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Elizabeth F Loftus

The study of the memory

Melynda Jensen
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When most people hear of the name Elizabeth Loftus in

psychology they think of the study of memory. This is because

she is in the top 100 psychologists eminent psychologists of the

20th century along with being the top ranked woman on the list.

She also received: 2003 awarded the APA award for Distinguished

Scientific Applications of Psychology, and elected a membership

of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and American Academy

of Political and Social Sciences (p).

Elizabeth grew up in Bel Air. Her father was a U.S. Army

physician, and her mother was a librarian. Elizabeth was always

a fan of the criminal books, factual and fictional. She had been

skilled in mathematics like her father. Elizabeth had enrolled

at UCLA as mathematics major to start out. She ended up taking a

psychology class at some point. She was in love with it which

kept her taking psychology classes. She ended up graduating from

UCLA with a double major in mathematics and psychology. She had

found that Stanford University had one of the leading graduation

programs in mathematical psychology. She thought, “That's my

combination; that field must be perfect for me” (p).

At age fourteen she had lost her mother to an accident where

she had drowned in a swimming pool (p). Her uncle told her she

was the first one to find her mother in the pool. After she had

been told this, pictures and memories started to drift back

quickly and vividly. Later on she found out that she was not the
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first to find her mother but it was her aunt. This is a personal

experience that supported her theory of implanting false memories

(p).

Elizabeth had started her research by investigating how the

mind classifies and remembers information. She said, “I wanted

my work to make a difference in people’s lives.” So she started

with the research on traumatically repressed memories and

eyewitness accounts (p).

Misinformation can influence a person’s memory when they

have been interrogated in a suggestive way or they have talked to

another person that gives the subject their interpretation of

what happened. This is why misinformation can sway what the

subject has seen based on the media coverage for example. This

phenomenon was named misinformation effect (p).

She worked in a case of the Romona family. The daughter

Holly went into therapy and started to get memories of being

raped and having sex with her family dog between he ages of five

and sixteen. This all became noted by having the therapy draw

these memories outs. Holly had never been raped and her father

sued the therapist and won. This is a true case of implanted

false memory (p).

Elizabeth did another study in a controlled atmosphere

where she would take some people, and tell the subjects they had

been lost for extended period of time in a shopping mall. The

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subjects were also told that while they were scared and after a

period of time they were saved by an elderly person. The

subjects were also told of true experiences that Elizabeth and

her partners got from the mothers and fathers. When she would go

back and ask the subjects if they remembered the event they would

have a partial or whole memory of it happening, when it truly

never did (p). This is another study that supports that people

can implant false memories.

Elizabeth has dedicated most of her life’s work to making a

brilliant model and theory showing that memory is incredibly

inventive and fragile (p). Elizabeth has taken in multiple

studies where over 20,000 subjects. These studies showed that

eyewitness testimonies are often unreliable and that false.

Memories can be triggered in up to 25 percent of people merely by

suggesting or outright giving the incorrect information. A

criminal case that Elizabeth took part, Ronald Cotton and

Jennifer Thompson, convicted him on eyewitness identification,

and he was freed after serving 10.5 years of his sentence. Later

Ronald had filed an appeal and DNA showed that he was not the

person that had rapped Jennifer (p).

There is a new study on memory related to troops stress

while under interrogation. Elizabeth and her partners, Morgan,

Southwick, Steffian, conducted a study where the soldier was

being interrogated. After the long interrogation the soldiers

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are asked questions. When they are being questioned about the

interrogation they are shown a picture of someone that was not

even there, and while showing them the picture ask them a

question such as did they ask them if they wanted anything to

drink. Once they are done asking them questions they will show

them a photo spread, and it will not include the picture of the

person that interrogated them, but it will include the picture

that was shown when being asked about the interrogation.

Controlled subjects will pick someone 53% of the time and make a

mistake of identification. 91% of the time the soldier will pick

the picture that they were shown when being questioned on the

interrogation. She is going to be publishing this study and being

criticized over it because it is a possibility that the enemy

will get the information and be able to use it to keep soldiers

to never know who they were interrogated or tortured from (p).

As far as for eyewitness testimonies go she showed that

these were not valid either. The other thing that happens a lot

is leading questions. This has been a proven way of distorting

the memory (p). The Related studies have shown that the memory

can become skewed with various techniques that bed misinformation

to the unsuspecting individual (p).

Take the study that she did on a simple car accident.

Police officers may ask and eyewitness about the car accident

they had just witnessed. They will ask if they saw a red car.
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The eyewitness would say no and the officer would ask them if the

eyewitness was sure. Then the eyewitness would start thinking

well maybe I did see the car and it was red. When we go to court

and we are asked did you see a red car we will state yes because

when questioned we had it suggested that it was a red car (p).

So as you can see Elizabeth has been criticized many times

over her work. There have even been times early on in her career

that she had to have bodyguards around her; even though there

have been threats on her life. Even thought there have been

these things happen to her, she does not stop her from conduction

studies and publishing her work. She is very passionate about

her work she continues to do it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=il0u2s_WGXA

http://www.ask.com/bar?

q=video+on+elizabeth+loftus&page=1&qsrc=0&ab=6&u=http%3A%2F
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%2Ffora.tv

%2F2009%2F07%2F14%2FElizabeth_Loftus_Whats_the_Matter_with_Memory

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1PooCmEkJ4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hER-5mdIoN0&feature=related

http://www.ask.com/bar?

q=Elizabeth+F+Loftus&page=1&qsrc=2417&ab=4&u=http%3A%2F

%2Fwww.pubmedcentral.nih.gov%2Farticlerender.fcgi%3Fartid

%3D1236565

http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/loftus.htm

http://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/Articles/AmerPsychAward+Art

iclePDF03%20(2).pdf