters
(particularly seven and eight), but the focus of the volume on the creation of
false memory would not have been compromised by more extensive coverage of how
to avoid creating false memories. The scientific literature on false
memory creation not only provides implications for avoiding false memory
creation, but has actually generated a substantial body of techniques that have
already been proven to significantly reduce the likelihood of
false-memory creation. These are techniques that increase the accuracy of
recollection of experienced events, and are particularly useful when
interviewing young children. Sadly these techniques are often not used by those
frontline clinicians who conduct such interviews. For example, in this book,
only a passing reference is made to Michael Lamb’s extensive research on empirically-supported
interview protocols.

To return to the beginning chapter,
the editor noted that there is frequently a divide between therapists and researchers
when it comes to memory research. This is too bad, because the science of false
memory creation has already generated a useful set of tools that therapists can
use when exploring memory. This book would have been stronger with the addition
of a chapter devoted to such techniques. In conclusion, while False-Memory
Creation in Children and Adults: Theory, Research, and Implications does
not fully live up to the final word in its subtitle (implications), it excels
at coverage of the first two (theory and research).

© 2002 Marcus Tye

Marcus Tye, Ph.D., Department of
Psychology, Dowling College, NY.

Categories: Ethics, General