Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the option that best fits each of the numbered...

Most of us have treasured memories of the events that shaped our lives as a child. Or do we? Controversial new research claims that those recollections may be as real as fairytales. Leading psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, of the University of California, believes (18) __________. When we think we are reminiscing, we are simply ‘rewriting’ our memory to suit ourselves. She maintains there is no evidence that perfect memories are stored by individuals.

In one study, volunteers were asked to read about events that happened to them as children. One of these was made up – a shopping trip when they were five, in which they got lost and were rescued by an elderly person. Later, (19) __________, with self-assurance and emotion. You could argue that these people might have genuinely lost their mum in a shop at some point during childhood. But Loftus later carried out similar studies (20) __________, or being responsible for knocking over a punch bowl at a family wedding and spilling it all over the bride. The results were the same.

Dr Jaime Quintanilla, professor of psychiatry at the Texas School of Medicine, agrees that our earliest recollections are far from accurate and (21) __________. He says: “It’s a proven fact that young children take fragments of experience and build them into distorted memories. For example, one 40-year-old man distinctly remembers his parents once punished him by refusing to buy him shoes. In fact, when he was three, he cut his foot on a piece of glass and developed a nasty infection. For two weeks, he was confined to the house in his socks so his wound would heal. When he wanted to go out, he was told he couldn’t, because he had no shoes.” (22) __________.

[Adapted from English Unlimited]