ABSTRACT
What makes these false memories ever more fascinating from a research perspective is the realism often associated with these accounts. Rememberers do not realise they are generating false memories, and it seems that the memories can be experienced in the same manner as real memories. This realism has been demonstrated in a number of ways. Individuals have been known to report high confidence in their memory illusions, insisting that their faulty recollection is correct (Laney, Fowler, Nelson, Bernstein, & Loftus, 2008; Laney & Loftus, 2008). They have also been shown to report the same kinds of multi-sensory components observed in real memories (e.g. Laney & Takarangi, 2013; Shaw & Porter, 2015). These reported rich memory experiences can include seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting and smelling components of autobiographical memories. And, independent observers of these recollections seem to have difficulty differentiating between true accounts and false memory accounts (Shaw, 2014). But what can explain this realism?
