Recovered Memories: The Role of Mental Imagery in the Creation of False Childhood
memories. (Ira E. Hyman Jr. & Joel Pentland, 1996)
The subject of recovered memories is a highly controversial one within Psychology, giving
rise to the true/false debate; an issue which has even divided professional organisations
(Ost, 2003). These memory wars have arisen mainly over the issue of recovered memories
of Child Sexual Abuse (CSA). In the past, society has been generally dismissive of the
sexual abuse of children due to a male dominated culture stretching back thousands of
years. It is only really in the past decade or two that attitudes towards CSA have begun to
change; it has finally been acknowledged as a serious problem that affects millions of
children around the world. It is also generally accepted that CSA is associated with a
variety of long-term psychological problems in adulthood e.g. depression (Lindsey &
Read, 1994). Since the 1980s, a growing number of adults have reported remembering or
rediscovering incidents of CSA in their childhood which can account for their current
psychological symptoms. It is thought that due to the traumatic and disturbing nature of
their content, these memories are often repressed, but can become conscious often,
although not necessarily, after a period of therapy. This in turn has sparked the huge
psychological debate between those who believe that memories such as these are
historically accurate and those who believe that it is the style of therapy itself that can
implant these memories into peoples minds. It is therefore possible to understand why
Hyman & Pentland conducted their study on the creation of false childhood memories.
They did not believe that all recovered memories of CSA were false, rather that they
wanted to show clinical therapists the circumstances which could lead to false memory
creation, in an effort to prevent cases where clients falsely remember CSA. This is an
applied experiment therefore because not only does it address the problem of recovered
memories of CSA, but it can also be applied to the use of eyewitness accounts and
interviews in Forensic Psychology. They based their study on the theory that human
memory is reconstructive and is therefore prone to error; memories can be distorted by the
individuals prior knowledge and beliefs. Reconstructive memory theory was pioneered by
Bartlett (1932) and is based on the idea of schemata. Schemata are cognitive structures that
represent ones general knowledge about a person, situation or event. Memories are not
