Essay on Memory Distortion in People Reporting Alien Abductions

The paper deals with the analysis of false memories and the dissociations of memories from the conscious mind. The research indicates that exposure to trauma or any other form of dangerous activity at a tender age may result in memory loss, this memory is always lost in the subconscious hence making it inaccessible to the conscious mind. This form of the defensive mechanism by the conscious mind to avoid depression is known as repression; it takes different forms, active, motivated suppression and the defective forms of repression. Dissociation and repression are not distinctively separated they both clearly describe a situation where the conscious memory selects what to keep and what to loose. In other extreme cases, there have been situations of people recovering memories that have been buried for a decade or so; these recovered memories are recovered, but they can be scanty and not fully detailed as the occurrences. This paper looks into understanding the malleability of memory that brings out the possibility of recovering false memories that are not the actual representations of the traumatic experiences occurred. This is a clear indicator that memories experienced by individuals can either be a total lie or just a creation of the mind.

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The researchers clearly point out that the people who recover their memories tend to have memories that are influenced by other exposures in life hence distorting the actual memories In a case study on the paper, they researchers took in women who had an idea of a case of child abuse in their tender ages, these women were helped to recover their memories of the traumatizing experience. The results of this research indicated that some women developed recovered memories that were distinctly separate from the actual experience they had earlier in life. Having compared these results with those of a control group, individuals who always had a memory of a traumatizing experience they had in their childhood days. This indicated that recovered memories had distortions, pointing out if the memories were false or not is the tough part. The determination of the cognitive characteristic of the brain and memories puts one at a stand point where you cannot be certain as to whether cognitive impairments serves the purpose of proving an individual with a leeway to forget harmful memories.

Taking the case in action, the researcher took in individuals with lost, repressed and recovered memories group of UFO abductions in their lives. These three groups of individuals were brought together for a research inquisition on the malleability of memory and the distortion of the truth. UFO abductees are quite different in their own distinct manners; other believe that they were abducted by they lost all the memories of the abductions, other believe that they can remember small bits of the occurrence of the abduction while in other cases, these individual have no idea if they were abducted or not. These groups formed three definitive functional groups namely the repressed, recovered and control groups. The research hypothesis is that the repressed group and the recovered groups will score malleability of memories due to external and higher than control groups. In other cases, the research also looked into the psychometric measures, false memories creations and the malleability of the memories during the recovery process.

The results of the research is rather interesting, the recovered and the repressed memory groups had a thin line separating them on a personality and psychopathology. These groups had high scores on hypnotic suggestibility and depressive symptoms; these factors are closely tied with false recall and recognition. These groups also scored high on perceptual aberration and the magical ideation. Such high measures on the above-mentioned score boards bring up the argument that the memories recovered are brought in by the development of feelings of abduction and later on paranoia. Memories are highly malleable and hence, in any case, people who claim to have recovered memories of alien abduction may be victims of their own past and personal conviction and believes. Suggestive memory influence comes along with the reading of books, watching alien abduction movies and hearing alien abduction stories, in the long run, memory distortion occurs.

In any case, the project looks into the susceptibility of distortion of memories in the case of recovering lost memories in the individual. The malleability of the memories in my perspective is a big contributor to the distortions that are expressed in memory recovery processes. The tricky part is ascertaining whether the memories recovered have been distorted or not. Here lies that challenge of identifying the truth as memories are influenced by activities in life, movies, books and other peoples experiences. In many cases of individuals who think that they were once abducted by aliens, they have repressed or lost memories of the situations. It is clear to note that these claims could be factual or fictional as memory recovery process cannot be ascertained, individual may overwrite their memories with others just by convincing themselves that their current convictions are the truth. This indicates the malleability of memories and possible distortions of recovered memory.