is highly controversial, as is repression, the psychodynamic explanation of traumatic amnesia. Because these concepts lack good empirical support, psychological scientists are skeptical about the validity of "recovered memories", and argue that some therapists, through suggestive techniques, have (un)knowingly encouraged false memories of victimization. Evidence against The idea that subjects can actively inhibit a memory has many critics. MacLeod (2003) challenged the idea of inhibition in cognitive control, arguing that inhibition can be attributed to conflict resolution, which is the error-prone act of choosing between two similar values that do not necessarily have the same pair. Re-examine the pairs from above: Food-Cracker, Food-Strawberry, Red-Tomato, and Red-Blood. Memory inhibition theories suggest that recall of strawberry decreases when recall of tomato decreases because tomato's attributes are inhibited when red-blood is learned. MacLeod argues that inhibition does not take place, but instead is the result of confusion between similar word-pairs like food-tomato and red-strawberry that can lead to errors. This is different from tomato's attributes being inhibited. "In most cases where inhibitory mechanisms have been offered to explain cognitive performance", explains MacLeod, "non-inhibitory mechanisms can accomplish the same goal (p.203)". See also Emotion and memory Interference theory References External links Anderson's Memory Control Laboratory Daniel Wegner's Thought Suppression Papers Neural Systems Underlying the Suppression of Unwanted Memories (emotional part-set cuing effects) Innocence Project: an organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted individuals Memory Unsolved problems in neuroscience Memory biases