This article examines a 3-decades-old unsolved homicide, where the victim's 4-year-and-9-month-old daughter was deemed the only eyewitness (State of Nebraska v. Donald J. Sykora, 2008). The authors critique the investigative methods employed over 33 years, with particular emphasis on the final "extreme" cognitive interview of the daughter, which persisted for days and incorporated various imaginative techniques. Adverse circumstances pervade the case: (a) the young age of the presumed witness when the murder occurred; (b) the vulnerability of memory to suggestion and revision over time; (c) the possible earlier use of hypnosis to refresh recall; and (d) implementing a poorly documented, 31-hour cognitive interview that encouraged repetition and fantasy. In this case, the prolonged cognitive interview is perilously hypnotic-like, yielding evidence that must be regarded as a product of imagination inflation--defective for sustaining veridical testimony.

Int J Clin Exp Hypn. 2010 Jul;58(3):269-87. Whitehouse WG, Orne EC, Dinges DF. Department of Psychology, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA 19122, USA. wayne.whitehouse@temple.edu

Full Title: On telling the whole story: facts and interpretations in autobiographical memory narratives from childhood through midadolescence.

This article examines age differences from childhood through middle adolescence in the extent to which children include factual and interpretive information in constructing autobiographical memory narratives. Factual information is defined as observable or perceptible information available to all individuals who experience a given event, while interpretive information is defined as information that articulates the desires, emotions, beliefs, and thoughts of the participant and other individuals who experience an event. Developmental research suggests that the latter type of information should become particularly prevalent in later adolescence, while the former should be abundantly evident by age 8. Across 2 studies, we found evidence for strong increases in interpretive information during adolescence, but not before. These increases were evident across different types of events, and across different subtypes of interpretive content. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for the development of autobiographical memory in childhood and adolescence.

Dev Psychol. 2010 May;46(3):735-46. Pasupathi M, Wainryb C. Department of Psychology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA. pasupath@psych.utah.edu

The prospect of utilizing memory plasticity (the constructive and transitory nature of memory) for therapeutic purposes has not been widely recognized. However, a number of theoretical and clinical venues throughout the last century have shown its potential application. Intensive research conducted during these last decades, pointed out the possibility of influencing human memory in relation to new memories and their specific components. Moreover, the research showed the feasibility of planting alternative early childhood memories and thus altering memories of personal history. Additionally, researchers found that memory is naturally very fallible due to everyday phenomena of forgetfulness, distortion and intrusion of past and present information. Throughout the course of this paper, the integrative overview of these empirical findings with the aforementioned clinical and theoretical foundations serves as a substratum in an attempt to present an integrative therapeutic approach, named Memory Focused Interventions (MFI).

Am J Clin Hypn. 2010 Jan;52(3):189-203. Meyerson J. Israeli Society of Hypnosis, HypnoClinic, Tel-Aviv, Israel. meyersoj@netvision.net.il

In 2 studies, children ages 3 to 7 years were asked to recall a series of touches that occurred during a previous staged event. The recall interview took place 1 week after the event in Study 1 and immediately after the event in Study 2. Each recall interview had 2 sections: In 1 section, children were given human figure drawings (HFDs) and were asked to show where the touching took place; in the other section, the same questions were asked without the HFDs (verbal condition). Children were randomly assigned to 2 different conditions: HFD 1st/verbal 2nd or verbal 1st/HFD 2nd. There were 2 major findings. First, HFDs elicited more errors than the verbal condition when used to probe for information that the child had already been asked. Second, regardless of interview method, children had poor recall of the touches even when these occurred minutes before the interview. It is suggested that cognitive mechanisms involving memory and semantics underlie children's poor recall of touching in both verbal and HFD conditions.

J Exp Psychol Appl. 2009 Dec;15(4):361-74. Bruck M. Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA. mbruck1@jhmi.edu

Previous studies have shown increased false memory effects in older compared to younger adults. To investigate this phenomenon in event memory, in the present study, the authors presented younger and older adults with a robbery. A distinction was made between verbal and visual actions of the event, and recognition and subjective experience of retrieval (remember/know/guess judgments) were analyzed. Although there were no differences in hits, older adults accepted more false information as true and, consequently, showed less accurate recognition than younger adults. Moreover, older adults were more likely than younger adults to accompany these errors with remember judgments. Young adults accepted fewer false verbal actions than visual ones and awarded fewer remember judgments to their false alarms for verbal than for visual actions. Older adults, however, did not show this effect of type of information. These results suggest that aging is a relevant factor in memory for real-life eyewitness situations.

J Gen Psychol. 2009 Oct;136(4):428-41. Aizpurua A, Garcia-Bajos E, Migueles M. Psychology Faculty, University of the Basque Country, Avda. Tolosa 70, Donostia-San Sebastian 20.018, Gipuzkoa, Spain. aaizpurua012@ikasle.ehu.es

Witnesses sometimes report event details that are acquired solely from another witness. We reevaluated the potency of this memory conformity effect. After viewing a crime video, some participants learned about nonwitnessed details via discussion (dyad group), reading another participant's report (read group), or watching another version of the video (both-video group). In Experiment 1, these participants often reported nonwitnessed details, but on a source-judgment test most details were attributed primarily to the actual source rather than to the video. In addition, the dyad group was not more likely than the read or both-video groups to report nonwitnessed details. Participants in Experiment 2 were explicitly discouraged from providing details that were remembered from the secondary source only. These postwarning instructions substantially reduced the memory conformity effect, and a dyad group was not more likely than a read group to report nonwitnessed details. Encouraging source monitoring at test can reduce the negative consequences of co-witness collaboration.

Bodner GE, Musch E, Azad T. Mem Cognit. 2009 Dec;37(8):1069-76. Department of Psychology, University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive NW, Calgary, Alberta, Canada. bodner@ucalgary.ca

The present research examined the influence of prior knowledge on children's free recall, cued recall, recognition memory, and source memory judgments for a series of similar real-life events. Forty children (5-12 years old) attended 4 thematic birthday parties and were later interviewed about the events that transpired during the parties using the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development protocol. Of the events, half were generic in that they could have occurred at any birthday party, and half were specific to the theme of the party. Older children demonstrated more evidence of using gist-based information to guide their memory performance than did younger children. However, younger children were able to use global gist to inform their source memory judgments, qualifying past word-learning research.

Child Dev. 2009 Nov-Dec;80(6):1877-90. Odegard TN, Cooper CM, Lampinen JM, Reyna VF, Brainerd CJ. Department of Psychology, Box 19528, University of Texas Arlington, Arlington, TX 76019-0528, USA. odegard@uta.edu

We explored whether children's suggestion-induced omission errors are caused by memory erasure. Seventy-five children were instructed to remove three pieces of clothing from a puppet. Next, they were confronted with evidence falsely suggesting that one of the items had not been removed. During two subsequent interviews separated by one week, children had to report which pieces of clothing they had removed. Children who during both interviews failed to report that they had removed the pertinent item (i.e., omission error; n=24) completed a choice reaction time task. In this task, they were presented with different clothing items. For each item, children had to indicate whether or not they had removed it. Significantly more errors were made for those removed items that children failed to report than for those they had not removed. This indicates that children's suggestion-based omission errors are not due to erasure of memories.

Conscious Cogn. 2010 Mar;19(1):265-9. Epub 2009 Nov 1. Otgaar H, Meijer EH, Giesbrecht T, Smeets T, Candel I, Merckelbach H. Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands. Henry.Otgaar@maastrichtuniversity.nl

Despite the importance of intrusive memories in clinical disorders, research has been limited by a dearth of paradigms that permit experimental study of intrusions. This study describes a hypnotic paradigm for eliciting intrusive memories. Forty-nine highly hypnotisable participants nominated a distressing memory prior to being hypnotised. During hypnosis, they received the suggestion that they would remember the memory in response to a designated cue after the hypnosis session. Half of the participants also received a posthypnotic amnesia suggestion for the source of the memory. Following hypnosis, all participants completed a cognitive task and during the task received the cue to recall the memory. Results demonstrated that memories experienced after posthypnotic amnesia were experienced as more involuntary and more distressing than those that were knowingly retrieved. Participants in the posthypnotic amnesia condition also demonstrated greater interference on the cognitive task after the retrieval cue was given than those who intentionally retrieved the memory. These findings suggest that posthypnotic suggestion provides a useful paradigm to elicit intrusive memories under experimental conditions.

J Behav Ther Exp Psychiatry. 2010 Dec;41(4):433-7. Hill Z, Hung L, Bryant RA. School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia.

Immediate and persisting effects of misleading questions and hypnosis on memory reports were assessed. After listening to a story, 52 highly suggestible students and 59 low and medium suggestible students were asked misleading or neutral questions in or out of hypnosis. All participants were then asked neutral questions without hypnosis. Both hypnosis and misleading questions significantly increased memory errors, and misleading questions produced significantly more errors than did hypnosis. The 2 effects were additive, so that misleading questions in hypnosis produced the greatest number of errors. There were no significant interactions with level of hypnotic suggestibility. Implications of these findings for the per se exclusion of posthypnotic testimony are discussed.

J Exp Psychol Appl. 2002 Mar;8(1):26-32. Scoboria A, Mazzoni G, Kirsch I, Milling LS. Department of Psychology, University of Connecticut, USA.

WEBWIRE – Monday, December 28, 2009

Study in Nature Neuroscience uncovers possible basis of short-term memory

CLEVELAND - Ben W. Strowbridge, PhD, associate professor of neuroscience and physiology/biophysics, and Phillip Larimer, PhD, a MD/PhD student in the neurosciences graduate program at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, are the first to create stimulus-specific sustained activity patterns in brain circuits maintained in vitro.

Their study, entitled, "Representing information in cell assemblies: Persistent activity mediated by semilunar granule cells" will be published in the February 2010 issue of Nature Neuroscience and is currently available online.

Neuroscientists often classify human memory into three types: declarative memory, such as storing facts or remembering specific events; procedural memory, such as learning how to play the piano or shoot basketballs; and working memory, a type of short-term storage like remembering a phone number. With this particular study, Strowbridge and Larimer, were interested in identifying the specific circuits that could be responsible for working memory.

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The remember-know paradigm is one of the most widely used procedures to examine the subjective experience associated with memory retrieval. We examined how the terminology and instructions used to describe the experiences of remembering and knowing affected remember-know judgments. In Experiment 1 we found that using neutral terms, i.e., Type A memory and Type B memory, to describe the experiences of remembering and knowing reduced remember false alarms for younger and older adults as compared to using the terms Remember and Know, thereby increasing overall memory accuracy in the neutral terminology condition. In Experiment 2 we found that using what we call source-specific remember-know instructions, which were intended to constrain remember judgments to recollective experiences arising only from the study context, reduced remember hits and false alarms, and increased know hits and false alarms. Based on these data and other considerations, we conclude that researchers should use neutral terminology and source-specific instructions to collect the most accurate reports of the experiences of remembering and knowing arising from the study context.

Conscious Cogn. 2009 Jun;18(2):401-13. Epub 2009 Mar 31. McCabe DP, Geraci LD. Department of Psychology, Colorado State University, Campus Box 1876, Fort Collins, CO 80523-1876, USA.

Full Title: Are subjective memory problems related to suggestibility, compliance, false memories, and objective memory performance?

The relationship between subjective memory beliefs and suggestibility, compliance, false memories, and objective memory performance was studied in a community sample of young and middle-aged people (N = 142). We hypothesized that people with subjective memory problems would exhibit higher suggestibility and compliance levels and would be more susceptible to false recollections than those who are optimistic about their memory. In addition, we expected a discrepancy between subjective memory judgments and objective memory performance. We found that subjective memory judgments correlated significantly with compliance, with more negative memory judgments accompanying higher levels of compliance. Contrary to our expectation, subjective memory problems did not correlate with suggestibility or false recollections. Furthermore, participants were accurate in estimating their objective memory performance.

Am J Psychol. 2009 Summer;122(2):249-57. Van Bergen S, Jelicic M, Merckelbach H. Department of Clinical Psychological Science, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands. s.venbergen@psychology.unimaas.nl

To explore the nature of past-life memories in hypnosis, 64 normal male adults aged 21 to 23 were selected using the Korean version of the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility (HGSHS:K) and a simple belief in past-life scale. They all received hypnotic past-life regression 3 times. The influence of HGSHS:K scores on the production rate of past-life memories was statistically significant; however, the influence of belief was not. The percentage of subjects who responded to hypnotic past-life regression increased with hypnotizability. Content analysis showed that cultural background and religious concepts influenced past-life memory production. Animals as past-life identities, for example, were reported whereas all past-life identities were human in a Canadian study.

Int J Clin Exp Hypn. 2009 Jul;57(3):269-78. Pyun YD, Kim YJ. Pyun Neuropsychiatric Clinic, Seoul, South Korea. pyunyd@naver.com

People falsely endorse semantic associates and morpheme rearrangements of studied words at high rates in recognition testing. The coexistence of these results is paradoxical: Models of reading that presume automatic extraction of meaning cannot account for elevated false memory for foils that are related to studied stimuli only by their visual form; models without such a process cannot account for false memory for semantic foils. Here we show how sentence and list study contexts encourage different encoding modes and consequently lead to different patterns of memory errors. Participants studied compound words, such as tailspin and floodgate, as single words or embedded in sentences. We show that sentence contexts led subjects to be better able to discriminate conjunction lures (e.g., tailgate) from old words than did list contexts. Conversely, list contexts led to superior discrimination of semantic lures (e.g., nosedive) from old words than did sentence contexts.

Mem Cognit. 2009 Jan;37(1):52-64. Matzen LE, Benjamin AS. University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, USA. lematze@sandia.gov

Children in two age groups (7 vs. 12 yrs, N= 174) individually interacted with a stranger and were later interviewed about this event. Right before the interview, each child encountered the stranger once again and he engaged in a conversation where he either suggested that a (central or peripheral) detail originally present in the event had actually not been there or that an originally non-present (central or peripheral) detail had in fact been there. It was hypothesized that the two types of misinformation would result in omission and commission errors respectively. The results showed that the social influence resulted in an asymmetric effect (i.e., more commission than omission errors). Importantly, we also found that the children made more errors with respect to the peripheral detail (a suitcase), compared to the central detail (a passenger). Younger children did not make more errors (neither omission nor commission errors) than older children.

Scand J Psychol. 2008 Dec;49(6):507-13. Hjelmsäter ER, Granhag PA, Strömwall LA, Memon A. Department of Psychology, University of Gothenburg, P.O. Box 500, SE 405 30, Göteborg, Sweden. emma.roos@psy.gu.se

We explored whether event recency and valence affect people's susceptibility to imagination inflation. Using a three-stage procedure, subjects imagined positive and negative events happening in their distant or recent past. First, subjects rated how confident they were that they had experienced particular positive and negative events in childhood or adulthood using a Life Events Inventory (LEI). Two weeks later, they imagined two positive and two negative events from the LEI. Finally, they rated their confidence on the LEI a second time. For positive events, subjects showed more imagination inflation for adulthood than childhood events. For negative events, they showed no difference in imagination inflation for adulthood and childhood events. We discuss factors that may influence source confusions for memories of the past and highlight directions for future research.

Acta Psychol (Amst). 2008 Oct;129(2):228-33. Sharman SJ, Barnier AJ. School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia. s.sharman@unsw.edu.au

This experiment aimed to create a laboratory analogue of déjà vu. During hypnosis, 1 group of high hypnotizables completed a puzzle game and then received a posthypnotic amnesia suggestion to forget the game (PHA condition). Another group of highs were not given the game but received a posthypnotic familiarity suggestion that it would feel familiar (PHF condition). After hypnosis, all participants were given the game and described their reactions to it. Whereas 83% of participants in both conditions passed their respective suggestions, more in the PHF condition felt a sense of déjà vu. An EAT inquiry revealed that they experienced sensory fascination and confusion about the source of familiarity, akin to everyday déjà vu. These findings highlight the value of using hypnosis as a laboratory analogue of déjà vu and provide a framework for investigating clinical manifestations of this phenomenon.

Int J Clin Exp Hypn. 2008 Oct;56(4):425-50. O'Connor AR, Barnier AJ, Cox RE. University of Leeds, United Kingdom. aoconnor@wustl.edu

The authors examined the relation between children's narrative ability, which has been identified as an important contributor to memory development, and suggestibility. Across 2 studies, a total of 112 preschool-aged children witnessed a staged event and were subsequently questioned suggestively. Results from Study 1 indicated that children's ability to provide a high-quality narrative of the event was related to resistance to suggestive questions, and narrative ability appeared to supersede age as a predictor of such resistance. In Study 2, children's general language and narrative abilities were measured in addition to their ability to produce a high-quality narrative about the target event. These results replicated Study 1's findings that children's ability to produce a high-quality narrative of a previously experienced event predicted resistance to suggestion. However, the quality of children's autobiographical memory narratives predicted shifting from denial to assent. Findings are considered in light of narrative's role in memory development and underlying mechanisms that may explain children's suggestibility.

Dev Psychol. 2008 Sep;44(5):1442-56. Kulkofsky S, Klemfuss JZ. Department of Human Development & Family Studies, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409, USA. sarah.kulkofsky@ttu.edu

Research on memory conformity shows that collaborative remembering--typically in the form of discussion--can influence people's memories. One question that remains is whether it matters with whom we discuss our memories. To address this question we compared people's memories for an event after they discussed that event with either their romantic partner or a stranger. Pairs of subjects watched slightly different versions of a movie, and then discussed some details from the movie, but not others. Subjects were better at remembering non-discussed details than discussed details: when remembering discussed details they incorrectly reported information from their partner's version instead of their own. In addition, subjects who discussed the event with their romantic partner (rather than with a stranger) were even more likely to report false memories. We discuss our findings in relation to other research on memory conformity, social influences on false memories, and memory systems within romantic relationships.

Memory. 2008 Apr;16(3):262-73. French L, Garry M, Mori K. Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand.

Three experiments explored a jumbled word effect in false recognition. Lists of theme-related items were presented in word or nonword form. Results indicated that critical lures semantically related to studied items were falsely recognised regardless of whether they were presented as words or nonwords. High false recognition rates to either SLEEP or SELEP following study of an appropriate theme list of items in nonword form should only occur if nonwords are recoded at study. With study conditions conducive to recoding, jumbled words induced false recognitions based on semantic associations among their respective base words. Disrupting a recoding process by creating "difficult" letter rearrangements for jumbled words (Experiment 2) appeared to eliminate the false recognition effect. In Experiment 3, presentation durations ranged from 110 ms to 880 ms. Although there was little evidence of a semantic false recognition effect at the fastest presentation rate, the brief durations appeared to be effective in eliminating the effect when items were studied in nonword form. These results appear to be consistent with an encoding activation/retrieval monitoring model.

Memory. 2008 May;16(4):443-61. Halcomb SH, Taylor JP, DeSouza KD, Wallace WP. Department of Psychology, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA. sara.haber@rice.edu

We investigated the influence of preparation provided by parents on preschoolers' recall. One day before children participated in a staged novel event, parents discussed the event with their child either with (verbal+photos) or without (verbal) photographs. Parents and children in a control condition read an unrelated story. Then 8-10 days later the children were interviewed about the event. Children in the verbal+photos condition recalled significantly more than those in the control condition. Parental preparation style (e.g., evaluations, hypothetical language) was associated with the child's contributions to the preparatory discussion, but no aspect of parent or child style or content was associated with children's verbal recall. Similarly, there were no significant associations between children's performance on a task of episodic future thinking, and their preparatory discussion or recall, although episodic future thinking was strongly associated with language ability. The potential underlying mechanisms and theoretical implications are discussed.

Memory. 2008;16(5):485-99. Salmon K, Champion F, Pipe ME, Mewton L, McDonald S. University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. Karen.Salmon@vuw.ac.nz

Many people believe that emotional memories (including those that arise in therapy) are particularly likely to represent true events because of their emotional content. But is emotional content a reliable indicator of memory accuracy? The current research assessed the emotional content of participants' pre-existing (true) and manipulated (false) memories for childhood events. False memories for one of three emotional childhood events were planted using a suggestive manipulation and then compared, along several subjective dimensions, with other participants' true memories. On most emotional dimensions (e.g., how emotional was this event for you?), true and false memories were indistinguishable. On a few measures (e.g., intensity of feelings at the time of the event), true memories were more emotional than false memories in the aggregate, yet true and false memories were equally likely to be rated as uniformly emotional. These results suggest that even substantial emotional content may not reliably indicate memory accuracy.

Memory. 2008;16(5):500-16. Laney C, Loftus EF. University of Leicester, UK. cl136@le.ac.uk

Information about stressful life experiences obtained from patients during diagnostic interviews is an important foundation for clinical decision making. In this study self-reports from 115 committed psychiatric patients of experiences of mechanical restraint were compared with medical records. The sensitivity of patient self-reports was 73% (11/15) and the specificity was 92% (92/100). No clear relationship between psychiatric symptoms and reliability of self-reports was identified. The results highlight the subjective qualities of narratives about past experiences.

Memory. 2008;16(5):548-55. Wallsten T, Kjellin L, Sjoberg RL. University of Uppsala, Vasterås, Sweden. tuula.wallsten@ltv.se

Despite a large body of false memory research, little has addressed the potential influence of an event's emotional content on susceptibility to false recollections. The Paradoxical Negative Emotion (PNE) hypothesis predicts that negative emotion generally facilitates memory but also heightens susceptibility to false memories. Participants were asked whether they could recall 20 "widely publicised" public events (half fictitious) ranging in emotional valence, with or without visual cues. Participants recalled a greater number of true negative events (M=3.31/5) than true positive (M=2.61/5) events. Nearly everyone (95%) came to recall at least one false event (M=2.15 false events recalled). Further, more than twice as many participants recalled any false negative (90%) compared to false positive (41.7%) events. Negative events, in general, were associated with more detailed memories and false negative event memories were more detailed than false positive event memories. Higher dissociation scores were associated with false recollections of negative events, specifically.

Memory. 2008;16(6):658-66. Porter S, Taylor K, Ten Brinke L. Department of Psychology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada. sbporter@dal.ca

Prior research on false memories has shown that suggestibility is often reduced when the presentation rate is slowed enough to allow monitoring. We examined whether slowing presentation speed would reduce factual errors learned from fictional stories. Would subjects use the extra time to detect the errors in the stories, reducing reproduction of these errors on a later test? Surprisingly, slowing presentation speed increased the production of story errors on a later general knowledge test. Instructing the reader to mark whether each sentence contained an error, however, did decrease suggestibility. Readers appear to passively accept information presented in stories and need a constant reminder to monitor for errors. These results highlight differences between typical episodic false memories and illusions of knowledge (such as learning from fiction). Manipulations that reduce suggestibility for episodic false memories do not always reduce suggestibility for illusions of knowledge.

Psychon Bull Rev. 2008 Feb;15(1):180-5. Fazio LK, Marsh EJ. Department of Psychology, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina 27708-0086, USA. lkf@duke.edu

Do false beliefs last? To explore this question, this study planted false beliefs or memories of a childhood experience with asparagus. We found that these false beliefs had consequences for subjects, when assessed directly after the suggestive manipulation. Moreover, subjects were brought back two weeks later to see if their false beliefs persisted. After two weeks, subjects' confidence in their new memories, and the consequences of those memories were diminished, but not extinguished. These false beliefs were found to be somewhat weaker than other subjects' true beliefs for the same events. Another novel finding was that the manipulation was sufficiently powerful to affect actual food choices.

Acta Psychol (Amst). 2008 Sep;129(1):190-7. Laney C, Fowler NB, Nelson KJ, Bernstein DM, Loftus EF. University of California-Irvine, CA, USA. CL136@le.ac.uk

The influence, if any, of emotional arousal on memory is a controversial topic in the literature. Much of the research on memory for emotionally arousing events has focused on a few specific issues (e.g., differences in types of details recalled in emotionally arousing and neutral events; increasing ecological validity). Although gaining more recent attention, a neglected area in the literature has been memory for instances of repeated, emotionally arousing events. This issue has important implications for understanding children's ability to recall events in a forensic setting. We review existing findings on memory for emotionally arousing events in general and particularly in children, children's memory for events that occur repeatedly, and then discuss the scarce research on repeated emotionally arousing events and the need for further research in this area. We conclude that although it is clear that children are capable of accurately reporting arousing and repeated experiences, it is also apparent that circumstances both within and outside the control of investigative interviewers influence this ability.

Int J Law Psychiatry. 2008 Aug-Sep;31(4):337-46. Price HL, Connolly DA. Department of Psychology, University of Regina, 3737 Wascana Parkway, Regina, SK, Canada S4S 0A2. Heather.Price@uregina.ca

OBJECTIVE: Two studies examined the effects of the oath or reassurance ("truth induction") on 5- to 7-year-old maltreated children's true and false reports of a minor transgression. METHODS: In both studies an interviewer elicited a promise to tell the truth, reassured children that they would not get in trouble for disclosing the transgression, or gave no instructions before questioning the child. In Study 1, children were encouraged to play with an attractive toy by a confederate, who then informed them that they might get in trouble for playing. In Study 2, a confederate engaged children in play, but did not play with the attractive toy. RESULTS: In Study 1, the oath and reassurance increased disclosure among children who would qualify as competent to take the oath. In Study 2 neither the oath nor reassurance increased false reports among children who would qualify as competent, whether yes/no questions or tag questions were asked. Among non-competent children, reassurance (but not the oath) increased false reports. Children were more likely to accuse the confederate of the transgression than to implicate themselves. CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest that a promise to tell the truth may increase true disclosures without increasing false allegations. Reassurance that specifically mentions the target activity also increases true disclosures, but may increase acquiescence among some children. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: A child-friendly version of the oath may be a useful addition to child interviews.

Child Abuse Negl. 2008 Jul;32(7):738-48. Epub 2008 Jul 2. Lyon TD, Dorado JS. University of Southern California Gould School of Law, 699 Exposition Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90089-0071, USA.

The memory (and hypnosis) lab at the University of New South Wales investigates a broad range of memory topics. We try to find innovative methods from cognitive and clinical psychology to address theoretical and empirical questions about memory. We aso use hypnosis as one major methodological tool in our investigations of memory (as well as other cognitive processes). In this paper, we review the projects currently underway in our memory (and hypnosis) lab.

Cogn Process. 2005 Dec;6(4):272-81. Epub 2005 Aug 26. Barnier AJ, Bryant RA, Campbell L, Cox R, Harris C, Hung L, Maccallum F, Sharman SJ. School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia, A.Barnier@unsw.edu.au.

We explore a new distinction between the future, prospective memory system being investigated in current neuroscience and the past, retrospective memory system, which was the original theoretical foundation of therapeutic hypnosis, classical psychoanalysis, and psychotherapy. We then generalize a current evolutionary theory of sleep and dreaming, which focuses on the future, prospective memory system, to conceptualize a new evolutionary perspective on therapeutic hypnosis and brief psychotherapy. The implication of current neuroscience research is that activity-dependent gene expression and brain plasticity are the psychobiological basis of adaptive behavior, consciousness, and creativity in everyday life as well as psychotherapy. We summarize a case illustrating how this evolutionary perspective can be used to quickly resolve problems with past obstructive procrastination in school to facilitate current and future academic success.

Am J Clin Hypn. 2008 Apr;50(4):343-50. Rossi E, Erickson-Klein R, Rossi K. Ernest@ErnestRossi.com

The current investigation addresses the manner through which trauma affects basic memory and self-system processes. True and false recall for self-referent stimuli were assessed in conjunction with dissociative symptomatology among abused (N=76), neglected (N=92), and nonmaltreated (N=116) school-aged children. Abused, neglected, and nonmaltreated children did not differ in the level of processing self-schema effect or in the occurrence and frequency of false recall. Rather, differences in the affective valence of false recall emerged as a function of maltreatment subtype and age. Regarding dissociation, the abused children displayed higher levels of dissociative symptomatology than did the nonmaltreated children. Although abused, neglected, and nonmaltreated children did not exhibit differences in the valence of their self-schemas, positive and negative self-schemas were related to self-integration differently among the subgroups of maltreatment. Negative self-schemas were associated with increased dissociation among the abused children, whereas positive self-schemas were related to increased dissociation for the neglected children. Thus, positive self-schemas displayed by the younger neglected children were related to higher dissociation, suggestive of defensive self-processing. Implications for clinical intervention are underscored.

Dev Psychopathol. 2008 Winter;20(1):213-32. Valentino K, Cicchetti D, Rogosch FA, Toth SL. University of Rochester, USA. kristin.valentino@yale.edu

AIM: The Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale (GSS) assesses suggestibility by asking respondents to recall a short story, followed by exposure to leading questions and pressure to change their responses. Suggestibility, as assessed by the GSS, appears to be elevated in people with intellectual disabilities (ID). This has been shown to reflect to some extent the fact that people with ID have poor recall of the story; however, there are discrepancies in this relationship. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether a closer match between memory and suggestibility would be found using a measure of recognition memory rather than free recall. METHOD: Three modifications to the procedure were presented to users of a learning disabilities day service. In all three experiments, a measure of forced-choice recognition memory was built into the suggestibility test. In experiments 1 and 2, the GSS was presented using either divided presentation (splitting the story into two halves, with memory and suggestibility tests after each half) or multiple presentation (the story was presented three times before presentation of the memory and suggestibility tests). Participants were tested twice, once with the standard version of the test and once with one of the modified versions. In experiment 3, an alternative suggestibility scale (ASS3) was created, based on real events in a learning disabilities day service. The ASS3 was presented to one group of participants who had been present at the events, and a second group who attended a different day service, to whom the events were unfamiliar. RESULTS: As observed previously, suggestibility was not closely related to free recall performance: recall was increased equally by all three manipulations, but they produced, respectively, no effect, a modest effect and a large effect on suggestibility. However, the effects on suggestibility were closely related to performance on the forced-choice recognition memory task: divided presentation of the GSS2 had no effect on either of these measures; multiple presentation of the GSS2 produced a modest increase in recognition memory and a modest decrease in suggestibility; and replacing the GSS with the ASS3 produced a large increase in recognition memory and a large decrease in suggestibility. IMPLICATIONS: The results support earlier findings that the GSS is likely to overestimate how suggestible a person will be in relation to a personally significant event. This reflects poor recognition memory for the material being tested, rather than increased suggestibility per se. People with ID may in fact be relatively non-suggestible for well-remembered events, which would include personally significant events, particularly those witnessed recently.

Willner P. Learning Disability Services, Bro Morgannwg NHS Trust, Neath, UK. p.willner@swansea.ac.uk J Intellect Disabil Res. 2008 Apr;52(Pt 4):318-26.

We explore a new distinction between the future, prospective memory system being investigated in current neuroscience and the past, retrospective memory system, which was the original theoretical foundation of therapeutic hypnosis, classical psychoanalysis, and psychotherapy. We then generalize a current evolutionary theory of sleep and dreaming, which focuses on the future, prospective memory system, to conceptualize a new evolutionary perspective on therapeutic hypnosis and brief psychotherapy. The implication of current neuroscience research is that activity-dependent gene expression and brain plasticity are the psychobiological basis of adaptive behavior, consciousness, and creativity in everyday life as well as psychotherapy. We summarize a case illustrating how this evolutionary perspective can be used to quickly resolve problems with past obstructive procrastination in school to facilitate current and future academic success.

Rossi E, Erickson-Klein R, Rossi K. Ernest@ErnestRossi.com Am J Clin Hypn. 2008 Apr;50(4):343-50.

This study explores associations between language ability and hand preference in children with Down syndrome. Compared to typically developing children of the same age, children with Down syndrome showed weaker hand preference, were less consistent in the hand they used and also less willing to reach to extreme positions in contralateral space. Within the group of children with Down syndrome, those who showed a stronger or more consistent hand preference had better language and memory skills. This association could not be explained by differences in non-verbal cognitive ability or hearing loss. These findings are discussed within the theory of neurolinguistic development proposed by Locke [Locke (1997). Brain & Language, 58, 265-326].

Dev Psychobiol. 2008 Apr;50(3) Groen MA, Yasin I, Laws G, Barry JG, Bishop DV. University of Hamburg, Biological Psychology and Neuropsychology, Von-Melle-Park 11, 20146 Hamburg, Germany. margriet.groen@uni-hamburg.de

The nocebo effect consists in delivering verbal suggestions of negative outcomes so that the subject expects clinical worsening. Here we show that nocebo suggestions, in which expectation of pain increase is induced, are capable of producing both hyperalgesic and allodynic responses. By extending previous findings on the placebo effect, we investigated the role of learning in the nocebo effect by means of a conditioning procedure. To do this, verbal suggestions of pain increase were given to healthy volunteers before administration of either tactile or low-intensity painful electrical stimuli. This nocebo procedure was also carried out after a pre-conditioning session in which two different conditioned visual stimuli were associated to either pain or no-pain. Pain perception was assessed by means of a Numerical Rating Scale raging from 0=tactile to 10=maximum imaginable pain. We found that verbal suggestions alone, without prior conditioning, turned tactile stimuli into pain as well as low-intensity painful stimuli into high-intensity pain. A conditioning procedure produced similar effects, without significant differences. Therefore, in contrast to placebo analgesia, whereby a conditioning procedure elicits larger effects compared to verbal suggestions alone, learning seems to be less important in nocebo hyperalgesia. Overall, these findings indicate that, by defining hyperalgesia as an increase in pain sensitivity and allodynia as the perception of pain in response to innocuous stimulation, nocebos can indeed produce both hyperalgesic and allodynic effects. These results also suggest that learning is not important in nocebo hyperalgesia compared to placebo analgesia.

Colloca L, Sigaudo M, Benedetti F. Department of Neuroscience, University of Turin Medical School, and National Institute of Neuroscience, Corso Raffaello 30, 10125 Turin, Italy. luana.colloca@unito.it Pain. 2008 May;136(1-2):211-8.

This study examined how rumors originating in 3- to 6-year-olds' causal inferences can affect their own and their peers' memories for a personally experienced event. This was accomplished by exposing some members of classrooms to contextual clues that were designed to induce inferences about the causes of two unresolved components of the event. After a 1-week delay, a substantial number of children who were exposed to the clues misremembered their inferences as actual experiences. Causal inferential memory errors were most pronounced among 5- and 6-year-olds. Also, many of the children whose classmates were exposed to the clues mistakenly incorporated their classmates' causal inferences into their own accounts, with 3- and 4-year-olds being most likely to make this error.

Principe GF, Guiliano S, Root C. Department of Psychology, Ursinus College, Collegeville, PA 19426, USA. gprincipe@ursinus.edu J Exp Child Psychol. 2008 Feb;99(2):135-55.

Background: Dyslexia is a common learning difficulty affecting up to 10% of British children that is associated with a wide range of cognitive, emotional and physical symptoms. In the absence of effective conventional treatment, it is likely that parents will seek complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) to try and help their children. However, little is known about the level of CAM use or the type of CAM used by dyslexic children. Aims: This study assessed: (1) the lifetime use of CAM by dyslexic children, (2) the role of socio-demographic factors in CAM use by dyslexic children, (3) parental attitudes towards CAM use in the treatment of dyslexia, and (4) how parents' understanding of dyslexia affects CAM use. Methods & Procedures: A semi-structured questionnaire-based survey of parents of 148 dyslexic school children was undertaken. The children had been recruited to a university research programme investigating the effectiveness of a complementary therapy for the treatment of learning difficulties. Outcomes & Results: Lifetime use of CAM was 55.4% (82 children). The most popular CAM approaches were nutritional supplements/special diets (63 children) followed by homeopathy (29 children) and osteopathy/chiropractic manipulation (29 children). Socio-demographic factors did not predict CAM use. In total, parents of 101 dyslexic children reported that an interest in CAM for the treatment of dyslexia was based on their preference for CAM for their families more generally. Parents who thought that dyslexia was a 'medical/health' disorder were more likely to have used CAM with their children (p<0.01) than other parents in this survey. Conclusions & Implications: Educational and health professionals should be aware that many dyslexic children use CAM. Parents of dyslexic children should be provided with evidence-based advice to help them make informed therapeutic choices.

Bull L. School of Life Sciences, Roehampton University, London, UK. Int J Lang Commun Disord. 2008 May 27:1-12.

It is well established that source memory retrieval - remembering relationships between a core item and some additional attribute of an event - engages prefrontal cortex (PFC) more than simple item memory. In event-related potentials (ERPs), this is manifest in a late-onset difference over PFC between studied items which mandate retrieval of a second attribute, and unstudied items which can be immediately rejected. Although some sorts of attribute conjunctions are easier to remember than others, the role of source retrieval difficulty on prefrontal activity has received little attention. We examined memory for conjunctions of object shape and color when color was an integral part of the depicted object, and when monochrome objects were surrounded by colored frames. Source accuracy was reliably worse when shape and color were spatially separated, but prefrontal activity did not vary across the object-color and frame-color conditions. The insensitivity of prefrontal ERPs to this perceptual manipulation of difficulty stands in contrast to their sensitivity to encoding task: deliberate voluntary effort to integrate objects and colors during encoding reduced prefrontal activity during retrieval, but perceptual organization of stimuli did not. The amplitudes of ERPs over parietal cortex were larger for frame-color than object-color stimuli during both study and test phases of the memory task. Individual variability in parietal ERPs was strongly correlated with memory accuracy, which we suggest reflects a contribution of visual working memory to long-term memory. We discuss multiple bottlenecks for source memory performance.

Neuropsychologia. 2008 Jul;46(8) Kuo TY, Van Petten C. Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, United States; School of Osteopathic Medicine in Arizona, A.T. Still University, Mesa, AZ, United States.

by Melany Friedlander, JD, CHt

A Survivor's Story

When Joe came into my office last February, he was very distraught. He had already failed the Bar once and his confidence was at an all time low. Each time he took a practice test, he would just freeze up. Joe had all of the classic symptoms of test anxiety. Since there were only two weeks left before the exam, I suggested we try a quick technique called anchoring. I assured Joe that with this simple tool, he could learn to instantly change his anxiety state into a more resourceful state in a matter of seconds. Joe picked an anchor (finger squeeze) that instantly transported him to a time in his past when he felt calm, collected and confident. Every time he fired off the anchor, he was able to quickly access those positive states. Armed with the right tools, Joe managed to tame his anxiety and pass the Bar! Just imagine having access to your most resourceful states - confidence, relaxation, focus, etc. - in a matter of moments. The tools are literally at your fingertips.

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