False remembering in real life: James Ost’s contributions to memory psychology

ABSTRACT

This special issue honours James Ost’s (1973–2019) contributions to our understanding of false and distorted remembering. In our editorial, we introduce some of James’ distinctive research themes including the experiences of people who retract “recovered” memories, social (e.g., co-witness and interviewer influence) and personality influences on false remembering, the nature of false remembering itself (e.g., different types of false memories; false memories vs. false beliefs), public understanding of (false) memory, and a historical link to the work of Frederic Bartlett. We illustrate these themes through a number of key publications. The unifying thread behind James’ work is his core interest in false/distorted remembering in real-life (typically high-stake) situations, in line with his engagement with the British False Memory Society and his role as an expert witness in court trials. The articles included in this special issue elaborate on the research themes to which James devoted his career and his curiosity.

KEYWORDS:

• False memory
• memory distortion
• eyewitness memory
• social influence
• interviewing
• individual differences

At the time he sadly passed away in 2019, James Ost was a Reader¹ in the Department of Psychology at the University of Portsmouth in southern England, where he had spent his entire academic career.² As a student in the 1990s, he became intrigued with the “memory wars” raging at that time – the intense scientific and societal debate about repressed vs. false memories in the context of allegations of childhood sexual abuse (see e.g., Loftus, 1993; Otgaar et al., 2019). Subsequently, James embarked on the study of false memories and memory suggestibility as his main academic pursuit. Characteristically, he also went beyond the realm of academia and engaged with the issue of false memories in the real world, by joining the British False Memory Society (initially as a member, and later on its Scientific Advisory Board; see Felstead & French’s coverage of his contributions to the society in this special issue), and by providing expert witness testimony on the matter to criminal courts on several occasions. This grounding in the real-life context of the false memory debate helped shape James’ unique approach to this topic, emphasising theoretical and methodological approaches that reflected those real-world influences (e.g., social influence and individual differences), and de-emphasising purely cognitive, lab-based approaches that he considered artificial and less productive for understanding high-stake false memories of autobiographical events.

In this introduction to James’ work, we – as some of his many friends, colleagues, and collaborators over the years – outline the main themes of his research before this general background, roughly following a temporal trajectory from his early PhD work on memory “retractors” up to his latest work prior to his untimely death. Our goal cannot be to give a full account of his work but to provide a roadmap, highlight core contributions, and encourage interested readers to further explore James’ publications for themselves.

The starting point: studying memory “retractors”

Let us begin with some historical background. In the 1980s, increasing numbers of adults came forward with memories of having been sexually abused in their childhood, a development that raised awareness of childhood sexual abuse as a large but underrecognized societal problem (Pendergrast, 2017). In a number of cases, though, the memories of the abuse had emerged in the context of psychotherapy and other forms of counselling, sometimes using questionable memory recovery techniques such as imagination and hypnosis and involving suggestive influence from the therapist or peer pressure. According to many cognitive psychologists, these circumstances suggested that at least some of the emerging memories of childhood trauma were not forgotten (or repressed) and then recovered, but instead were implanted false memories of suggested events (e.g., Lindsay & Read, 1994; Loftus & Davis, 2006). This led to what became known as the “memory wars” between these skeptics on the one hand and some therapists and clinically oriented researchers on the other hand. In general, skeptics asserted that traumatic experiences are well remembered, while therapists and clinical researchers maintained the possibility of repressing and then recovering traumatic memories along Freudian/psychodynamic lines (for details see Otgaar et al., 2019).

An intriguing twist in this debate appeared in the 1990s in the form of “retractors” – people who had initially reported traumatic memories but who later came to disbelieve and distance themselves from these reports; naturally, these people’s experiences reinforced the idea that their memories had been brought about by suggestion to begin with. At any rate, retraction cases provided a rare opportunity to retrospectively explore how memories and beliefs of experiences dynamically develop in specific social contexts. This is what James set out to do in his PhD work, and what resulted in three key publications with his primary PhD supervisor, Alan Costall (Ost & Costall, 2002; Ost et al., 2001, 2002).

The empirical core of this work consisted of self-reports of 20 retractors identified with the help of the British False Memory Society and its US counterpart, the False Memory Syndrome Foundation. These reports were in response to a detailed questionnaire posted to the participants, including sections covering the conditions, details and outcomes of their memory recovery, details of their therapy or counselling, and the conditions and outcomes of their memory retraction. The questions were approximately half multiple-choice and half open-ended, leaving plenty of room for respondents to describe their experiences in their own words (see Ost et al., 2001, for the full questionnaire).

James’ theoretical approach to understanding the retractors’ experiences was characteristically different from the cognitive focus of most false memory researchers at the time (and even now). Reflecting the shifting contexts in which memories of childhood sexual abuse first appeared and later unravelled, his main analytical perspective was a social one. Indeed, the first of his PhD papers (covering the conditions in which the traumatic memories developed; Ost et al., 2001) opened with an analogy between false memories of traumatic events and false confessions in criminal investigations (see, e.g., Kassin & Kiechel, 1996; Kassin & Wrightsman, 1985). Both of these contexts entail immense consequences for the rememberer or confessor, and also typically involve considerable social influence. Whereas these similarities had been noted before by others (see the coverage in Ost et al.’s introduction), James’ study was the first to empirically test the adequacy and usefulness of a social influence model of false confessions as an analytical lens for understanding the emergence of traumatic memories that were later retracted.

And the similarities were striking. Firstly, the three main types of false confessions (in Kassin et al.’s terminology: voluntary false confessions without detectable social pressure, coerced-internalized false confessions in which people are persuaded into believing they have committed a crime, and coerced-compliant false confessions where people confess solely to escape social pressure) all had their counterparts in the emerged memories of childhood trauma. In some cases, individuals had suspected childhood trauma themselves and actively sought out therapy to confirm and deal with it; oftentimes, however, people found themselves in therapy or counselling contexts for other reasons and then came to be persuaded of and/or developed memories of childhood sexual abuse. Moreover, some retractors reported that they had intentionally fabricated such memories to escape pressure from their therapist or from peers. Finally, there was considerable overlap in the social influence factors thought to underlie false confessions and those reported by the retractors (e.g., social isolation, undermining the person’s confidence, and providing seemingly convincing evidence for the crime/abuse). In short, a social influence approach proved very useful for understanding the emergence of traumatic memories in therapy and counselling contexts.

A follow-up article compared the conditions and processes involved in the emergence and retraction of the traumatic memories (Ost et al., 2002). Some commentators within this literature had speculated that retractors might be individuals who are easily swayed in one or the other direction as a function of the social contexts they find themselves in, and therefore the emergence and retraction of traumatic memories could be conceived as largely symmetric processes. This was not what emerged from the retractors’ reports. Whereas the emergence of the memories was characterised by noticeable social influence (see James’ first paper; Ost et al., 2001), the conditions under which they were retracted were best characterised by an absence of direct social pressure, rather than counterpressure in the opposite direction. Moreover, the retraction process was one of gradually abandoning the memories, different from the intense build-up phase (estimates from those respondents who provided quantitative information pointed to about 4 years on average until retraction, compared to about 2 months of build-up). Finally, many retractors indicated that they had come to doubt their traumatic memories because of their distinct experiential qualities (e.g., lack of familiarity, too much detail, too directly linked to the therapy context) that set them apart from their other long-held memories; that is to say, their traumatic memories did not “feel” like other memories.

Alongside James’ two empirical papers sat a third, theoretical article (Ost & Costall, 2002), an examination of the many misinterpretations of Frederic Bartlett’s ideas on Remembering (Bartlett, 1932), an issue of renewed relevance in the context of the “memory wars.” Specifically, cognitive “skeptics” often referred to Bartlett’s dictum that remembering is reconstructive and therefore (supposedly) inherently unreliable, in order to support their suspicion that many “recovered” traumatic memories were in fact fabricated false memories. Interestingly, however, as Ost and Costall (2002) point out drawing on quotes from the 1932 book and earlier writings, Bartlett’s position was much more moderate. Not only did he concede the possibility of literal recall based on memory traces, but he also maintained that schemas often preserve accurate recall (rather than inevitably distorting it). While there is no doubt that Bartlett was introducing a new view of remembering as reconstruction (involving efforts to make sense of the remembered material within social settings), this is best seen as complementing rather than contradicting traditional trace-based explanations. In a clever quip at the end of their paper, Ost and Costall (2002) explained the “radicalisation” of Bartlett’s theory within the cognitive community as the same kind of serial reproduction effect (i.e., scholars reproducing the accounts of other scholars) that Bartlett observed in his own “War of the Ghosts” experiments. Be that as it may, the paper on Bartlett certainly illustrates that James took a nuanced stance towards his subject, an attitude that is also reflected in the two empirical papers, as well as in a comparative review of six books on traumatic childhood memories (tellingly entitled “Seeking the middle ground in the memory wars”; Ost, 2003).

In summary, James’ PhD work was a remarkable entry onto the false memory research scene, and an unusual one in many respects. Unlike much of the cognitive lab-based research, it relied on a highly systematic and detailed coverage of retractors’ individual real-world experiences. James’ commitment to studying real-world contexts also resonated with his theoretical focus on social influence, a relatively unusual angle for the analysis of memory phenomena (but see e.g., Bartlett, 1932; Blank, 2009; Blank et al., 2017; Bless et al., 2001; Leding, 2012; Nash et al., 2015; for exceptions). Many of these features and concerns also characterise James’ subsequent, more “conventional” research, to which we now turn.

False memories of news events

In the 2000s, James became interested in studying the personality variables and social factors associated with false memories of high-profile tragic public events (e.g., terrorist attacks). The initial motivation to study these types of events was closely linked to James’ work on retractor memories. As stated in the first of his papers on this topic (Ost et al., 2002), from a legal perspective it would be highly desirable to be able to distinguish true from false memories. This is notoriously difficult to achieve for traumatic childhood memories (because there is rarely hard evidence either way), but much easier in principle in the context of such highly publicised events.

To study these memories, he and colleagues used the “crashing memories” paradigm first developed by Crombag et al. (1996) in a study of memories of a plane crash in Amsterdam. The core of this paradigm consists of suggesting that there is – in all cases, non-existent – film or CCTV footage of a tragic public event and then probing participants’ memories of that footage. This is perhaps the closest real-life parallel to traumatic memories that can be studied under lab conditions, making it possible to study the phenomenological qualities of such known-false memories (when they emerge) and to link them to personality characteristics or social influence factors.

These efforts were met with modest success in terms of finding tell-tale signs or correlates of false memories: in the first of James’ studies (Ost et al., 2002; covering the fatal car accident of Princess Diana in 1997), an established Memory Characteristics Questionnaire did not systematically distinguish between true and false memories, and personality scales such as the Dissociative Experiences Scale and the Creative Experiences Questionnaire (both measuring individual tendencies to dissociate oneself from reality and engage in fantasies, daydreaming, etc.) were linked to false memories in some subsequent studies but not others. A more consistent insight from James’ and colleagues’ studies was the importance of distinguishing between false beliefs and full-blown false memories. Although the rates of reporting false memories were quite high across studies (around 40–50% on average), using various methods to probe the difference between beliefs and memories revealed actual false memory rates as low as 10% (e.g., Smeets et al., 2009).

An interesting effect of social context emerged in a study that compared “crashing memories” for the same public event (the 2005 London bombings) but in two different countries (UK and Sweden; Ost et al., 2008). In the UK, where media coverage had been vastly more extensive than in Sweden, the rate of reported memories of the non-existent footage was about seven times higher, suggesting that the familiarity and availability of information about the events contributed to the formation of false memories. A different type of context effect – social influence – was investigated by Ost et al. (2006). In this study – which also offers a thorough general introduction and discussion of social influence effects on memory – participants answered questions about purported footage of a terrorist Bali nightclub bombing in 2002 in the presence of another “participant” (actually a confederate). Before the participant had a chance to answer, and depending on the experimental condition, this confederate stated (as if talking to themselves) either that they remembered the footage, did not remember it, or they did not say anything. This subtle social cue was enough to strongly influence the real participants’ reports: with social “support” (as compared to when the confederate denied having seen the footage), they were more than three times as likely to claim that they had seen the footage themselves. Combined, these two studies demonstrate that both the general (national) and immediate social setting can heavily influence the incidence of false memory reports.

Further research on social influence on remembering

Social influence on remembering was a recurring theme in James’ research, implemented in a number of different ways. In terms of forensically important real-life memories, interviewing situations constitute a very important context in which social influence occurs. James’ first take on this issue (Ost et al., 2005) involved the “parental misinformation” technique (also called the “lost in the mall” procedure; Loftus & Pickrell, 1995) often used in false memory research. In this paradigm, researchers obtain information from the participants’ parents about events that happened to their children when they were young. The participants are then asked to try and remember these events, but crucially including an extra, false event that had not happened to them (with the pretense that this event had also been described by their parents). Typically, over a number of successive interviews, this procedure leads a substantial percentage of participants (about one third; see the mega-analysis by Scoboria et al., 2017, to which James contributed) to create false memories of these suggested events. This procedure also often involves the use of suggestive memory techniques (such as imagination) or social pressure to remember the events.

The key idea in the Ost et al. (2005) paper was that, even in the absence of such additional suggestive features (i.e., in what would otherwise constitute forensically appropriate interviews), the parental misinformation technique inevitably contains an element of social influence – the credibility of the parental information source. Indeed, even under these basic conditions about 20% of the participants developed full or partial false memories. Also, as expected, the participants generally trusted their parents’ reports. This may well have produced some pressure to remember the probed events: in a self-report assessment of social pressure, participants indicated moderately high levels of pressure they felt (4.4 on a 1–7 scale), particularly when trying to remember the false events. In short, merely being asked to remember an event that was (ostensibly) provided by a highly credible source creates pressure to come up with something, leading some participants to produce congenial “memories”.

Investigative interviews were the topic of further research pursued by some of James’ PhD students. Gavin Oxburgh, for instance, produced several analyses on the use of empathy in actual police interviews (e.g., Oxburgh et al., 2014), while Jehanne Almerigogna studied the impact of interviewers’ behaviour on children’s eyewitness testimony (e.g., Almerigogna et al., 2008). She first established interviewer behaviours that the children perceived as supportive (e.g., smiling) or non-supportive (e.g., fidgeting) and then implemented these behaviours when interviewing the children about an activity they had participated in earlier. Remarkably, the non-supportive style (compared to the supportive style) led to fewer accurate (53% vs. 68%) and clearly more inaccurate memory reports (43% vs. 17%). Even more drastic, 19% (vs. 0%) of children inaccurately reported having been physically touched during the activity; such reports would be highly sensitive in a forensic context.

Another important aspect of social influence on eyewitness memory is the presence of co-witnesses. Crucially, co-witnesses can provide misinformation concerning the witnessed events, but the impact is likely to depend on the co-witness’ confidence and their relation to the witness, as demonstrated in further research by James and colleagues. Studying co-witness influence in a setting modelled after the classic Asch paradigm, Ost, Ghonouie, Cook and Vrij (2008) showed participants a video of a mugging and later asked them questions about it, in the presence of either one or three confederates who gave incorrect answers, with low or high confidence. The participants were swayed by this confederate influence: whereas performance was near ceiling (94% accurate) when the confederate(s) answered correctly, this dropped to just over 40% when three highly confident confederates had answered incorrectly.

Hope et al. (2008) added another angle to this by focusing on the nature of the co-witness relationship. They used a co-witness paradigm in which pairs of witnesses viewed (unbeknownst to them) different versions of an event and discussed the event with each other before being asked to recall it individually. Pairs of romantic partners were most likely to include details in their individual recall that had only been available to the co-witness, pairs of friends were slightly less so, and in stranger-pairs the degree of contamination depended on the participant’s liking of the co-witness. In short, the closer the relationship, the stronger the co-witness influence on memory. More recently, Rechdan et al. (2018) reported another effect of co-witness discussion in terms of the metacognitive regulation of memory reports: participants who had received disconfirming feedback from their co-witness were later more cautious in their own recall, providing more coarse-grained, less informative reports. These three studies illustrate that co-witnesses can distort memory reports in a variety of ways.

Memories, beliefs, and beliefs about memory

A recurring concern in James’ research, apart from social influence, was with the very nature of the (false) remembering that was going on in real-life cases and in lab studies like the ones covered above. When people report traumatic memories, memories of non-existing video footage, or false details that were only suggested to them, do they actually access detailed (but false) recollections? Or do they “merely” hold beliefs about the past to this effect and “declare” them as memories (or something in between)? Relatedly, are reported false memories always of the same kind (and driven by the same underlying processes), or do different mechanisms lead to different types of false memories?

Starting with the latter question: in one of the first studies on this topic, Ost, Blank, Davies, Jones, Lambert and Salmon (2013) looked at the relations between false memories obtained with two popular research paradigms, DRM lists and the eyewitness misinformation paradigm. In the DRM (Deese-Roediger-McDermott) paradigm, false memories are induced through presenting lists of words highly associated with a non-presented target word that is later falsely remembered (e.g., a list of words all related to sleep leads to falsely remembering sleep as having been on the list; Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995). In the misinformation paradigm (Loftus et al., 1978), participants first watch an event (e.g., a crime video) and then receive misleading post-event information (e.g., in a narrative), which is later often misremembered as part of the original event. James and colleagues linked these two species of false memories to a categorical distinction between naturally occurring and suggestion-dependent false memories (Mazzoni, 2002). Perhaps not surprisingly (at least in hindsight), the two types of false memories turned out to be completely unrelated (r = -.01) in the Ost et al. (2013) study. Similar results were obtained in other studies (e.g., Bernstein et al., 2018; Otgaar & Candel, 2011; Zhu et al., 2013). In short, “false memory ≠ false memory” (Ost et al., 2013).

The other conceptual distinction mentioned above, between (false) memories and (false) beliefs about the past, already figured in some form in Bartlett’s (1932) book on remembering but was more recently elaborated by Mazzoni and Kirsch (2002), Scoboria et al. (2004), and Blank (2009), among others. James used this distinction to revisit his old research on the experiences of retractors (of memories of childhood sexual abuse). In particular, he wondered if the retractors’ disowned experiences were comparable to what Scoboria et al. (2004) called non-believed memories (later extensively studied by Mazzoni et al., 2010, among others; see Otgaar et al., 2014, for a review), that is, cases where people remember autobiographical events but at some point reduce or even abandon belief that these events ever happened to them. In what is probably the most comprehensive (re-)analysis of retractors’ accounts to date (Ost, 2017), James systematically coded available reports (from his own PhD research and other publications) along these lines. He also looked at retractors’ (a) reasons for losing belief in these memories (compared to other non-believed memories, e.g., Scoboria et al., 2015) and (b) strategies for verifying memories when they still believed in them (again complementing recent memory literature, e.g., Wade et al., 2014).

In effect, there were similarities between the retractors’ experiences and the more mundane (non-believed) memories and verification strategies, but also very noticeable differences (e.g., not all retractors had ever developed full-blown memories in the first place; also, “verifying” information was typically externally offered, rather than actively sought out). One key finding that emerged from the analysis was the primacy of belief over recollection: in terms of the practical real-life consequences of the experiences, what mattered was a belief that the events occurred (or, later, that they did not occur), and the presence or absence of recollection was just another piece of supportive subjective evidence along with other contextual information. As James pointed out, this echoes Bartlett’s emphasis on the role of attitude in remembering: “As Bartlett (1932) suggested, reasoning, rather than conscious recollection, is important in inferring the ‘probable constituents’ of one’s past, and that socially situated beliefs (or ‘attitudes’) then drive recollection” (Ost, 2017, p. 907).

An entirely different kind of beliefs caught James’ interest in the context of his role as a court-appointed expert witness on false memory: lay beliefs about the functioning of memory. Plausibly, jurors’ reactions to cases involving either delayed or retracted memories of sexual abuse (and their eventual verdicts) will depend on their general beliefs regarding how memory works and, more specifically, beliefs regarding repressed memory or social influence on memory. Beliefs of practitioners (e.g., therapists) involved in such cases can be very consequential, too. For these reasons, James and colleagues (Ost et al., 2017; Ost et al., 2013) undertook a survey including more than 400 chartered clinical psychologists, hypnotherapists (a profession that does not require a formal qualification), and psychology undergraduates in the UK to explore their beliefs about memory along these lines, as well as the therapists’ experiences with recovered memory cases. One of the takeaway findings was that the chartered psychologists’ beliefs about memory were more aligned with the scientific consensus than those of the hypnotherapists (and psychology students); the hypnotherapists were also more likely to take the accuracy of recovered memories for granted and were more skeptical about the malleability of memory (e.g., through social influence). None of the three groups were in good agreement with scientific opinion, though (in line with other survey findings and reviews, e.g., Otgaar et al., 2019; Patihis et al., 2014). Accordingly, James and colleagues warned against using therapists (particularly hypnotherapists) as expert witnesses in court.

Later and unfinished work

Much of James’ wealth of expertise on false memory went into an edited book (with Rob Nash) on “False and distorted memories” (Nash & Ost, 2017). This volume combined contributions of leading false memory researchers to reflect the current state of knowledge on this topic and included many interesting chapters highly related to James’ own work (e.g., social influences on memory, nonbelieved memories). In their concluding chapter, the editors made predictions about the problems and priorities that would concern false memory researchers in future years, noting that our theoretical understanding of memory—just like memories themselves—changes and evolves over time:

Are children necessarily more susceptible to false memories than adults? Must false information be interpreted as credible and true before it has the power to infiltrate memory? Must recollecting an autobiographical experience imply believing in that experience? The chapters throughout this volume tell us that the answers to these questions are all “no,” but how many memory experts might have answered “yes” only a decade or two ago? Memory science has the power to debunk myths like these. (Ost & Nash, 2017, p. 157)

Other work James did not live to see in published form. His PhD student Eva Rubínová investigated memory (distortions) for repeated events, a topic that links both to memories of sexual abuse (which, sadly, is often a repeated experience) and to Bartlett’s schema theory, both of course areas that were congenial with James’ own PhD research. One study in particular (Rubínová et al., 2021) involved the recall of repeated unfamiliar stories, echoing Bartlett’s famous War of the Ghosts study but including additional elements, such as the experimental variation of story content and order. Notable findings were that, unlike parallel research with familiar materials (Rubínová et al., 2020), changes in content did not lead to increased recall of the changed details; theoretically, this finding points to a slower schema build-up with unfamiliar materials. By contrast, order variations always impeded recall (i.e., both with familiar and unfamiliar materials).

Still other work he could not finish. One of the topics we know he had been working on for some time, and testament to James’ eagerness to explore phenomena that piqued his curiosity, was an investigation into personality differences in exit latencies – the lengths of time that people keep searching their memory (e.g., when retrieving items from a previously learned list) without success before they decide to give up (the exit latency measure inspired by Dougherty & Harbison, 2007). Nevertheless, something did come out of this work – highlighting, coincidentally, another aspect of James’ creative scientific personality. As part of artist A. R. Hopwood’s False Memory Archive (https://www.arhopwood.com/fma) project in 2014, the audio-recorded exit latencies from James’ participants’ recall attempts were transformed to vinyl LPs, leaving a collection of “ers” and “ums”, occasionally audible breathing, but mostly – silence: the poignant sound of unsuccessful remembering.

James Ost’s legacy

Fortunately, what James Ost leaves behind for memory research is anything but silence. His work is a powerful reminder of the importance of studying memory and memory distortion in real-life contexts, as a necessary supplement of lab studies that tease apart the underlying cognitive machinery. James’ research illustrates at least three things: (1) We need a broad approach to understanding memory (distortions); no single paradigm or dimension will be sufficient on its own. Different types of false memory are only weakly related, and (false) remembering cannot be fully understood without the belief dimension to which it is inextricably linked (see Bartlett’s, 1932, “effort after meaning”). (2) Remembering is always a social activity; notwithstanding the cognitive machinery, what we remember is shaped by the person we speak to (e.g., in investigative interviews), the people we remember with (e.g., co-witnesses), or the people we remember for (e.g., the social groups we belong to). (3) Real-life memories and beliefs have consequences without which they cannot be fully understood; this is blatant in the case of retractors but holds more generally as well and should therefore be adopted as an integral part of any analysis of memory. (Beliefs about memory have tangible real-life consequences, too, and we need to understand them better.) In short, and corresponding to his real-life commitments (e.g., with the British False Memory Society), James’ take-home message for memory psychology is an appeal to shift the epistemic balance towards studying real-life (or at least, realistic) remembering in its different forms and aspects, in rich social contexts and with real consequences.

Contents of the special issue

The contributions to the special issue (which otherwise speak for themselves) each reflect James’ theoretical and practical concerns in one way or another, including empirical investigations related to memory suggestibility and distortion in realistic contexts (Butt et al.; Coburn et al.; Janssen et al.; Kenchel et al.; Robin et al.; Sheaffer et al.; Vo et al.) and studies of practically relevant memory beliefs (Cormia et al.; Dodier et al.; Sauerland & Otgaar). Two of the contributions are distinctive in ways that warrant particular mention: Firstly, as the only non-empirical article, Felstead and French feature the British False Memory Society and James’ role in it. Secondly, the final contribution in the special issue is authored by James himself in a hitherto unpublished modern take on Bartlett’s serial reproduction research (thanks to Alan Costall for overseeing the re-shaping of an existing draft for the present purposes). We cannot think of a more fitting conclusion to this special issue.

Acknowledgement

We are grateful to Lorraine Hope and Steve Lindsay for helpful comments on a draft. Correspondence may be addressed to either editor of the special issue; email addresses: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected].

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This academic title is uncommon outside the UK; it roughly equates to a senior Associate Professor in other countries.

2 For more detail on James’ life and academic career, see the obituaries in The Psychologist (Blank et al., 2019) and JARMAC (Hope et al., 2019).