Lauren French’s research while affiliated with Curtin University and other places

Changes in health care provision have led to an emphasis on providing end of life care within the home. community pharmacists are well positioned to provide services to community-based palliative care patients and carers. A multiple qualitative case study design was adopted. A total of 16 focus groups and 19 interviews with pharmacists, nurses, general practitioners and carers were undertaken across metropolitan and regional settings in Western Australia, New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria. Data were analysed thematically using a framework that allowed similarities and differences across stakeholder groups and locations to be examined and compared. Three main themes emerged: effective communication; challenges to effective communication; and: towards best practice, which comprised two themes: community pharmacists' skills and community pharmacists' needs. A key component of the provision of palliative care was having effective communication skills. Although community pharmacists saw an opportunity to provide interpersonal support, they suggested that they would need to develop more effective communication skills to fulfil this role. There is clear need for continuing professional development in this area - particularly in communicating effectively and managing strong emotions. Community pharmacists are willing to support palliative care patients and carers but need education, support and resources.

People remember different details about the same events, and when they discuss events they exchange new - and misleading - information. Discussion can change memory, especially when the source of new information is highly credible. But we do not know whether the effects of credibility are based on absolute judgments - judging a source's credibility independently from our own credibility - or relative judgments - judging a source's credibility only in relation to our own credibility. We addressed this question by manipulating subjects' expectations, leading them to believe that they either had the same, higher or lower "visual acuity" than their partner while they watched a movie together. To create ample opportunities for the pairs to mention misleading details to one another, each member unknowingly saw a different version of the movie. The pairs then discussed some of the critical differences, but not others. Later, everyone took an independent recognition test. Subjects' susceptibility to misinformation depended on their own credibility relative to their partner's, supporting the idea that susceptibility to misinformation depends on relative differences in credibility.

The MORI technique provides a unique way to research social influences on memory. The technique allows people to watch different movies on the same screen at the same time without realizing that each of them sees something different. As a result, researchers can create a situation in which people feel as though they share an experience, but systematic differences are introduced into their memories, and the effect of those differences can be tracked through a discussion. Despite its methodological advances, the MORI technique has been met with criticism, mostly because reviewers are worried that the MORI technique might not completely block the alternate movie version from view, leading people in these studies to see their partner's version of the movie as well as their own. We addressed these concerns in two experiments. We found no evidence that subjects noticed the alternate movie version while watching a movie via the MORI technique (Experiment 1) and no evidence that subjects remembered details from the alternate movie version (Experiment 2). Taken together, the results provide support for the MORI technique as a valuable research tool.

This chapter discusses research that shows how normal everyday people can come to produce confabulations. It argues that false memories can be considered to be a subset of the phenomena of confabulation: people confidently claiming to have had certain experiences that they never had. It describes research showing that false memories are an inevitable by-product of the completely normal way that memory works. As such, virtually everyone is susceptible to memory distortion and confabulation. When people remember the past, they reconstruct it; when people reconstruct the past, they might introduce errors from both external and internal sources, and they might confuse the sources of that information. Virtually everyone is susceptible to memory distortion and regardless of the content, the pathway to false beliefs and false memories is the same.

Researchers studying memory conformity have made significant advances in our understanding of the phenomenon, but have used methods with significant shortcomings. Mori's three-stage method addresses many of these concerns. To date the technique has not been replicated on a Western sample. We present such a study, and discuss two significant improvements to Mori's method. We found that subjects were more likely to report the correct answer for non-discussed critical details than discussed critical details. Our data also suggested that when subjects agreed with their partner's information during the discussion, they did so because they thought that information was accurate; only a minority of the time did they go along with their partner during discussion and revert to their own answer at the test. We draw parallels between the unknown mechanisms driving memory conformity effects and the search for mechanisms driving the misinformation effect two decades ago. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Research on memory conformity shows that collaborative remembering--typically in the form of discussion--can influence people's memories. One question that remains is whether it matters with whom we discuss our memories. To address this question we compared people's memories for an event after they discussed that event with either their romantic partner or a stranger. Pairs of subjects watched slightly different versions of a movie, and then discussed some details from the movie, but not others. Subjects were better at remembering non-discussed details than discussed details: when remembering discussed details they incorrectly reported information from their partner's version instead of their own. In addition, subjects who discussed the event with their romantic partner (rather than with a stranger) were even more likely to report false memories. We discuss our findings in relation to other research on memory conformity, social influences on false memories, and memory systems within romantic relationships.

Although people often reminisce about their past experiences, little research has assessed how discussion might influence people's autobiographical memories. There were two major aims to this study: first, to assess how adults' memories for genuine childhood experiences might be affected by discussion, and second, to extend research on false memories by exploring how memories for false events might be affected by discussion. Siblings attempted to recall four childhood events—three true and one false—three times independently, and then discussed their memories with each other. Results showed that subjects incorporated elements from each other's reports into their own; 24% also reported details about the false event by the end of the individual phase, although false reports dropped dramatically after the discussion phase. Our research shows discussion can influence both true and false autobiographical memories. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.