Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions from 36 to 42.
Most of us have treasured memories of the events that shaped our lives as a child. Or do we? Controversial new research claims that those recollections may be as real as fairytales. Leading psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, of the University of California, believes your memories are more likely to be dream-like reconstructions of stories told by your parents. When we think we are reminiscing, we are simply ‘rewriting’ our memory to suit ourselves. She adds: “Our biases, expectations and past knowledge are all used in the filling-in process, leading to distortions of what we remember.” She maintains there is no evidence that perfect memories are stored by individuals.
In one study, volunteers were asked to read about events that happened to them as children. One of these was made up - a shopping trip when they were five, in which they got lost and were rescued by an elderly person. Later, some participants recalled the event in detail, with self- assurance and emotion. You could argue that these people might have genuinely lost their mum in a shop at some point during childhood. But Loftus later carried out similar studies where the fake event was an attack by a vicious animal, or being responsible for knocking over a punch bowl at a family wedding and spilling it all over the bride. The results were the same.
Dr Jaime Quintanilla, professor of psychiatry at the Texas School of Medicine, agrees that our earliest recollections are far from accurate and often complete distortions or figments of our imagination. He says: “It’s a proven fact that young children take fragments of experience and build them into distorted memories. For example, one 40-year-old man distinctly remembers his parents once punished him by refusing to buy him shoes. In fact, when he was three, he cut his foot on a piece of glass and developed a nasty infection.
For two weeks, he was confined to the house in his socks so his wound would heal. When he wanted to go out, he was told he couldn’t, because he had no shoes.” These false suggestions about childhood events can profoundly change people’s attitudes and behaviour in adulthood.
(Adapted from English Unlimited by Adrian Duff and Ben Goldstein)
