ation effect’ (Farrants, 1998).It has been argued that such findings reveal nothing helpful to the understanding of memories of abuse (Pedzdek, 1994). Firstly, in Loftus’ study, the memories were implanted by a relative, who may be assumed by the subject to have personal knowledge of the event, thus giving it credence. Secondly it could be argued that individuals may be operating according to a pre-existing script for common events such as being lost while shopping, rendering such a memory easy to construct. Pezdeck (1994) argues that individuals, especially children, are unlikely to posses such a script for sexual abuse, unless it is something which they have directly experienced. However Pezdek’s point fails to recognize that most adults in this present culture may in fact posses such a script. Furthermore, Holst and Pezdek (1992) found that subjects shared common scripts for three types of robberies, which affected their memory of events, despite no direct experience of them. These studies, therefore, suggest that personal experience of sexual abuse is not essential for the recovery of such memories, as the possibility remains existing scripts are being deployed (Farrants, 1998).Generalizing from the Loftus study to other situations heeds caution. The study has been criticized for numerous flaws including the nature of her sample, the possible effects of social influence on response and the inappropriate generalization of data from non-traumatized laboratory subjects to traumatized individuals. The research findings are, therefore, mixed with some evidence for the fact that misleading or suggestive questioning can result in memory distortion, although the extent to which entirely new memories of traumatic incidences can be created from nothing has not yet been demonstrated. False memory proponents have argued that it is indeed the way in which therapist operates that lead the client to recover false memories. Indee...
