In several studies over the past ten years, we have reported that false memories are significantly less likely to be suggestively planted for events that are relatively implausible. Recently, reported no effect of event plausibility on rates of planting false childhood memories; that is, imagination inflation resulted for both moderate and low plausibility false childhood events after imagining those events. However, considerable differences in methodology, differences in operational definitions of key terms, and differences in data analysis techniques between these two studies bar these conclusions. Their study is also plagued by an error of circular logic; the researchers did not define the independent variable (plausibility) independently of the dependent variable (LEI change scores). In light of these problems, the findings of , and the cognitive model they proposed, remain unchallenged by the results of Sharman and Scoboria. Copyright # 201' John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Several researchers have reported that imagination can induce false autobiographical memories (Garry, . Researchers have also reported that false memories are significantly less likely to be suggestively planted for events that are relatively implausible . Taken together, Pezdek, Blando ´n-Gitlin, and reported that although imagining plausible events increased individuals' beliefs that they had experienced the events in childhood, imagining implausible events had no effect on occurrence ratings. That is, the interaction of plausibility and imagination significantly affected occurrence ratings.
Recently, however, Sharman and Scoboria (2009) reported results that they claimed conflicted with ours.