04. Charles J. Brainerd and Valerie F. Reyna, Human Development
The Science of False Memory (Oxford University Press, 2005). Recalling events that did not happen—false memory—is a phenomenon of great importance to law and medicine. It is a field that has only been recognized since the early 1990s, with intensive research on the circumstances in which normal people are possessed of positive, confident memories of things that never happened to them. Brainerd and Reyna’s book pulls together the research on this hot topic and makes it accessible to the general reader, aiming to further the understanding of the phenomena. The book explores four major topics: theories of false memory, adult experimental psychology of false memory, false memory in legal contexts, and false memory in psychotherapy. Hailed as a “compelling scholarly analysis that ranges from laboratory studies to cases in the courtroom . . . this book is must reading for memory researchers, psychologists, and anyone else interested in understanding why people sometimes remember events that never happened” (Daniel L. Schacter).