Many claim that they’re able to remember each aspect of past occurrences, piece by piece and scene by scene. But is there a way or theory to prove this? The short version is no, we can’t; if we forget something small, our brain will attempt to fill in the blanks with other information. The term “misinformation effect” refers to the process by which the brain integrates false information into a memory in order to interpret sensory input.
The Loftus Study was carried out to demonstrate how versatile and effortlessly influenced people’s memories are. Elizabeth Loftus created the Loftus Study with the goal of examining memory flexibility. In this study, forty-five students watched brief films—five to thirty seconds—in which vehicle crashes occurred. After seeing the films, the students were asked to estimate how quickly they thought the automobiles were traveling before they collided. The term “contact”, “hit,” “smashed” and “bumped” had an impact on memory formation since different students were asked the same question using different synonyms which technically meant the same thing but were processed by the brain differently. Even though they had watched the same film, students’ estimations of how fast the car was moving varied according to the words used.
A week break followed the beginning of the study to see if the brain would try to fill in extra information to connect to the words used when the students were asked about the speed of the cars. The next question asked about the crash was if there was any shattered glass from the accident. The study ended up showing that words like smashed and hit provided more answers of yes, there was glass broken than the group who had the crash described as contact or bumped. There was actually no broken glass in the video shown to any of the groups but the week break made their brains associate the severity of the crash with the word used to describe it. This demonstrated that the brain may manufacture fake occurrences that ultimately drastically change memory, in addition to perceiving events differently based on small variations in the account of the events.
A few years back, my dad was in a car accident on the highway driving home from the airport. Though I am not fully aware of the severity of the accident, I know that the car was totaled and my dad had some pretty serious neck injuries. These memories and information I have of the accident make my brain assume it was very bad. My dads description of the accident was that he was hit by a drunk driver at 90 mph which makes my brain associate things like broken glass, dents in the car, and possibly even a flipped car. The brain fills in these gaps with the information I already know about car accidents and knowing that it takes a lot for the car to be totaled. This proves the Loftus experiment to be true because even though I was not at the site of the accident, my brain fills in the gaps to tell me what happened and more details than i was actually given about the accident.
lecture 11 – Josh Wede Pennsylvania State University
https://moderntherapy.online/blog-2/loftus-and-palmer-study-explained
I think you described what the Loftus study was very well, but I think maybe using the word “misinformation” more could have made this stronger. Over all, I think this is really well written!