memories

Memory is used in all parts of our daily life. The concept of memory is used in nearly all actions that we take part of. It will help us in passing a test to recall certain elements in our lives. There are three elements that go into memory. The first task that goes into memory is encoding. Encoding is when you take in the information that you are attempting to remember. There are two ways to do this: the first being verbatim and the second is gist. Verbatim is the details of the situation and gist is the “essence of the event” (Siegler and Alibali p.228). The second element of memory is storage. The storage part is when the memory is store in your brain. The third part of memory is the retrieval. This is the actual recall of memories. These three parts are needed in order to have a successful memory.

One of my strongest childhood memories is of an accident that I had when I was in the first or second grade. I was playing tag with some friends when I decided to climb the jungle gym. When I reached the top of the jungle gym, I slipped and fell. As a result I received a cut to my head and had to be rushed to the emergency room. Without the use of autobiographical memories I would not be able to recall events from my own life. Although this memory of mine is one of my earliest, research has shown that individuals are able to remember events before this. An example would be toddlers remembering to kick their leg in order to make a mobile move. This is the very basic kind of memory. As children grow older their memory improves and gets better. Even recollection of memories before the age of four is hard to believe.

The recollection of memories for all ages can be altered to suit are own needs. The changing of memories is easiest among young children. Children are able to change their mind about what they remember because they are easily suggestible. Memories can be planted into children mind by the way that we ask them to recall the memory. The questioner can “trick” the children into thinking that something happen when in fact it did not by the way that they ask the question. Another way that children get memories confused is by having to image what happen. They will often confuse a new event with a past event. Or they will combine two past events into one. A third problem with children’s memories is that they can be influence with suggestion by others. I have this memory of taking my mothers keys out of her purse and starting the car when I was a toddler. Everyone swears by this event that it did actually happen. But since I was so young, how much of my memory was the telling of stories by my family.

The recollections of memories are not just needed by the individual, but often times by others. Sometimes children are needed to testify in court. With the ability to be easily suggestible and easily influence, society needs to create a standard for questioning children. As stated in the book, open-ended questions are the best way to question children. Children are less likely to please the questioner and create answers.

Memories are useful in all parts of life. Memories can benefit the person trying to remember things as well as others relying on that other person memory. As we grow older, we start to rely more on our memory. Memories in older people also are more important than anything else.

Theory of mind

Theory of mind is the understanding that individuals have mental states that not always is accessible to others or the public and this may guide other people behavior. Children from age 4 to 5 years old start recognising that minds are separate and that may hold different thoughts. They understand that beliefs are merely mental representation of reality and start recognizing the public and the self as diferent and are more aware of how other individual can differ in their thoughts and desires. Social experiences can foster the development this theory, such as Pretended play and family.
Pretended play is an activity that prompts children to think about mental states. They start making mental representantions of an object pretending to be another or performing other social roles such as cops, robbers and thier super hero spiderman. Children when use their mental representaition in role play, they start acting, talking and pretending to be someone esle, which help them understand not everyone have the same attitudes, behavior, desires, beliefs and thoughts. Cops and robbers for example are two individuals who are different from one another and have different set of mind; therefore role play helps the child see this difference.
Family can also foster Theory of mind in children by doing family discussions in conflict with other member in their family. For example, how their sibilings might be feeling, what motives, intention and beliefs other siblings. The more often mothers talk about other people's mental states with their infants, toddlers and preschoolers, the more likely children are able to recognize the different mental states of others and develop understanding toward other people set of mind. Also, kids who have older brother are more likely to develop a quicker acquisition of this theory than other childrens are because they learn from their sibling and are exposed to more complex pretended play and interact with older siblings how already are succesful at understanding theory of mind of others, who influence and help their younger siblings to do so.

Pretend Play and Egocentrism

Regarding Tuesday’s lecture on Pretend Play, I found it interesting to learn that some adults still have imaginary friends. I realize the adult version of the imaginary friend may often take a very different form than the childhood playmate, but my first reaction to this information was surprise and skepticism that adults would continue to maintain relationships with fictional characters.

However, this reminded me of a study I read for another class, describing another child-like thought process that changes in a similar way as the child matures. This was the idea of egocentrism. When my psychology classes have covered this topic, they have taught that this is a stage a child leaves at about age five, and after this point the child/adult no longer interprets the world egocentrically. This study was designed to explore that theory. The main part of the study used a variation of the “Sally doll” experiment, where a doll leaves a room, someone moves a toy she had put away, and the child is asked where “Sally” will look for the toy when she returns. In the variation for adults, there were four boxes, each painted a different color. “Sally” left her toy in one box, and when she left, her friend moved the toy to another box – and moved all four boxes, so when “Sally” returned, she found them in a different order than when she left. Half of the adults were also told where the friend hid “Sally’s” toy. The adults were then asked to assign a probability to each box (0 to 100 percent), showing what they thought the chance was that “Sally” would check that box first to find her toy.

The adults that were not told which box currently held the toy assigned equal probability to all four boxes. The adults that did know the new location of the toy assigned a slightly higher probability to the box that contained the toy. Although the scenario was significantly more complex than the traditional “Sally doll” experiment, it appears that adults also may use some egocentric thought processes. I think the adult version of the invisible friend is similar to this. The child does not completely lose their way of thinking, or replace it with something new – instead, the old behaviors and thought processes are modified and adapted and merged with new, better, and more mature ones. Some studies we’ve read in this class have indicated other areas where adults display similar thinking patters to children, such as determining which side of a scale will go down depending on the magnitude and location of weights. I think it would be very interesting to see the results from similar experiments exploring other thought patterns and behaviors from childhood that are assumed not to exist in adults.

Gender Differences in Child Development

This class has a lot of overlap with a few of my other classes and I always find it very interesting to relate my classes to one another and to analyze how different ideas and topics can be applied to one another. In my Psychology of Gender class we discuss many of the different ways males and females differ and how they are the same. I am curious how this relates to child development and how gender differences affect the way we each develop. I have noticed in almost all of our readings for this class almost none of them look at developmental differences between boys and girls and almost always rely solely on age of the child instead.

In my Psychology of Gender class we often talk about how most of the differences that we observe between girls and boys are socially constructed. We reward children who follow the sex roles we create for them while we penalize or at least fail to reward children who don't conform to these roles. Parents create and reinforce the differences we observe between girls and boys by the way that they treat their child’s actions. There are also many differing explanations for the gender differences between boys and girls.

Leonard Sax wrote a book called “Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know about the Emerging Science of Sex Differences.” In this book he talks about how a few years ago most experts believed that differences in how girls and boys behave were mainly due to differences in how they were treated by their parents, teachers, and friends. He said however that it is very hard to hang on to that belief today. An avalanche of research over the past twenty years has shown that sex differences are more significant and profound than anybody guessed. Sex differences are real, biologically programmed, and important to how children are raised, disciplined, and educated according to Dr. Sax. One of the main examples that he shows of this is that girls are born with more sensitive hearing than boys, and those differences increase as they grow up. So when a grown man speaks to a girl in what he thinks is a normal voice, she may hear it as yelling. Conversely, boys who appear to be inattentive in class may just be sitting too far away to hear the teacher-especially if the teacher is female. These male students are then much more likely to be diagnosed with ADD and given drugs to treat this, which is often unnecessary because the boy simple can’t hear his soft spoken female teacher so she thinks that he is just not paying attention to her.

Sax also discusses how the amygdala is the place known for negative emotions to be held in our brains. He says that girls are able to talk about their feelings sooner than boys because they develop the connection between the amygdala and the cerebral cortex much earlier. This however develops much later for boys, thus showing why they find it hard to discuss their feelings articulately. I am interested to see how this will apply to social interactions that we are learning about next week and how males and females differ in their social interaction. Females tend to have strong close relationships that rely on emotions and feelings, while males close relationships rely more on doing things or activities with another person to build a strong relationship. These gender differences in children are very interesting to me in the developmental process.

Pretending Childhood

As our guest lecturer, Alison, talked about pretend play in our class on Monday, it brought back some of my memory from childhood. When I was a kid, I loved to tie one end of a jacket, blanket, or large towel around my neck and leave the rest hanging down my back so it would look like a cloak. Then I would run around and jump from place to place, pretending that I can fly with this ‘wing’ that I put on myself. The reason I was pretending to be flying came from the cartoon I was watching around the time, where the super hero had a cloak and flies around to save people.

When I was four years old, my sister was born. And by observing her childhood, I remember that there was a brief period in which she had a doll as her friend, and she would talk to her and hug her during sleep. Sometimes our family even needed to make a space for her ‘friend’ to sit when we are watching TV together. However, unlike me, I don’t remember ever seeing my sister pretend to be some super hero or princesses in her childhood. Comparing my sister’s childhood with mine, I agree with one of the study Alison talked about, that boys tend to have pretend identity while girls tend to have imaginary friend.

While reviewing my childhood experience and my sister’s, I realized that pretend identity or imaginary friend is often influenced by culture and media. The super hero that I was pretending during my childhood was from a Japanese cartoon, which is the reason that I don’t think children in the US at the time would pretend to be that same hero. Moreover, as time changed, the media has also changed. With a lot more new characters from cartoon or other media types, children’s pretending target has changed. Only the classic super heroes, such as Superman and Spiderman, survived and still stayed as the top in children’s pretending list.

Making Childhood memories

I found the lecture on childhood memories and how children form these memories to be extremely fascinating. I personally do not remember very much from my own childhood except for small random things that really have no relevance. Most children remember events which are extremely emotional such as the birth of a sibling or experiences which they found to be exciting such as a dog having puppies. I feel that since I am a twin and was raised while my mom did day care, that some of these special events that children remember tended to not be as memorable or emotional for me. My family also moved about three times when I was fairly young and using the context-dependent retrieval hypothesis, maybe if I were to return to my old houses I would begin to remember some things that I can not retrieve just simply thinking about my childhood.
My first memories seem to be when I began to learn things like reading with my Grandmother. This to me says that maybe since these times were some of the only events in which I was experiencing something individually without my siblings that they may have been more solidified in my memory. It may have also been that my parents used more of a low elaborate reminiscing style.
Because I am pregnant with my first child I am really glad we discussed ways in which we can help children better remember their experiences. I want to use this high elaborative style so that my child can hopefully make some lasting memories about his childhood which I was not able to make. (Not that I have any animosity towards my parents :) )

Discussion of Memory Recall In Children

In the article “Culture and Language in the Emergence of Autobiographical Memory” by Robyn Fivush and Katherine Nelson, autobiographical memory and how it forms is discussed through the emergence of language, understanding of self, culture and gender. These authors propose that instead of childhood amnesia being a “barrier” that must be overcome in order to begin creating a “life story”, autobiographical memory is accumulated through socio-cultural development. It is stated that adults can recall memories at the earliest ages of three or four, because the density and level of detail of memories has developed within the child. However, the age can vary among different individuals. I can remember being two years old, and not only tidbits here and there, but a framework and a self awareness that I can still access in my memory today. I can remember floor plans of the many houses we lived in in great detail. Also people such as family members, neighbors, babysitters and friends. In the article, it is stated that adults can recall some details about events as early as the age of two, but it is argued that the child isnt able to effectively tie these memories together unless they are specifically targeted. I disagree with this statement, because I feel I can remember what I was thinking at the time and how I felt. I can recall a framework of daily life, and remember specific events that my parents did not tell me about, or that they didn’t even know in the first place (such as when I was doing something I shouldn’t have been).

I always thought that everyone else could remember the same things that I could, but that is not the case. My little sister, who is two years younger than me, cannot remember anything before the age of seven or eight. What could possibly account for the large range in age of rememberance? Fivush and Nelson claim that gender and culture are factors in the development of memory, but we are both female and raised by the same parents. The memories that she does have from childhood are memories that my parents and myself have created for her. I can remember telling her stories when we were younger about events in our lives, and when we were older, she would talk about these events using the exact same language that I had used when explaining them to her as a child. However, I know she didn’t explicitly remember these events, because she could not further describe them or give any other contextual details except for the things she was told. This might be explained by the presence of a “linguistic scaffold” that my parents and I created for her to help her organize events. Reminiscing about the past can help a child develop the ability to recall events and put them into an organized framework. I found it interesting that the ariticle described an experiment performed by Simcock and Hayne in 2002 that shows the emergence of this phenomenon. They had two and three year old children engaging in activities and then at the intervalls of six and twelve months later, they measured the level of recalled information and what the children could actually recall correctly. They found that the children could provide verbal recall, but all the words they used were words that they had in their vocabulary at the time. This shows that language is an important part of memory recall, because a person must have language to be able to describe an event.

Another point brought up in the article is that a child must be aware of themselves and others who also experience the same events. My sister disagrees with me about events that happened when we were children, but since I am older, I believe that my memory representations are more true to the situation than hers. The disagreements between the recall of the younger sibling versus the older sibling challenged her to understand that memories are just representations that are unique to each person. They depend on the child’s level of development, their persepctive of the situation, and past experiences that may be applied to help shape the memory.

Pretend Play

There are three types of pretending play. There are self as vehicle, object as vehicle and nothing as vehicle. For instance, a boy could pretend himself as the Spiderman. In addition, it seems that imagined friends could vary from human beings to a green alien. Clearly, the contexts of pretend play might depend on what information that a child has received. For example, it is possible that children in United States are easily to watch a cartoon or hear a story about aliens. So, children might imagine a friends looks like an alien. Children must have enough basic knowledge about human and the world to perform pretend play. Furthermore, based on the knowledge or perception that children have, children would have various contexts of pretend play. So, I would like to share with my experience of pretend play in this blog.

I remembered that I changed the contexts of pretend play with the trend of the media such as movies or animations. When I was around age 5, I liked to watch Kung-fu series movies. My brother and I were fascinated how the main characters killed their enemies by one kick or some fabulous Wu-Shu. Additionally, we were fascinated how main character could jump so high in the movie (If you have watched the movie, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, you would understand what I mean here.) Therefore, during our play time, I usually pretended that I was a person who is really good at using sword. I also used the umbrella to pretend as a sword. In addition, I jumped on the mattress and pretended that I could jump really high like the people in the Kung-Fu movies. Later, when I was into the animation about a girl who has powerful magic, I started to pretend that I have powerful magic and liked to fight with other friends who pretend as devils. In short, my pretend play would influenced by the media.

Furthermore, unlike other children, I had no memory for having an imagined friend before 6. It is possible that I did not remember my imagined friends due to the childhood amnesia. However, I suspected that I did not have any imagined friend before age 6m because it is not necessary for me. Before age 6, I not only had my brother but also had my cousins to be my companions. I also had a group of friends in the kindergarten because I went to the kindergarten around age 2 and half. We hanged out and played together everyday. After my cousins, my brother and my friends who are older than I in the kindergarten went to the elementary school, I started to have an imagined friend. Thus, I think that children would create an imagined friend when they could not find any actual companion.

In conclusion, I am impressed how creative that children’s imagination. And, children’s imagination probably is inspired by the media across culture. Moreover, based on my own experience, it is possible that most of children have imagined friend because they do not have actual companions. Furthermore, I wonder if the imagined friend would relate to the schizophrenia. It seems that most of Hollywood movie portrait that adults who have imagined friend would have the schizophrenia. Recently, I have heard the news that a teenager created an imagined boyfriend due to the sexual abused. So, it would be interesting to investigate the relationship between imagined friend which were created after age 7 or older and the abnormal behavior in the future.

False Beliefs

Our reading from this Wednesday discussed theory of mind which is achieved by the age of 3 or 4. One of the important aspects of theory of mind is being able to understand intensions and actions of others and yourself, this is called false beliefs. Children can be tested if they are capable of false beliefs through a test called “misleading appearance” task. Children are lead to believe there is candy in a box but once they look in the box there are pencils inside. Five year olds say they expected there to be candy inside and believe that if other children looked in the box they would think there would be candy in the box also. Three year olds on the other hand say they always knew there were pencils inside and they believe that other children would know there would be pencils also. Another task that test false belief is “location change” task. The results are the same between five and three year olds.
In my Social Psychology class we talked about false beliefs and how adults still struggle with false belief tasks. One article I read, by Susan Birch and Paul Bloom, talked about the curse of knowledge can conflict with an adults reasoning of false beliefs. Birch and Bloom investigate if an adult has plausible knowledge of an event, is he or she capable of predicting another person’s false beliefs. The task was much similar to the way the test children’s false beliefs. Participants were randomly assigned to three different groups: ignorance, knowledge-plausible, or knowledge implausible. Participants were shown a picture of a girl holding a violin and standing by four containers. Each container was a different color: blue, purple, red, and green. The second picture they were shown was a different girl holding a violin and there were four of the same containers that were rearranged. Subjects were then told, ‘This is Vicki. She finishes playing her violin and puts it in the blue container. Then she goes outside to play. While Vicki is outside playing, her sister, Denise . . . .” Than they were told different things depending on which group they were in, “Ignorance: ‘‘moves the violin to another container.’’ Knowledge-plausible: ‘‘moves the violin to the red container.’’ Knowledge-implausible: ‘‘moves the violin to the purple container.’ The findings showed, that similar to children, an adult’s own knowledge makes it harder to reason others false beliefs and prediction of their actions, only when it is plausible knowledge. These finds concluded that one’s own knowledge can taint our abilities to reason what other people’s action and beliefs.
I get really excited when two of my classes discuss similar topics because you get different perspectives of the topic. False belief is a complex theory of the mind and the findings about adult’s capabilities on these tasks shed light on how children and adults social cognition isn’t much different.

ICs

I was really excited when Alison brought Calvin and Hobbes into lecture on Monday. I had a little moment in class when I remembered how sad I was when I realized that Hobbes wasn’t actually a real tiger, and that only Calvin could interact with him. I don’t remember having an imaginary friend myself, or really having a pretend identity (beyond the occasional Werewolf over Halloween), but I read as much Calvin and Hobbes as I could when I was younger. It was mentioned during the lecture how kids may use ICs to test the waters in certain situations, like when something has been broken, but I think that they could have a lot more benefits then just being a fall-guy. Just like our orienting abilities that we discussed earlier this term, I think that as adults we take our inner voice and our familiarity with it for granted. I know that when I wake up in the morning and part of me wants to stay warm, and the other part knows I need to go to class or work, that these aren’t two different people inside my head. I’m comfortable with the idea that I can have multiple desires and essentially a conversation with myself as I decide which one is the most appropriate to act on. It wouldn’t be surprising to me if children simply ascribe these dissenting voices to actual characters. It may even seem strange to them that we as adults don’t manage our various thoughts and desires in the same manner.
Children also may not understand the distinction we make and the value we place on real as opposed to imaginary things and actions. We have had years to come around to the idea that only our interactions in the real world can actually change our position in it, but this may not be so easily understood by children. Imaginary friends may provide as much support and much needed interaction as real friends and family do. It may be why they so readily they admit that their friends are only in their heads and that they made them up. It seems strange to us since we’ve come to the conclusion that we have better things to invest our energy in, but they may not see what the big deal is.

Children's memory

This week we read about memory, and how it develops. I think that this information was the most interesting to me, because there were several examples of children remembering things which had never occurred. I had heard about this happening with adults (particularly with Elizabeth Loftus’s work), but didn’t realize how dangerous the concept is until I was presented with how damaging it could be to children. Children that are exposed to crimes (either as a victim or a witness) are already in a vulnerable position, due to their inexperience with dealing with the information they have been exposed to. Combining that with their impressionability creates a situation even worse than that experienced by adults that witness or are the victims of crime.

The scariest part to me is that there are situations that I think I remember, but now I can’t be so sure about. There’s one specific instance in which I remember sitting in the passenger seat of a car, being driven to a Child Development Center and hanging out with a bunch of other kids, but also having access to watching my mother play tennis. (She was down on a lower level in a gymnasium, while I was on an upper level with a balcony overlooking the gym.) None of this happened. I know that it couldn’t have because I asked my mother about it later on in life. But it’s very clear in my mind still. I just wish I knew where I’d gotten the idea from. On a further note, I believe I’m very lucky not to have ever been exposed to something that could have been damaging to me, either being pressured into falsely accusing someone of misbehavior or having been mistreated and having someone try to talk me out of that idea.

It shocks and amazes me that we’ve been going off testimony that has basically been tampered with for years, without ever realizing that the words these children were saying were not actually their own. The worst part of it is that I don’t think anyone in particular is always at fault for it. The adults that were asking the children leading questions probably didn’t always realize that they were pushing the child to say things that weren’t true. However, I also realize that there are instances where someone does push a child to say something that they know isn’t true (i.e. the example from page 227 in the text). Nor can any blame be placed on the children in these dreadful situations, because it’s not their faults that their memories are easily manipulated. And because they don’t understand a lot of social situations, they just try to please the people they are talking to.

However, part of me wonders how much things like IQ and general memory effectiveness come into play in these situations. I guess I could be considered to have a pretty high IQ, but I have a terrible memory. I have absolutely no capacity to remember dates and times, and I don’t believe I ever have. The only time that I can specifically remember things was when I told myself to remember them. There was a time when I was a kid living in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and two people were killed at the video store just down the street from my house. I remember that when I heard about it, I decided from then on to pay attention to the world around me, in case I ever witnessed a crime, so that I would be able to report it and help put the bad guys in prison. The thing that I realized after trying to do that all the time is that there’s a lot going on in the world, both in reality and in my mind. As a child with a lot of mental processing going on, it’s hard to pay attention to things that could be happening, in addition to things that are relevant in your life.

I suppose this relates back to thinking about children being used for eyewitness testimony. I just wonder if the prosecutors have ever realized how hard it must be for children to sort through everything in their minds. Not only is there so much going on (they’re still learning how to be people, for one thing) but they don’t have the practice that adults have with using the information we contain.

Susie's Imaginary Friend vs. Tommy's Imagined Persona

The idea that gender may play a role in the types of imaginary play, poses an interesting question regarding why this may be the case. Although there isn't an overwhelming sense of consistency regarding the differences in boys and girls role play preferences, according to Alison Shawber there is a degree of difference in that girls tend to imagine an imaginary companion or companions, where as boys more often tend to have pretend identities. There may be several reasons for this difference including a possible need girls feel to nurture, the differences in how boys and girls are spoken to by their parents, or even the fact that at about the same age children are inventing or embodying these characters is at approximately the same time children begin to acknowledge more concretely the types of roles boys/men and girls/women preform which may encourage more quiet make-believe play from girls and louder, rougher play from boys, or the fact that boys may want to emulate a strong individual.
Although people may believe "girls have an innate need to nurture" that is in fact not entirely the case. Young girls are instead bombarded by images of nurturing, endlessly caring, and attentive women who form the mental picture of what it is to be a woman and because of this I find it very difficult to believe that girls are more likely to have imaginary companions than boys.
One difference that has been seen in children and their interactions with their parents is the different styles of communication that parents utilize when speaking to their children. Mothers tend to speak more frequently and with more elaboration when speaking to their daughters which could help to cultivate the level of imagination required to invent another entire individual; where as mothers tend to be more direct and concise with their sons which could require them to rely on outside stimulation, such as cartoons, to help them create their role play characters.
This is also the time in children's lives that they begin to more completely grasp that in frequent situations the expectations of them differ greatly. This difference is most often seen in the fact that girls are expected to "act like a lady" or "not get dirty" where as boys are told "go outside and play" and are less frequently punished for getting dirty or being overly loud. This may be one of the causes of role play differences because boys tend to embody loud and active pretend identities and girls may not be given the freedom to embody such boisterous characters.
Another possible explanation for this difference in tendency is that boys may be groomed to want to emulate a strong individual, I personally think that this is the most likely explanation for any difference that can be found within the imaginary play preferences in girls and boys. Due to the fact that our society constantly tells men of all ages that in order to thrive they must be strong and independent it seems only necessary that to achieve this mentality as young men and adults we must begin teaching boys these subtle mental pictures early. In looking at the examples given in the lecture of Spiderman and Batman we observe two superheros who are strong, secretive, brave, unemotional, and very autonomous, characteristics which we find valuable and societaly superior.
I am by no means attempting to say that these circumstances are universal or the causes of these differences I just think that these are factors which could influence the difference and should possibly more carefully looked at. Although, as I previously mentioned, there is not statistically significant evidence that these differences are overly prevalent among young children it seems that as our society continues to progress and these stereotypes of men and women become more ingrained these differences may continue to become more visible and more statistically predictable when examining role play behavior in children.

Non-parent college students' attitudes toward imaginary companions

Parental support is defined as a key factor in the development of imagination, including the maintenance of imaginary companions (Singer & Singer, 1990; Taylor, 1999). Despite the fact that many parents have positive attitudes toward imaginary companions and support the interaction of their children with imaginary companions, such positive attitudes are not adopted by all parents (Taylor, 1999). Even though there are some children who create imaginary companions in spite of the negative attitudes of their parents, parental disapproval is considered one of the reasons why children abandon their imaginary companions after preschool (Taylor, 1999). Given the importance of the positive or negative contributions of parents in terms of both creating and sustaining an imaginary companion, it is not surprising that parental attitudes toward imaginary companions have been studied by various researchers (Gleason, 2004; Mauro, 1991; Taylor, 1999). However, research in this area is still very limited, and non-parent populations are usually not examined.

Last summer, I conducted a research project to study the attitudes of non-parent college students toward imaginary companions Based on the relatively more negative attitudes of parents toward older children’s developing or maintaining imaginary companions (Taylor, 1999), it was hypothesized that non-parent college students would have more negative attitudes toward older children than younger children with respect to the child’s interaction with imaginary companions. It was also hypothesized that in parallel with the findings that mothers are more likely than fathers to adopt positive attitudes toward their children’s imaginary companions (Gleason, 2005; Mauro, 1991), female college students would show more positive attitudes toward imaginary companions than their male counterparts. Finally, as the positive or negative attitudes of parents do not differ according to the gender of the child (Gleason, 2005), it was hypothesized that gender of the child would not yield differences in the attitudes of non-parent college students.

73 non-parent college students (38 females and 35 males) participated in the study. Materials used in the study consisted of two different versions of a survey. In both versions, the section on the attitudes toward a child’s interaction with an imaginary friend consisted of two vignettes. In the first vignette, participants were asked to read a short description of a 5-year-old child interacting with an imaginary friend and rate on a 7-item Likert scale (a) how concerned they would be; (b) how harmful having an imaginary friend would be for the child; (c) how beneficial having an imaginary friend would be for the child (d) whether they would think having an imaginary friend implies that the child has emotional problems. In order to assess whether children’s age has an effect on individuals’ attitudes, in the second vignette, participants were asked to read a short description of a 10-year-old child interacting with an imaginary friend. The two versions of the survey were identical except the child’s gender.

The study supported the hypothesis that non-parent college students have more negative attitudes toward older children than younger children with respect to the child’s interaction with imaginary companions. As expected, gender of the child did not yield differences in the attitudes of non-parent college students. Contrary to expectations, female participants did not have more positive attitudes toward children with imaginary companions than male participants. This finding may indicate that such attitudinal differences between females and males occur as a result of transition to traditional gender roles.

Despite its limitations, my study emphasized two future directions for research. First, the relatively negative attitudes of non-parent college students toward older children’s interactions with imaginary companions are worthy of further study. If further research confirms similar negative attitudes toward older children, such findings may be employed in explaining the factors that contribute to the reasons why older children abandon their imaginary companions. Second, a more comprehensive study of the similarities and differences between non-parent college students and parents would be useful in that it would reveal to what extent college students can be used as a sample when studying parental attitudes in particular and adult attitudes in general.

Role Play

Pretend play was broken down into two subgroups: object substitution and role play. Role play was the focus of most of the lecture and subsequently is what I will be discussing. A large part of role play is the concept of an imaginary companion. It is often shown in television and movies that children with imaginary companions are the shy withdrawn individuals, while adults with imaginary companions are “crazy.” This portrayal in the media was shown to be wrong. Children with imaginary companions and role play in general tend to have higher verbal ability, creativity, extroversion, and executive functioning. Which of course, these findings make perfect sense; one would have to be quite creative to think up and imaginary friend and communicate with it. It is difficult for me to understand how role playing, particularly having an imaginary companion correlate to being more of an extrovert. It seems like this finding would be opposite. Playing with an imaginary friend or using role play all the time would appear to segregate you from other children, because you would be off in your own world.

During this lecture the question was raised as to whether or not children understood that their imaginary friends were not real, and that children could distinguish reality from fantasy. In lecture the conclusion was made, that yes, children do understand that role play, and their imaginary companions aren’t real. However, when testing this, it seemed like researchers depended on what the children said, whether or not they mentioned that it was all just pretend. They also relied on parent surveys. My thoughts are, that is if a child had an imaginary friend, the parent would constantly acknowledge the fact that they aren’t real, causing the child to start saying it as well. So, if a parent or an adult were to ask the child if their imaginary friend were real they would respond with the answer they were taught and told repeatedly, whether or not they believed it to be true. It seems that saying that their imaginary friend was real would produce a negative response from adults and their parents, so the say the answer that they know will get them a positive response. Children think that the characters they see on television are real, so it’s difficult for me to see how they would not think their own imaginary friends are real. I learned in my learning and memory class that the more a person thinks about an event, the more they can start to think it actually happened. Could the same be true for the concept of imaginary companions? The more a child thinks and interacts with their friend wouldn’t the lines between fantasy and reality become blurred?

Remembering That I Didn't Remember and a Little bit O' Imagination

This post is going to be a quick touch on two topics, the first being memory that has possibly been implanted then moving to an actual episodic memory that involves imagination. OK, so picture this, there is a blond slender 2-3 year old boy being carried by a woman with black permed out hair. The child is thrashing about and just looks completely freaked out screaming, "Help, Help, she's not my mommy!!!" The woman comely trys to leave the store to elevate the other shoppers of the crying kid.

I remember this event because I was the kid screaming. Well, I kind of remember this. OK, I remember the first time I heard this story about one of my experiences at Nordstrom's growing up. This story struck me as funny during our lecture on memory because I have no real recollection of the event, but have heard the story so many times that I can visually see things from the child's point of view. I can just picture the look on my mom's face as she takes me out of the store, I can smell the perfume that she would have been wearing at the time, etc...

Just like you said in class, after being told a story over and over you start to remember it. I don't doubt that this event happened or not, it seems like something I would have done (I'm actually kind of proud that I could string together such a meaning phrase at that age). It's just funny that I have such a vivid picture of the event. What really gets me are the questions that I ask myself when I think about it. Like when I described myself as a slender 2-3 year old. This part of the story just kind of happened a couple of years ago. No one told me that I was slender at the time I just kind of added it to the story. My question is, could the story be taking on a life of it's own, the addition of the perfume smell, and my mom's facial expression are examples of this, or is it possible that I have old memories creeping back to the surface when I remember/think about the event.

Well, part two of this blog starts out with my rabid love for the X-men comic book characters. Growing up I would spend summers with my cousins, either here in Oregon, Detroit Michigan, or Baton Rogue Louisiana. No matter where we were we "played" X-men. Each of us had a favorite character and would take on that persona (self as vehicle). I don't remember exactly how old I was at the time, but I'm thinking around 10 or so. Anyways we were at a River Rhythm's concert up in Albany.

Running jumping all over the place I ran smack into a classmate of mine. As I talked to her one of my cousins jumped from the bushes and said, "Lets go Gambit, I think Wolverine is in trouble", then he jumped back into the bushes and let out an agonizing scream like he was just attacked by something.

I remember Katie, just kind of looking at me and back to my cousin like we were frikin crazy. I can feel my embarrassed red face, hear the music, and smell the stands selling all sorts of foods. I can pick apart details just like I can when I think of the above mentioned story that has been implanted by others into my head. When I think of each event they both come up as a true memory. Yet I know for a fact that only the second is, because I remember the first time I heard the story of my calls for help.

What is it about our memories that make it impossible to tell what was real and what wasn't. I have such vivid images of both events I can see and smell, yet I question one of them. Kind of crazy how memories work for us.

The Rules We Follow

Kids take a long time to learn what is ok and not ok to do. Thinking about it, there are a lot of social rules that have to be learned. There’s what you’re supposed to say in different situations, do around different people, or how to be. Some of the rules are for children’s safety, such as don’t play in the street and don’t eat food off the floor, while others are to fit into general society, like don’t sit down next to someone on an empty bus and don’t swear in public.

An old roommate I had had a daughter who lived in the house with us. At the time my friends and I rented the house, she had just had her third birthday. My time living with her taught me a lot about dealing with little kids. She was a really rough-and-tumble little girl who like playing out in the backyard and bouncing around the living room, and she also had a real fondness for skirts. A social rule that she still hadn’t learned by the time I moved out a year later was that other people don’t want to see your underwear (at least, not any normal person, certainly no one in our house). She liked to lay on her back and kick her legs around, and all of us adults in the house told her every time that it wasn’t appropriate, but she really liked kicking her legs in the air. She certainly had no understanding of why this was not allowed, because she had no notion of what the adults around her thought of the situation, such as concerns of if a predator saw her doing this at the park. She just thought it was fun, while we were concerned for her safety out in the world.

Little kids don’t seem to have much concern for what adults place sexual meaning to. A lot of kids around two years old go through a naked phase. It isn’t to attract a mate, they have no idea about those things yet, it’s just another way to be. In other cultures without strong beliefs about the personal nature of one’s own nudity allow children to continue this, sometimes because it simply is not an issue, others because of basic economic and resource reasons. These children do not learn the same lesson of Western children to clothe themselves, but I’m sure that there are other lessons that they are taught that are not needed for urban, American children to adhere to.

It takes a long time to learn all the rules you need to follow to fit in normally. Just think about if you went to China, France, or Saudi Arabia. All the things that we think of as foreign are things that they have learned, and are all similar to the kinds of things that we leaned as children, in order to fit in and follow the rules.

I Think, Therefore I’m Alive?

Our textbook says that for something to be viewed as a uniquely biological process, a process must be viewed as depending not on psychological mechanisms or physical mechanisms, but on specifically biological mechanisms. This distinction between psychological and biological processes makes sense, but it’s something that I had never really thought about before – I assumed that the two went hand in hand. I hadn’t noticed that I had been making this distinction subconsciously (almost?) all my life until we identified humans and animals, but not plants, as mentalistic agents in class. It fascinated me.

When I was thinking about this, I realized how so many children’s shows, stories and toys utilize the personification of inanimate objects. Very often this is done by giving these inanimate objects morphological features and having them react contingently, which, as we learned, children use to identify mentalistic agents. Do children think of these much-loved characters, such as Lofty and Muck from Bob the Builder, as living creatures because they appear to have psychological processes? Or do they, as essentialists, know that Lofty and Muck, as a crane and bulldozer respectively, are really mechanical objects and are therefore nonliving although they appear to be mentalistic agents? In other words, can they and do they make this distinction between psychological and biological processes?

Six-month-olds don’t seem to make this distinction – they expect goal-directed movement from humans but not from inanimate objects, suggesting that they associate psychological mechanisms with biological mechanisms. From experience, it appears to me that children around the preschool age are convinced that these personified inanimate characters are alive. This seems consistent with probabilistic representations – being a mentalistic agent is a high cue validity for the “living object” concept. There is a slight shift in their understanding here though: instead of something having to be alive to be a mentalistic agent, something that is a mentalistic agent has to be alive. Notice that although there is this shift, children still don’t seem to make the distinction between psychological and biological mechanisms.

How do they go from this to understanding that Thomas the Tank Engine isn’t a live object, or that plants are not mentalistic agents, even if they are alive? We know they get there eventually (because we as adults make the distinction), so the question is at what age do they learn to make this distinction, and how?

It seems most likely to me that this change occurs along the lines of the explanation of the conceptual development that I put forth in my last blog post – when children get to school and learn about the underlying biological mechanisms that make something “alive”, they would then have defining features for what is alive and what isn’t. They would learn how being alive is more than being able to think, and how appearing to be able to think does not necessarily make something alive. In the same way they would also learn that one of the defining features of the “plant” concept is “not being a mentalistic agent”. They would then be able to make the distinction between the psychological and biological processes.

I wasn’t able to find any research in this area, so this hypothesis that children don’t make the distinction between psychological and biological mechanisms isn’t empirically based, and I’m sure there are other explanations for it too. It would be interesting to conduct research to shed some light on how and when we learn to make this inconspicuous but important distinction.

Repressed Memory—True or False?

Encoding, storing, and retrieving memories is undeniable a very complicated process. There are many opportunities for something to go wrong and memories to be lost, fused, or fabricated from outside sources. For this reason, many researchers have focused on false memories and the suggestibility of memory.

In class, the research conducted by Elizabeth Loftus was mentioned, but not much detail was given. I vaguely recalled some of the studies that I had read about and was curious enough to do some further research. I found few articles detailing specific studies that had been conducted; most of what I found were articles detailing very specific cases where “de-repressed” memories were used to convict a person for a crime. Elizabeth Loftus uses language that I would consider inflammatory and designed to persuade the reader that the idea of memory repression is a myth. Loftus in Remembering Dangerously [1995] claims “Like the witch-hunt trials of old, people today are being accused and even imprisoned on 'evidence' provided by memories from dreams and flashbacks -- memories that didn't exist before therapy.”

Although there is plenty of empirical evidence indicating that memory is highly susceptible to suggestion under particular circumstances there is no evidence that one cannot recover accurate memories long forgotten. I believe that children when faced with highly traumatic events may develop dissociative amnesia and memories of the events may be arrested in some portion of the memory to spare the child further trauma. These memories may or may not resurface at some point in time.

Elizabeth Loftus only seems to speak to cases where a therapist was involved in helping a patient to ‘recover’ repressed memories; there are other cases, less publicized, less bizarre, and certainly less controversial where someone has remembered without involvement of a therapist, the use of guided imagery, misleading questions or hypnosis.

It seems to me that there is great deal of research left to be done in this area, but Loftus leads us to believe that the jury is in and repressed memories simply cannot and do not exist. Although her research has provided us with some valid evidence regarding the suggestibility of the memory system, I believe that she does a great disservice to the victims of trauma who have recovered memories by negating their validity.

Infantile Amnesia

Infantile Amnesia is a topic that I found really interesting in class. I had never actually thought about this topic before. Why is it that we can't remember our childhood experiences before a certain age? When this topic was brought up in class I remembered one of my first clear chilhood memories. I remember that I was living in Italy with my mom and grandma and I clearly remember that our neighbor had a huge fat gray cat named Corey. I use to love this cat, but since I was little I was always annoying the poor cat until one day, this is a really clear memory that I have, the cat scratched me but not just anywhere he scratched me right in the eye, from then on I remember being afraid of cats as a little girl. It is funny that out of all my memories in Italy this seems to be the one that I remember with more detail, perhaps because it had a big impact for me as a little girl, and probably because I went and told my grandma and mom about it. Since I was able to share what happened with my family as well as them talking about the event with me, maybe that is why I remember it so clearly. Also living in Italy was a happy moment in my life, perhaps we tend to remember happy memories more than sad memories.

There are many theories regarding infantile amnesia. One of them is the language explanation. Some argue that the incomplete development of language in young children may be the cause of childhood amnesia. Through the sharing of language we are able to form mental representation and can remember events better than when we don't talk about an event. In my case perhaps the sharing of the event helped me form a mental representation and also the emotional state that I was in got engraved differently in my memory and perhaps that is why I remember this much better than other things that happened when I was there.

I also have some memories that are even earlier but not so vivid, kind of like dream-like memories, I remember being in a bus with my grandma in Peru, I was about 3 or 4 and a lady was saying how cute I was and that I looked so much like my grandma. I remember crying so hard and later telling my grandma that the lady said I looked like an old lady. This memory is not very vividly but sometimes I wonder if I really do remember this memory or maybe it was planted by my grandma who would always remember the event and tell it to everyone since she found it funny. Perhaps some memories are real while others are implanted in our memories by our parents but whatever really is the cause I think that infantile amnesia is an interesting topic with many explanations that all seem accurate.
I think that a lot of the theories seem to have a lot of support for why we may not remember our first years of life but the ones that seem could be the cause are the language explanation theory as well as the physical development explanation in which it suggests that perhaps children's mind is not mentally mature enough to create long-lasting autobiographical memories, it is not until 3 that children develop brain areas such as prefrontal cortex which is associated with the formation of memories.

IC's

Alicia Bradshaw asked in her blog if the 35% of children that don't have IC's engage in other pretend play. I did a little research to try to clarify what Alison Shawber tried to convey during lecture. Paul Harris, author of The Work of the Imagination, cited Majorie Taylor's 1998 finding that two-thirds of children have IC's, if you consider the vehicle for orchestration to be an imaginary character, or a projection onto an external prop. She also is cited by Harris for claiming that the number goes up to three-quarters if you include children who engage in impersonation. Children as young as 2 have the ability to understand pretense. Harris demonstrated this by pretending to "wash teddy" using a toy teddy, shoe box (bath tub), and a wood brick (soap) with a 2 y.o. infant. The child quickly made sense of the situation and began to "help" wash teddy, and when the teddy was raised out of the "bath" the child claimed "he's all wet!" and "dried" the teddy. This showed that the child has a pretty sophisticated understanding of pretence. According to Taylor, as cited by Harris, children will engage in role play, even if they are by themselves, by impersonation or evoking an IC. There is a suggestion though that children who don't have IC's, do engage in pretend play, and are capable of having an IC. When I think of why a child may not have an IC, I can think of many possible reasons. Some parents may mistake an IC for a psychosis, and prohibit the child from that type of play. There may be religious reasons for prohibiting imaginary play. In a lecture by Majorie Taylor, she reported that Mennonite children are not allowed to engage in pretend play, which was due to their belief that pretend play is a waste of time. This doesn't mean that they don't develop pretence though, otherwise they wouldn't learn their religion. Many figures in religion such as angels are described as having many human features, but supernatural ones as well. This requires an understanding and development of pretence. In summary all children engage in pretend play of one type or another, and even though some may not develop (or just not report)an IC, children are still capable of it.

Imaginary companions

The topic I would like to discuss in this week’s blog deals with imaginary friends/companions. After reading some of the posts Sarah Ennis’ blog really got me thinking. She talks about what determines whether or not a child will have an imaginary companion. Sarah talks about similarities that children with ICs (imaginary companions) have. She then suggests some reasons why children may create these ICs. I would like to take the other side of this and suggest some reasons why children may not create ICs. The most obvious reason deals with the child’s development. Alison Shawber talked about how children with ICs have to be able to understand “pretense, which is a representational act which is dependent on a mental representation.” They must be able to understand this in order to understand other people’s pretend acts and to be able to pretend themselves. One reason why some children do not create ICs is because they do not have this ability yet. They may not be able to understand pretense and therefore they cannot understand “pretend acts.” However, this does not mean that they may not create one later on. This just may be a reason why some children create an IC later on in their childhood.
One other suggestion that I have for why some children do not create ICs deals with some gender differences. Alison Shawbert mentioned that there were some gender differences in this topic of imaginary companions. She said that girls are more likely to have imaginary companions. She also said that boys are more likely to have pretend identities. I would like to suggest that this may be due to the social construction of gender. Girls are taught to be caring, nurturing, and warm. I understand that not every IC is something that can be taken care of. But maybe one reason why girls are more likely to create an IC is because they are taught these things (caring, nurturing, etc). Maybe they feel the need to take care of something. A similar suggestion can be made of boys which may explain why some children do not create ICs. Maybe boys are more likely to create pretend identities because they are conditioned to be “a man,” and be the hero in situations. Boys might feel the need to show the fact that they can be a “hero” or the “strong man.” This may be a reason why boys do not create ICs as often as girls do.
The last thing that I would like to do in this post is ask a question. Alison Shawber told us that 65% of children have an IC. What I would like to know deals with the other 35% of children. If they do not create imaginary companions do they pretend in other ways? An imaginary companion falls into the category of “nothing as a vehicle” when talking about role play. Do these children role play with the self or a toy as the vehicle. Also do these children participate in object substitution? I would just like to know if there have been any studies on whether or not children without ICs participate in any other pretend play.

Contingent interaction vs. Egocentric Communication

The topic of social cognition is very interesting to me and has made me become more aware and thankful of all the intricate yet simple knowledge that we develop. I have a better understanding of beliefs, thinking, knowing and pretending that makes me realize how lucky we are to have the cognitive/social abilities to reason about each topic. One particular concept that stood out to me was “contingent interaction” which starts at about 2 months of age. Contingent interaction is when a child starts to display reciprocal actions and reactions with other people. This means that children start to understand beyond their own wants and needs and also takes others into consideration. It just amazes me how infants can do this at a very young age. This idea challenges Piagetian Model, which claims that children in the Preoperational Period (2-7 Years) are still in the stage of egocentric communication. Egocentric communication is when a child communicates with another individual but doesn’t take the others perspective into consideration (its like having a one sided conversation). Piaget’s views claim that children aren’t able to take another individuals perspectives into account when conversing until they reach the Concrete operational stage (7-12 years). Some studies shown in class this Wednesday support the idea that children as young as 18 months old are able to recognize others desires. An example would be the test whether children handed broccoli or goldfish to an experimenter that expressed interest in the same item as they did (goldfish) or something that was different (broccoli). Younger children (14 months) would give the experimenter the goldfish because they assumed that because they themselves like the goldfish that the experimenter would too, and the older children (18 months) gave the experimenter what they wanted. This particular experiment also contradicts Piaget’s view of egocentric communication because it shows that children show contingent interaction way before Piaget’s Concrete Operational Period (7-12 years).
These findings show that children know the importance of paying attention to their social environment for better communication with others. Even before children can actually compose full sentences, evidence in class shows that they have an understanding of how to listen and better communicate with others. One example would be a child pretending to talk on the phone and having short breaks between babbling because they are imitating what a conversation sounds like. I was never blessed with younger siblings and find myself having a hard time interacting with infants and toddlers because I never know what they understand and don’t understand when it comes to conversing with them. I find myself in awkward situations when it comes to talking with toddlers and end up with them giving me funny looks because I tend to talk to them as if they were five years younger than they actually are. This class and the studies presented in them have taught me a lot about children’s social cognition and gives me a better understanding of what children of different ages comprehend.

Imaginary Companions in pretend play

Sarah Ennis
Blog #4

One of my most favorite topics of this course is the phenomenon of pretend play. Pretend play provides researchers with information about a child’s ability to perform abstract mental representations and learn social skills. Because most children engage in pretend play one could deduce that it must serve an important purpose in a child’s social and cognitive development. Otherwise, some children would engage in pretend play and others would not. Alison discussed different forms of role play. Two of the types of role-play, object or no objects as vehicle, often take the form of an imaginary or invisible companion. Not all children report having imaginary friends or companions. Alison Shawber discussed a study from her lab which found that 65% of children had Imaginary Friend(s) (Taylor, et al., 2004). My question is what determines whether a child will have an imaginary or invisible companion? One place to begin searching for the answer to this question is by considering that which separates children with IC’s versus children who do not (a child who may only pretend play with other children and not create or play with an IC)? She discussed certain characteristics that children with IC’s often possess including enhanced verbal ability, sociability, creativity, and others. Based on these enhanced abilities of children with IC’s and the fact that most children engage in some form of pretend play lead me to reason that the existence of an IC could be a child’s unconscious desire for additional social interaction perhaps to gain or sharpen certain social or mental skills. Children may not always have access to other children to play with, which may force create an imaginary friend or companion in order to fulfill this desire. Furthermore, a child may create an IC in the absence of actual children because they prefer ceratin characteristics of an IC versus an actual child. For instance, with an IC a child can control what elements of pretend play they explore as well as the behaviors or actions of the IC. This allows more flexibility, exposure to more creative play and possible more fun for the child. Interestingly, what type of play a child engages in is individual to each child. Although the answers to why pretend play exists may not be so explicit, implicitly it may serve an extremely important role in social and cognitive development.

Elizabeth Loftus

We talked briefly on Wednesday November, 7th about the work of Elizabeth Loftus concerning the suggestibility of memory. Loftus has created quite a name for herself in this area of study, and a lot of controversy as well. I know that one study that Loftus conducted involves showing participants a photo that includes a stop sign, and then asking about the yield sign, which often prompts people to remember that there was a yield sign, in the picture, rather than a stop sign. One problem with this is they are not given the opportunity to say that there was not a yield sign, so this implantation might not really be there. Some other studies have suggested that, that image of a stop sign remains in memory. She has also done work by prompting memories through the description of an event, such as showing participants a video of a car crash, than asking half of them how fast they thought the car was going when the cars “smashed” into each other and the other half are asked how fast the cars were going when they “bumped” into each other. Later participants are asked if there was glass at the scene of the accident, and more of the people from the “smashed” group report remembering glass. At the very end of class a person brought up controversy surrounding Loftus’ work, specifically commenting on the fact that Loftus has some conflicting ideas with one of the professors here at UofO. I assume she was referring to Jennifer Freyd, who does a lot of research on betrayal trauma theory, a theory Loftus has takes issue. I have not ever met Jennifer, but I work with one of her grad students in her lab and I am conducting experiments on betrayal trauma theory in that lab. Where Loftus and Freyd disagree is on recovered memories, and their validity. Loftus argues that because of this suggestibility that recovered memories are not valid memories. That people might believe that they are real, but they were lead to this through their memories suggestibility. There is a lot of compelling arguments that indicate that memory if fallible, I am not taking issue with that. In fact, I have seen the documentary we are watching next Wednesday and that is a really good example of just that. That these kids were coached by authorities with preconceived ideas about what had happened to them, and that may have created these memories in the minds of the computer students. Though there is also some very compelling evidence that, at least the father was an open pedophile. The best part of the film, in my opinion, is that is doesn’t seek an answer necessarily, rather it just tells the freedman’s story. I am not sure her stance, but I doubt that Freyd would argue that memory can’t be tainted and is suggestible, she would argue, however, that recovered memories, especially of traumatic events, are a reality and it is detrimental to trauma victims when people, like Loftus, try to discredit their real memories. Freyd’s theory suggests that there is a spectrum of trauma; reaching from fear (car crashes, natural disasters) to betrayal (sexual molestation perpetrated by a family member) and that people who experience betrayal trauma are more likely to dissociate and forget the event, as a survival technique. Because, if your parent abuses you as a defenseless child, you still need them to provide you with other things, thus it is advantageous to forget the trauma. So, while it is a common argument that more emotionally charged situations tend to be remembered in greater detail, because of the emotional state of encoding, this hypothesis proposes an adaptive reason for forgetting, and than later recovering memories, memories that are real. This is a gross oversimplification, but I think a really important debate that is heated in the psychology world, and on our campus. To me a lot of what Loftus is doing is really dangerous. One study that supports Freyd’s position involved researchers finding medical records of children who were brought into the hospital for sexual abuse, they than went out and found these children as adults, and asked them questions about their history, and about abuse, a large percentage of them had no memory of their abuse, and I believe some also reported at least some period of not remembering their abuse. A lot more can be said about this debate, I just think it is important to note that Loftus is a potentially dangerous figure is psychology and that, while she has some interesting and important results concerning suggestibility, we need to be very careful and sensitive when we look at memories of trauma, because it would be terrible to further traumatize victims through disbelief. But admittedly convicting innocent people of sexual abuse is also very traumatic.

Pretend Identities

Imagination begins at a very young age. Children learn the concept of "real" or "pretend" play and become able to distinguish the difference around the age of one year. Pretend play can take on three different forms; self as a vehicle, toy as vehicle, and nothing as a vehicle. The self as a vehicle is a type of play where the child takes on a pretend identity such as acting like superwoman, batman, or even a business man. Toy as a vehilce can be where the child gives personality to a toy such as a talking stuft animal, or it can be where the child uses objects in a way that is beyond there normal function. An example of this would be a block used to represent an airplane that flies around the room. The last type of pretend play covered in lecture was nothing as a vehicle. Such situations usually involve the child having an imaginary firend they play with and develop an entire persona for.
The type of pretend play that I was most intrigued by was the self as a vehicle. Starting from the age of one for about a year, I believed I was a cat. I refused to speak to anyone and would simply meow and run around in a Halloween costume that consisted of a black tail sowed to the black sweatshirt and cat ears. This is a typical pretend identity where the child imagines that she takes on characteristics of another being while wearing a speical costume, etc. My younger brother on the other hand, had a different form of pretend identity and decided at the age of four that he wanted to grow up to be a "big, huge, bald, black man." Such an identity formed from his love of basketball and he would sit in the driveway for hours pretending to dunk on his mini hoop set. His identity has a different spin that most pretend identities because he was awaiting the day when he could grow up and become his identity. His image displays a barrier to learning we discussed earlier in class in that he had not yet realized that race does not change as we grow up. One cannot decide to alter one's race as you could pick a new career.
My brother's alternate idea of identity causes me to wonder if pretend identities are something we engage in throughout our lives. As a young child, I had a strong love of animals and my pretending to be one may have been my desire to actually become one. My brother had a better concpet of reality but still a naive one. He knew that when you grow up you get to "be" something different than you are now and he assumed that encompassed everything. Adults still engage in this practice. If you were to ask college students what they are going to do when they graduate, each would have some sort of image in their head whether that image is to go to law school or to go back to living with their parents. It would be hard for many people to pursue a degree without having some image of what life may be like in the future. Our imagination gives us direction in life and helps us to plan out our path.
I think it would be very informative to run an imagination lab that tracked children's motivations for forming pretend indetities. It could possibly ask them why they chose such an identity and if they believe they can become that identity when they grow up. Does children's ability to engage in pretend play coincide or even for-tell the formation of a concept of the future? Do time and imagination go hand in hand?

Suggestibility

It is interesting to think back to my earliest memory. It was the month of May 1988 and my mom had gone into labor and was about to deliver my first sibling. My mom didn’t want to know the sex of the baby so it was a mystery about whether I was going to have a new baby brother or sister. The only solid memory that I have about this day was sitting in the lobby of the hospital when my dad informed me that I now had a new baby brother. I was furious. I remember having a profound sense of disappointment to learn that my new sibling wasn’t a girl. This event occurred when I was three years old, the time in which most people form their first memories.
After learning about infantile amnesia and the development of memory, I am beginning to question whether or not I actually do remember this event and many other events that occurred in my life when I was a small child. For instance, for a while I had the idea that the earliest memory I had was as an infant. I have this image ingrained in my head of lying on my back in a stroller and looking up at the trees as my mom pushed me down the sidewalk. I also have a memory of being led out of a store by a strange man who I, since I did not look at him, thought was my dad. Although these memories are not of great significance, thinking about them and the possibility that I made them up, led me to think about the power of suggestion and how it can even lead to the formation of false memories.
It seems to be quite common for parents to repeatedly tell their children stories about something they did during their childhood. This repetition sometimes causes the child to “remember” a particular event and, therefore, create a memory of that event. In other words, memories are sometimes constructed based entirely on the suggestions of other people such as parents. For example, it may be true that as a little girl, my mom told me time and time again about how she used to push me in my stroller down a sidewalk lined with huge trees. She may have told me this so many times that I eventually started to “remember” and ultimately formed a “memory” of the event. In the case of the stranger, I might have imagined at the time that the strange man was trying to kidnap me, although he probably wasn’t, and because of this thought, I might have formed a false memory that I was almost kidnapped.
Although these things might have happened, it is likely that I actually do not have actual memories of these events. My false memories did not have any serious implications, but the tendency of children to be more suggestible than adults can have legal implications. It is possible that in the case of the stranger, I could have been talked into believing that he was actually trying to kidnap me and I could have gotten him into serious trouble. In any case, it is extremely important to understand that children are highly suggestible and that this tendency can be dangerous.

Protecting the Innocent

Studies we looked at in class show that children are highly suggestible when influenced through leading questions, repeated interviews, etc. Other studies show adults can also be very suggestible; subjects who watched a video of a car accident "remembered" details that didn't exist significantly more often when asked leading questions. This effect is much more pronounced in children, however, and this can lead to many challenges in legal situations where children are witness to or victim of a crime.

I learned a bit more about this topic over the summer while taking the course "Psychology and the Legal System." While there are all kinds of pitfalls in crime investigation, one of the most sensitive subjects deals with children in sexual abuse cases. With such grave accusations, it is important to get accurate information from children. As discussed in class, this requires a patient interviewer asking open-ended questions as early as possible in the investigation. Fortunately, there is an amazing organization in Eugene called the Child Advocacy Center, where they lessen the trauma, time, and shuffling around involved in such investigations. They also do interviews with children which can later be entered as evidence in a trial. In class, we had the opportunity to watch a video of such an interview; the child's identity was protected through blurring. The interviewer first took great care to introduce himself and explain everything that was going to happen, establishing a sense of openness to gain the child's trust. He then proceeded to ask questions of the child about what had happened in very general terms, he often didn't even use specific words until the child said them first, in order to structure the interview around her vocabulary instead of his. He let her describe the house she lived in, only talking about locations after she mentioned them. In this case, the child very clearly described situations in which her father had abused her, but the interviewer continued to speak in a friendly and professional manner, preventing the situation from being scary or shameful. The interviewer, who was our guest speaker for the day, said that his job is not always that straight-forward, though. On one occasion, he had a mother who brought her son in, positive he was being abused by another family member, but an interview with the child gave strong evidence that he was not being abused. One wonders, though, are there some children who are convinced by a suspicious parent that they have been abused? It sounds like the video next Thursday may shed light on this question.

This all comes back to the very important responsibility we have as adults to give children a voice, free of someone else's bias, if we would hear what they have to say. Fortunately there are resources like the Child Advocacy Center that understand how to best listen to and help children in those situations.