Loftusconducted her study by having volunteers conduct a set of actions thatmixed the common place (flipping a coin) with the unusual and evenbizarre (crushing a Hershey's kiss with a dental floss container).Later, her research team asked volunteers to imagine additional actionsthey performed that day, such as kissing a frog. At a future time,participants were asked to recall their actions on that specificday[j1]. Ayanna Thomas, a doctoral student in Loftus' research group,found that 15 percent of the study's volunteers claimed they had actually performed some of the actions they had only imagined.

In another study, Loftus showed how false memories can be planted with a visual. Loftus and her colleagues exposed volunteers to a fake print advertisement describing a visit to Disneyland where they would meet Bugs Bunny. Later, 33 percent of these volunteers claimed they knew or remembered the event happening to them. (Bugs Bunny is a Warner Bros. character and has never appeared at Disneyland.) The false memory rate was boosted when people were given multiple exposures to the fake advertisement. In one study, 36 percent of those given three exposures said they met Bugs Bunny, compared to only 9 percent in a control condition.A key to inducing memories, researchers said, is to add elements of touch, taste, sound and smell to the story.IIt is sensory details that people use to distinguish their memories - If you imbue the story with them, you'll disrupt this memory process. It's almost a recipe to get people to remember things that aren't true," said Loftus.

These studies continue three decades of research on 20,000 subjects by Loftus proving that memory is highly susceptible to distortion and contamination. Her past work has shown that people can be led to remember rather familiar or common experiences, even when these experiences likely had not occurred. Much of Loftus's work has focused on false claims of repressed memories of sexual abuse. She also has shown that eyewitness accounts, notably those given in court, often are inaccurate. Loftus has served as an expert witness or consultant on some of the nation's most high-profile trials, including the McMartin Pre-school molestation case, the "Hillside Strangler" case, the police officers involved in the Rodney King beating and the Bosnian War Trials. She is ranked among the 25 psychologists most frequently cited in introductory psychology textbooks

Conclusions
Her success at planting these memories challenges the argument that suggestive interviewing may reliably prompt real memories instead of planting false ones.
N.B. Her paper was presented on 17th.Feb.03 to the American Association for the Advancement of Science.