Ira Hyman

In a 1990 study with Troy H. Husband and F. James Billings, Hyman found that when given misleading information, college-students will create a fictitious memory of their childhood. In this study, called "False Memories of Childhood Experiences" Hyman and his colleagues sent questionnaires to the parents of psychology students, asking them to describe meaningful events in their children's life, such as getting lost, losing a pet, or taking a family vacation. The child (now a college-student) was then asked to recall several of the 'real' events as recorded by their parent, and also a 'false' event, created by the researchers as a misleading guide, in two separate interviews. It was found that while none of the participants incorporated the false information into their memories in the initial interview, in the follow-up interview 20% of the participants had created a false memory using the misleading information. A second related experiment revealed, that regardless what age the experimenters claimed the false event happened at (ages 2, 6 or 10) participants created false memories at the same rate. This experiment shown that as long as some relevant background material is present, under peer pressure people are likely to create false childhood memories.[4] These results have significant implication in therapy situations, in which one is attempting to recover childhood memories, which may instead lead to creation of false memories.

Hyman then conducted a similar study three years later, in 1998, to distinguish if there were certain personality types that were more likely to create false childhood memories. In this "Individual Differences and the Creation of False Childhood Memories" study, Hyman and his partner Billings once again sent questionnaires to the parents of psychology students asking them to describe significant life events. The student was then presented with several true memories and one researcher-created false memory. In addition, students were given four Cognitive/Personality Scale tests. These scales were used to test the students' suggestibility (Dissociative Experiences Scale), ability to create mental images from memory (Creative Imagination Scale), commitment to memory (Tellegan Absorption Scale) and desire for social acceptance (Social Desirability Scale). It was found that the more one uses mental imagery and the more suggestible they are, the more likely they are to form a false memory. Commitment to memory and social acceptance do not affect false memories. This study also found that the more students talked about the false event during the interviews, the more likely they were to create a false memories.[5] This study is also important because it indicates that the findings of the first study are generalizable to a wider population as well as showing that people with certain personality types are more susceptible to the creation of false memories in psychotherapy, where similar techniques are regularly used.

In 2001 he conducted a study with Christina A. Bryne and Kaia L. Scott on "Comparisons of Memories for Traumatic Events and Other Experiences". In this study undergraduate college women were questioned using the Traumatic Stress Survey to identify a potentially traumatic event in their lives, such as child abuse, experiencing a natural disaster or other types of victimization. Students were then questioned further about their 'worst' traumatic event, a different negative event and a positive event. Students were asked to rate the quality of each of their three memories on a scale from 1-7 for vividness, emotionality and importance, surrounding events, order of events within the memory and their confidence as to the accuracy of the memory. Students were then assessed with a post-traumatic stress disorder scale, the Beck Depression Inventory, the Brief Symptom Inventory (used to determine current distress levels) and the Dissociative Experiences Scale. It was found that contrary to many flashbulb memory hypotheses, traumatic experiences are less clearly recalled than positive experiences. Positive memories contained more sensory detail, and clarity of events surrounding the memory were also better for positive memories, despite the fact that the negative and traumatic memories were more likely to be rated as important. In general, participants reported talking about traumatic events less often than positive events, but this had no real effect on recall, nor did the emotionality of the respective events. Thus these findings support the view of a more limited memory for traumatic events and poor encoding for negative events overall.[6]

In a related study on "Children's Memory for Trauma and Positive Experiences" in 2003, similar trend was observed. In this study the nature of memory for trauma vs. standard autobiographical events was tested. Thirty children between age 8 and 16, who were being treated for traumatic experiences were asked to identify one positive event, that occurred around the same time as the traumatic event for which they were receiving treatment. They were not asked to describe either event in the course of the study, but they were then given a questionnaire about both events. Therapists were also asked to fill out a questionnaire about the characteristics of the children's memories. It was found that the trauma memories had less detail and coherence than the positive memories, but more meaning. Emotionality had no effect. This suggests that along with a failure to encode, poor memory for traumatic events could be due to a reluctance to retrieve unpleasant memories, but overall there is very little difference between memories for positive vs traumatic events.[7]

In 2009, Ira Hyman conducted one of his most widely cited studies along with S. Matthew Boss, Breanne M. Wise, Kira E. McKenzie and Jenna M. Coggiano. The article was called "Did you see the Unicycling Clown? Inattentional Blindness while Walking and Talking on a Cell Phone." The researchers had a clown unicycle around a plaza on a college campus, and observed the students walking through the plaza. They interviewed students after they had been exposed to the clown, and found that only a quarter of those using a cell phone saw the clown. They compared this to three other groups: those walking alone, those listening to music, and those walking in a pair or group. They found that it wasn't the use of an electronic device that impaired the students attention, because more than twice as many students saw the clown while listening to music, than while on the phone. They concluded that it is using a cell phone, and having to divide attention between the conversation and the surroundings, what makes people less likely to notice the clown. They observed that many of the students using their cells walked slower, changed directions more often and weaved more than other students. They also noted that individuals walking in pairs were more likely to notice the clown, simply because they could also rely on their companion to pay attention, and that it is unlikely that the conversation itself was the reason why the cellphones users were less attentive to their surroundings.[10] This research offers an important finding in what dictates our attention, and shows just how unaware of many things around us we are at any given time. It also shows the dangers of cellphone distraction, that can be applied to areas other than just walking, such as working machinery or attempting to drive while talking on a cell phone. A recreation of this study was featured on the CBC Documentary "Are We Digital Dummies" and on News10 in Sacramento, California.[2]

In 1998 Hyman and his co-authors, P. Usita and K. Herman conducted a study on the effects of progressive Alzheimer's disease on the ability to recall life events. They listened to personal narratives from six people with the disease and six without and recorded the various memory failures, repetitions and organizational methods of each group. They found that those with Alzheimer's Disease had a marked deficiency in their ability to adequately recall past significant events. They were less organized in their storytelling and were also far less detailed than those without the disease. However, it is important to note that all members of the experiment were able to complete the survey with enough time and prompting. This is an important finding because sharing life stories is an important interpersonal skill and crucial to social engagement.[12] This study is important because it shows the longevity of autobiographical memory even when there are global memory failures in other ways and gives an idea of how psychology's results can be used to enrich the lives of the elderly and ill.

Hyman was also interested in the transference of laboratory methods of testing autobiographical information to real life situations, and in 1998 Ira Hyman along with Carol Wilkinson published an article that looked at how memory had been tested in psychology laboratories. They hypothesized that the methods psychology researcher were using, mainly word lists, did not explain how normal autobiographical memory worked, and the results gathered using this type of research may not generalize to real world situations. They found that errors made in autobiographical memories did not relate to the complexity of an additional task, that called for the participant to remember word lists. No matter how many words the participant was asked to remember, it had no effect on how well they remembered autobiographical memory. Thus, this finding shows evidence that autobiographical memory cannot be tested in the traditional lab setting.[13]