NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Elizabeth Loftus

Elizabeth F. Loftus is an American psychologist who works on human memory and how it can be changed by facts, ideas, suggestions and other forms of post-event information. A psychologist is an expert in psychology, the systematic investigation of the human body, including behavior, cognition, and affect. ... For other uses, see Memory (disambiguation). ...

Education

Loftus received her bachelor's degree in mathematics and psychology from University of California, Los Angeles in 1966. She went on to receive her MA (1967) and Ph.D (1970) in psychology from Stanford University. The University of California, Los Angeles (generally known as UCLA) is a public research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. ... Stanford redirects here. ...

Career

Loftus is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychology and Social Behavior, the Department of Criminology, Law, and Society, and the Department of Cognitive Sciences, and a Fellow of The Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory at the University of California, Irvine. She is also an Affiliate Professor of Psychology and Affiliate Professor of Law at the University of Washington in Seattle. ^[1] ^[2] ^[3] The University of California, Irvine is a public research university primarily situated in suburban Irvine, California, USA. Founded in 1965, it is one of ten University of California campuses and is commonly known as UCI or UC Irvine. ... The University of Washington, founded in 1861, is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. ... City nickname Emerald City City bird Great Blue Heron City flower Dahlia City mottos The City of Flowers The City of Goodwill City song Seattle, the Peerless City Mayor Greg Nickels County King County Area - Total - Land - Water - % water 369. ...

Loftus was married to University of Washington psychologist Geoffrey Loftus in 1968. They were divorced in 1991.

One of her studies is the reconstruction of automobile destruction study, which is an example of the misinformation effect. She also developed the lost in the mall technique for creating false memories in the laboratory.^[4]^[5]In a critique, Lynn S. Crook has questioned the applicability of the lost in the mall study to therapeutic situations^[6] [1]^[7][2] and proposes that the mall study itself was not “subjected to rigorous scientific scrutiny” yet it was reported to the media supporting claims that “therapists can implant false memories of childhood trauma.” [3]Loftus has co-authored a journal article entitled "Memories of Childhood Sexual Abuse: Remembering and Repressing", in which the co-authors argue that loss of memory of childhood sexual abuse is similar to the loss of memories of other traumatic or significant events, and provides no evidence of a "repression" mechanism in memory loss.^[8] Loftus in regard to L.M. Williams' study (1994), her abstract states "The findings do not provide cogent support for the claim that a long stream of childhood sexual traumas is routinely banished from conscious awareness and then can be reliably recovered later. The findings do support the claim that many children can forget about a sexually abusive experience from their past." ^[9] Reconstruction of automobile destruction was a psychological study carried out by Elizabeth Loftus and Palmer in 1974 [1]. The aim of the study was to investigate whether or not an eye witnesss memory can be altered by information supplied to them after an event. ... The misinformation effect is a memory bias that occurs when misinformation affects peoples reports of their own memory. ... The Lost in the Mall technique, formally known as the Familial Informant Narrative Procedure, is a procedure which can be used to create false memories. ... For the novel, see False Memory (novel) It has been suggested that Synthetic memory be merged into this article or section. ...

Loftus is a member of the Scientific and Professional Advisory Board of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation.^[10] The False Memory Syndrome Foundation was formed by a group of parents who had been accused of child abuse, their lawyers, and sympathetic academics who promote the hypothesis of False Memory Syndrome and dispute the validity of recovered memories. ...

Honors

In 2004 Loftus was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. In 2005, she won the Grawemeyer Prize in Psychology (to honor ideas of “great significance and impact”). Also in 2005 she was elected to the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In 2006, she was elected to the American Philosophical Society. President Harding and the National Academy of Sciences at the White House, Washington, DC, April 1921 The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine. ... The Royal Society of Edinburghs Building on the corner of George St. ... The American Philosophical Society is a discussion group founded as the Junto in 1743 by Benjamin Franklin. ...

Loftus has also received five honorary doctorates for her research, the first in 1982 from Miami University (Ohio), the second in 1990 from Leiden University in the Netherlands, and the third in 1994 from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York - an honorary doctorate of laws. Her 4th honorary doctorate, from the University of Portsmouth in England, was awarded in 1998; the 5th, from the University of Haifa in Israel, was awarded in 2005.

She is past president of the Association for Psychological Science, the Western Psychological Association, and the American Psychology-Law Society. The Association for Psychological Science (APS), previously the American Psychological Society, is a society for scientific psychology, whose mission is to promote, protect, and advance the interests of scientifically oriented psychology in research, application, teaching, and the improvement of human welfare. ...

Perhaps one of the most unusual signs of recognition of the impact of Loftus’s research came in a study published by the Review of General Psychology. The study identified the 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th century, and not surprisingly Freud, Skinner, and Piaget are at the top of that list. Loftus was #58, and the top ranked woman on the list. Sigmund Freud (IPA: ), born Sigismund Schlomo Freud (May 6, 1856 â€“ September 23, 1939), was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist who founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology. ... Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, 1904 â€“ August 18, 1990), Ph. ... Jean Piaget (August 9, 1896 â€“ September 16, 1980) was a Swiss philosopher, natural scientist and developmental psychologist, well known for his work studying children, his theory of cognitive development and for his epistemological view called genetic epistemology. He created in 1955 the International Centre for Genetic Epistemology in Geneva and...

Jane Doe case

"Jane Doe" was the subject of a case study published in 1997 by Dr. David Corwin on issues of repressed and recovered memory.^[11] Neither the study nor later follow-up studies and articles referred to her by her real name. As a psychiatrist retained in a divorce case, Corwin had videotaped an interview with Jane Doe - then six years old - in which she claimed to have suffered physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her biological mother. Eleven years later, Corwin showed Jane Doe the original tape after obtaining approval from her and her guardian. Corwin then videotaped a follow-up interview in which Jane Doe appeared to spontaneously recall another abusive event she had suffered despite having had no conscious memory of abuse in the years since the initial interview. Corwin published a transcript of the tape and an explanatory article. With Doe's permission, Corwin also played portions of both videotapes to numerous professional audiences. Repressed memory is one of the most controversial subjects in the history of psychology and psychiatry. ...

Loftus hired a private investigator in California and together with co-researcher Melvin Guyer undertook a subsequent investigation into the case, reviewed extensive court records and interviewed Jane's mother and foster mother. In 2002, based on the information obtained, Loftus and Guyer published an article entitled "Who Abused Jane Doe? The Hazards of the Single Case History" in the Skeptical Inquirer. The article was highly critical of the scientific validity of Corwin's 1997 article, and questioned the factual accuracy of his account. The Skeptical Inquirer is a magazine of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) dedicated to debunking pseudoscience. ...

On February 23, 2003, "Jane Doe", using her real name of Nicole Taus, sued Loftus, the University of Washington and others alleging invasion of privacy and other torts. Twenty of the twenty-one counts against Loftus were dismissed by the trial court or reviewing courts as a "SLAPP" suit, intended to punish the defendants for academic activity protected by the Free Speech clause of the First Amendment. In February, 2007, the California Supreme Court ordered dismissal of all but one count, allowing Taus to proceed on her claim that Loftus misrepresented herself as Corwin's supervisor in interviewing Taus's foster mother.^[12] ^[13]^[14]^[15] Strategic lawsuits against public participation, (SLAPP) refers to litigation filed by a large corporation (or in some cases, a wealthy individual) to silence a less powerful critic by so severely burdening them with the cost of a legal defense that they abandon their criticism. ... The first ten Amendments to the U.S. Constitution make up the Bill of Rights. ...

While the lawsuit received extensive media coverage, the settlement has not. The case was settled on August 28, 2007, when Loftus's acceptance of Taus's offer was filed. Loftus agreed to pay $7,500, instead of the amount of over one million that was requested by Taus. Loftus and Taus were each to be responsible for their own legal costs.^[16] ^[17] ^[18]

Testimony in Scooter Libby trial

On October 26, 2006, Dr. Loftus was called as the first defense witness in a pretrial hearing in the federal perjury case against Lewis Libby.^[19] The Washington Post reported that under "withering" cross-examination by prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald, Loftus struggled to defend the scientific basis of her methodology amid apparent contradictions between her testimony and her work, and internal contradictions within her work. ^[20] According to the Post, Loftus also "insisted that she had never met Fitzgerald" previously; however, Fitzgerald reminded her that he had cross-examined her before in another case in which she had been an expert defense witness. ^[20] ^[21] is the 299th day of the year (300th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... I. Lewis Scooter Libby Irve Lewis Scooter Libby, Jr. ... ... Patrick J. Fitzgerald Patrick J. Fitzgerald (born December 22, 1960, in Brooklyn, Kings County, New York) is an American attorney and the current U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. ...

Other appearances

Loftus attended and was a speaker at the Beyond Belief symposium on November 2006.

Books

References

^ Elizabeth Loftus. University of California, Irvine. Retrieved on 2007-09-25.
^ Elizabeth Loftus. University of Washington. Retrieved on 2007-09-25.
^ Award for Distinguished Scientific Psychology November 2003
^ War & remembrance: Controversy is a constant for memory researcher Elizabeth Loftus, newly installed at UCI November 3, 2002
^ Recovered Memories January 16, 2006
^ Crook, L. (1999). "Lost in a Shopping Mall--A Breach of Professional Ethics.". Ethics & Behavior. 9 (1): 39-50. Retrieved on 2008-01-18. “Although the mall study has been cited to support claims that psychotherapists can implant memories of false autobiographical information of childhood trauma in their patients, the therapeutic implications of the study appear to be limited to a narrowly defined and perhaps even unlikely situation....Notably, a similar study (Pezdek, 1995) found that although 3 (15%) of 20 participants recalled a plausible false memory of getting lost in a shopping mall, none of the participants accepted an implausible false memory that they had received a painful enema as a child from their parent.”
^ Pope, K. (1996). "Memory, Abuse, and Science: Questioning Claims About the False Memory Syndrome Epidemic". American Psychologist 51. Retrieved on 2008-01 -31. “Does the trauma specified in the lost-in-the-mall experiment seem comparable to the trauma forming the basis of false memory syndrome?....Does this seem, for example, a reasonable analogy for a five-year-old girl being repeatedly raped by her father?....Is it possible that the findings are an artifact of this particular design, for example, that the older family member claims to have been present when the event occurred and to have witnessed it, a claim the therapist can never make? To date, replications and extensions of this study have tended to use a similar methodology...”
^ Loftus, E.; Polonsky, S., Fullilove, M. (1994). "Memories of Childhood Sexual Abuse: Remembering and Repressing.". Psychology of Women Quarterly 18 (1): 67-84. Retrieved on 2008-01-11. “Interviews 105 women in outpatient treatment for substance abuse to examine their recollections of childhood sexual abuse. Overall, 54% reported a history of childhood sexual abuse. Of these, 81% remembered all or part of the abuse their whole lives, whereas the remainder regained previously forgotten memories.”
^ Loftus, E. (December 1994). "Forgetting Sexual Trauma: What Does It Mean When 38% Forget?". Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 62 (6): 1177-81. Retrieved on 2008-01-24. “These findings do not support certain freely made claims about memory, but they do support other claims. The findings do not provide cogent support for the claim that a long stream of childhood sexual traumas is routinely banished from conscious awareness and then can be reliably recovered later. The findings do support the claim that many children can forget about a sexually abusive experience from their past. Extreme claims such as "if you were raped, you'd remember" are disproven by these findings.”
^ The FMSF Scientific and Professional Advisory Board - Profiles - accessed January 15, 2008
^ Corwin, D.; Olafson E. (1997). "Videotaped Discovery of a Reportedly Unrecallable Memory of Child Sexual Abuse: Comparison with a Childhood Interview Videotaped 11 Years Before". Child Maltreatment 2 (2): 91-112. doi:10.1177/1077559597002002001. Retrieved on 2008-01-09. “This article presents the history, verbatim transcripts, and behavioral observations of a child's disclosure of sexual abuse to Dr. David Corwin in 1984 and the spontaneous return of that reportedly unrecallable memory during an interview between the same individual, now a young adult, and Dr. Corwin 11 years later. Both interviews were videotape recorded.”
^ Taus v. Loftus (2007) 40 Cal.4th 683, 54 Cal.Rptr.3d 775.
^ S.C. to Decide Whether Abuse-Study Subject May Sue Professor Re: Nicole Taus, David Corwin, 2005
^ Taus: Amicus Curia by Richard McNally 2005
^ Taus: Amicus Curia by Michael J. Snedeker May 26, 2005
^ "FMS Foundation Newsletter", False Memory Syndrome Foundation. Retrieved on 2007-09-25. "The lawsuit against Elizabeth Loftus has been settled. The lawsuit had been brought by Nicole Taus who was the subject of an article by Loftus and Mel Guyer that was published in the Skeptical Inquirer called "Who Abused Jane Doe?""
^ Settlement reached in Taus's lawsuit
^ Tavris, Carol (January/February 2008). "Whatever Happened to 'Jane Doe'?". Skeptical Inquirer 32 (1): pp. 28–30. Amherst, New York: Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. ISSN 0194-6730.
^ "Memory Expert Pressed In C.I.A. Leak Case.", New York Times, October 27, 2006. Retrieved on 2007-09-25. "The special prosecutor in the C.I.A. leak case tangled with a psychologist who testified about memory research, forcing her to acknowledge errors and misstatements in her research. The prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, left, spent three hours cross-examining the psychologist, Elizabeth Loftus. She was testifying at a procedural hearing at which the defendant, I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, was trying to persuade the judge to let him call a memory expert at his trial on charges of obstruction and perjury. Mr. Libby wants to use a memory expert to help argue that a faulty memory, brought on by a stressful workload, resulted in his making false statements to investigators about his conversations with reporters regarding a Central Intelligence Agency operative, Valerie Wilson. The judge did not immediately rule on the issue. ..."
^ ^a ^b "In the Libby Case, A Grilling to Remember.", Washington Post, October 27, 2006. Retrieved on 2007-09-25. "With withering and methodical dispatch, White House nemesis and prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald yesterday sliced up the first person called to the stand on behalf of the vice president's former chief of staff. ... But when Fitzgerald got his chance to cross-examine Loftus about her findings, he had her stuttering to explain her own writings and backpedaling from her earlier assertions. Citing several of her publications, footnotes and the work of her peers, Fitzgerald got Loftus to acknowledge that the methodology she had used at times in her long academic career was not that scientific, that her conclusions about memory were conflicting, and that she had exaggerated a figure and a statement from her survey of D.C. jurors that favored the defense. ... One of those moments came when Loftus insisted that she had never met Fitzgerald. He then reminded her that he had cross-examined her before, when she was an expert defense witness and he was a prosecutor in the U.S. attorney's office in New York."
^ Page 21 of the transcript from the hearing indicates that Loftus said "I don't remember meeting you before" then "I just can't get the memory back". When Fitzpatrick provided details of the case, she said on p. 21, "I vague -- well, I remember the defense attorney ... "

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