Memory is being able to retain and recall experiences from the past. When memory is distorted, it can lead to having false memories. False memories occur when people take a mental experience as a real-life experience that has happened to them in the past. When a person suffers from a tragic event, information is stored in the brain that may or may not be true. In a study done by Otgaar, Smeets, and Peters (2012) they found that providing people with suggestive information could encourage people to add this false information in their memory.
In the experiment children were told about an experience that they had encountered themselves, such as how it was on their first day of school. The experimenter talked to the parents of the child and were told things such as what they ate, who their teacher was, and what they wore. The experimenter then told the child the story about how it went for them and added additional information. In the first trial the child corrected the experimenter about the false information that was added to the story.
The second time the child saw the experimenter the child was told the same story with the additional false information, this time the child had developed full false memory about the story. The child agreed about the whole story as if that was what they experienced in real life (Otgaar, Smeets, and Peters, 2012). The results of the experiment found that children who received additional knowledge were more likely to develop false memory. Memory is the device we use to think and learn and use it in our everyday lives.
Memory tends to be very selective and reconstructive when trying to recall past experiences. The more people think about a certain situation in the past, the more vulnerable they are to false information. There are many reasons why people develop false memories. In a study done by Cicchetti, Howe, and Toth (2011) found that children who experience child abuse or neglect experience physiological changes, this affects how memory is stored. They also found that failure to nurture could lead maltreated children to have a distortion in memories.
Lastly, they found that maltreated children are at risk to develop traumatic related PTSD as well as dissociation (Cicchetti, Howe, and Toth, 2011). The way children are treated have a huge impact on the way they think and act, children are fragile individuals that need guidance and love. A literature review done on Child Maltreatment and memory has found that neglected children are more likely to develop stress disorder poor memory when encountered by trauma related situations (Howe, Cicchetti, Toth, & Cerrito, 2004). When a child has been maltreated there are a lot of changes that happen not only physically but also mentally.
In the current study, we will examine the children’s ability to inhibit true and false memory for unbiassed and emotional information using the Deese Roediger McDermott Paradigm. The hypothesis for this study is that there will be differences between non-maltreated children and maltreated children when recalling emotional true and false memory. Methods Participants The participants will include children from the ages of six to twelve years old. The study will provide parents with an informed consent for their child’s participation and for examination of this experiment.
Teachers will also be provided with an informed consent form of participation of the stududents. At the end of the study, the children will receive recognition and a small gift for participating in the study. The study will also have to be approved by the Faculty of Psychology in Cal State Fullerton. The sample will be ethnically diverse and predominantly of minority race. The study will include 100 participants, 50 of the participant will be used in the study will be maltreated children and the other 50 will be non-maltreated children.
The two groups will be evenly distributed by 25 non-maltreated females and 25 maltreated females, as well as 25 non-maltreated males and 25 maltreated males. Examples of maltreated children will be children who have experience typical neglect incidents, such as having abusive parents, children who don’t have a well sanitary living condition, and children who have experienced a lack of adequate nourishment. There will be a diverse sample of maltreated cases such as having children that have been emotionally neglected, children that have been physically abused, and children who have been sexually abused.
The participants that will be viewed as non-maltreated are children who have no record search on child abuse through preventive services records. Parents will also be interviewed and questioned about their child’s experiences that may have qualified as maltreatment. These interviews will be conducted, as open ended to avoid defensive denial by the parents. Design The design of the study will be a variance ANOVA and a post hoc test. The experimental design used will be a within-subject design. The independent variable used in this study will be a stimulus type; the independent variable will be stress.
The dependent variable that will be used in the study will be false memory. Measures The Deese Roediger Mc Dermott Paradigm list used in this design will be a modified version that would will be easy for the children to understand and read. The words will be said by a recording and it will use words that are easy for the children to understand. The present research will try to understand if there are any changes in the memory process because of child maltreatment. The study will see if stress is associated with child maltreatment, will the children be more susceptible to believing false memories.
Are maltreated and non-maltreated children’s memory skills related to topics such as things that are emotional or stress related. Procedure Participants will be randomly assigned to a condition. The study will examine non-maltreated and maltreated children’s ability to remember true and false memories based on the DRM list. The study will be completed in two visits, one of the visits will include by the child’s side and the other will be with the child alone. During the first visit the mother will sign the informed consent for their child’s participation as well as giving us permission to contact the child’s teacher.
Children will be given a list of words by a recording voice, this will eliminate any facial or physical contact that will eliminate this limitation in the study. There will be two three possible DRM lists. The list will contain eight words in total, four words that are non- emotional such as tree, apple, chair, sun and four emotional words such as hate, drugs, rape, and steal. The experimenter will be behind a glass tinted window and will evaluate any facial and physical movement of the child as they hear the list. Planned Analyses
The current study will analyze whether the ability to inhibit true and false information is a consequence of maltreated behavior. The study will examine if maltreated children and non-maltreated children’s stress levels differ in any way. We will evaluate what word the children tended to recall he most and we will compare the results with each group. The analyses I plan to run is a within subject design and ANOVA test. The two variables that will be used will be stress and false memory. Children will be split into categories of gender and whether they were maltreated or non- maltreated.
Some assumptions that will be tested with this experiment is whether age is a factor of recalling memory. Will older children can recall more information than younger children. Another assumption that we will look at is do emotional items have more effected on maltreated children than non- maltreated children. Lastly, we will look at if stress and SES are correlated or if they are independent variables that don’t correlated. If any significant findings are found, for further research I would investigate whether attention and relationship functioning correlate with memory processing.
