An Outline of Findings and Conclusions of Research into the Capacity of Short-Term Memory Jacobs lead the first organised study of the capacity of short-term memory in 1887 by creating a technique called the "memory span". Jacobs discovered the average short-term memory span to be between five and nine items. This became known as the "magic number 7 plus or minus 2". He also found that letters were not recalled as well as digits. Individual differences were found, thus giving the range five to nine. Jacobs also found that short-term memory span increased with age, for example he found a 6.6 average for eight-year-old children compared to 8.6 for nineteen-year-olds. From Jacob's research we can see that short-term memory has a limited storage capacity of between five and nine items. The capacity of short-term memory isn't determined much by the nature of the information to be learned but by the size of the short-term memory span, which is fairly uniform across individuals of a given age. Individual differences were found as short-term memory span increased with age, this may be due to increasing brain capacity or improved memory techniques, such as chunking. 2) Outline one explanation of forgetting in long-term memory (LTM) and give one criticism of this explanation. Cue-dependant forgetting is a classic example of forgetting because of retrieval failure. The information is stored in memory, and so is available, but just cannot be retrieved until an appropriate cue is given. Tulving (1979) used the concept that remembering something depends on having the right cues, to put forward his encoding specificity principle: this is t... ... middle of paper ... ...ed people who had witnessed a crime where one person was shot dead and one person fatally injured. These interviews which were carried out a number of months after the incident had taken place, along with the interviews given to the police immediately after the incident, were analysed. The eyewitness accounts were found to be very accurate, and the accuracy and amount of information recalled didn't decrease over time. The eyewitnesses' accounts also didn't become distorted by leading questions. The Devlin report in 1976 to the Home Secretary found that in 1973 there were 850 cases where eyewitness testimony was the only evidence of guilt. In 74% of these cases a jury found the accused guilty. Because of the findings already discussed the Devlin committee advised that no jury convict on eyewitness testimony alone.
(Kennedy & Haygood, 1992; Williams & Loftus, 1994), which is worrying considering the growing and substantial body of evidence from laboratory studies, field studies, and the criminal justice system supporting the conclusion that eyewitnesses frequently make mistakes (Cutler & Penrod, 1995; Huff, 1987; Huff, Rattner, & Sagarin, 1986; Innocence Project, 2009; Wells, Small, Penrod, Malpass, Fulero, & Brimacombe, 1998). According to a number of studies, eyewitness misidentifications are the most common cause of wrongful convictions (Huff, Rattner, & Sagarin, 1986; Wells et al., 1998; Yarmey, 2003) and, through the use of forensic DNA testing, have been found to account for more convictions of innocent individuals than all other factors combined (Innocence Project, 2009; Wells, Memon, & Penrod, 2006).
You can't trust eyewitness reports because the human mind can't remember some things. “Every year more than 75,000 eyewitnesses identify criminal suspects in the us and studies suggest that as many as a third of them are wrong.” Thats 25,000 eyewitness reports wrong. All those mistakes caused the victims their lives. in the article by the week staff it says that the...
Eyewitness testimonies are also valued unique factors they can bring to criminal investigations. Nevertheless, an eyewitness testimony can also raise several factors that threaten its credibility, especially for those who haven’t had prior training in assessing witness reliability. It has been suggested, for instance, that jurors only have their common sense as their guides when their witnesses have strenuous claims (Schechel et al., 2006, p.178).
Eyewitnesses are primarily used by the criminal justice system for investigating and prosecuting crimes, particularly in circumstances where it is the only evidence available (Wells & Olson, 2003). Their testimony is highly regarded as it allows for police, prosecutors, judges and juries to establi...
The justice system depends on eyewitness evidence to convict offenders. Eyewitness is a difficult task to achieve in the justice system. According to Wise, Dauphinais, & Safer (2007), in 2002 one million offenders were convicted as felons in America. Out of those one million offenders, 5000 of them were innocent in 2002 (Dauphinais, 2007). The Ohio Criminal Justice survey states that 1 out of 200 felony criminal cases is a wrongful conviction (Dauphinais et al., 2007). According to Dauphinais et al., (2007), Dripps said that eyewitness error is a huge factor in cases of wrong convictions. A study conducted in 1987 indicated that in roughly 80,000 criminal cases, eyewitness error was the only sole evidence against the defendant
Memory is an important and active system that receives information. Memory is made up of three different stages sensory memory, short term memory, and long term memory. According to the power point presentation, sensory memory refers to short storage of memory that allows an individual to process information as it occurs. Short term memory refers to memory that is only available for a limited time. It is information that is held for seconds or sometimes even minutes. Long term memory refers to memory that is stored for a long period of time and it has an unlimited capacity with the ability to hold as much information as possible. Retrieval is key and it allows individuals to have memories. Episodic memory refers to memory for events that we
Fradella, H.F. (2006) Why judges should admit expert testimony on the unreliability of eyewitness testimony. Federal Courts Law Review. Retrieved from http://www.fclr.org/fclr/articles/html/2006/fedctslrev3.pdf
Preston, A. (2007, Sep 26). How does short-term memory work in relation to long-term memory? Are short-term daily memories somehow transferred to long-term storage while we
When an individual is trying to remember a certain memory or piece of information that is already learned, they access their long term memory to determine that memory. Studies have been conducted to prove that the theory of retrieval induced forgetting is true. An example of recognition induced for getting is the infamous eye witness testimony. When the victim is brought to the police station and told to choose which person in the line is the cause of the crime, the time spent between the actual crime and the trip to the police station can cause an issue with the witness remembering who the suspect was. Eye witness testimonies are considered an inaccurate way to catch a criminal because the victim can accuse the wrong person. Even in children, there are concerns when teaching a child, if they should access their long term memory to effectively learn. In present studies, retrieval induced forgetting was tested to prove if recognizing recent information causes harm to already learned information. In regards to the child learning, the downside of accessing their long term memory is the same as an adult. It is shown that retrieval induced forgetting can cause impairment to memory. Even when retrieval induced forgetting is an issue it is believed that one of the reasons that memory impairment is a hard subject to solve is because it only affects verbal memory not
The Effects of Levels of Processing on Memory PB1: Identify the aim of the research and state the experimental/alternative hypothesis/es. (credited in the report mark scheme) To show how different levels of processing affects the memory. “People who process information deeply (i.e. semantic processing) tend to remember more than those who process information shallowly (i.e. visual processing). ” PB2: Explain why a directional or non-directional experimental/alternative hypothesis/es has been selected. (I mark) I have used a directional experimental hypothesis because past research, such as that by Craik and Tulving (1975) has proved this. PB3:
Memory is a group of related mental processes that are involved in acquiring, storing, and retrieving information (Hockenberry and Hocenberry page 232). I will be addressing two specific types of memory: short-term memory and long-term memory. Short-term memory holds temporary information transferred from sensory memory or long-term memory. Sensory memory is the first stage of memory and obtains information for a brief amount of time. Short-term memory is also called active memory and is stored in the prefrontal cortex which is the most active part of the brain during an activity. Short-term memory can hold information for roughly twenty seconds, but sensory memory holds information for a shorter amount of time. We usually store things such
In a child younger than three or four have a harder time remembering things when they get older. Some researchers have even said that young children don't form memories, but that is false. However, their memories may fade once they get older or older memories are sometimes replaced with newer memories. Some may not even remember simple things such as their third or fourth birthdays. Also, other researchers think that this has to do with cognitive and language skills. According to Psychology Professor Carole Peterson: “this is not the case. Very young children can still recall past events.” Peterson also said “As young children get older their first memories tend to get later and later, but around the age of ten their memories crystallize.” Researchers have even done tests to check the memories of children. What they did was asked 140 kids in the age range of 4-13 to describe their earliest memories, then they would ask them two years later. They had to estimate the age they were at the time and parents were to confirm it. By doing this they found out that ages 4-7 showed very little overlap between the memories they called first and remembered them two years later. Peterson said “Even when we repeated what they told us two years before, many of the younger children would tell us it didn't happen to them.” ⅓ of the children ages 10-13 described the same earliest memory during their second interview. More than half of the memories were recalled the same at
...Baddeley (1966) study of encoding in the short term memory and long term memory supports the MSM model on the mode of processing such that words are processed on recall and both models share the same opinion that processing does influence recall. Finally, the MSM model of memory states that all information is stored in the long term memory, however, this interpretation contrasts with that of Baddeley (1974) who argue that we store different types of memories and it is unlikely that they occur only in the LTM store. Additionally, other theories have recognised different types of memories that we experience, therefore it is debatable that all these different memories occur only in the long-term memory as presumed by the multi-store model which states the long term memory store as with unlimited capacity, in addition it also fails to explain how we recall information.
Vallas, G. (2011). A survey of federal and state standards for the admission of expert testimony on the reliability of eyewitnesses. American Journal of Criminal Law, 39(1), 97-146. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com.pioproxy.carrollu.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=cookie,ip,cpid&custid=s6222004&db=aph&AN=74017401&site=ehost-live&scope=site
Eyewitness testimony is defined as, “an area of research that investigates the accuracy of memory following an accident, crime, or other significant event, and the types of errors that are commonly made in such situations.” Much emphasis is placed on the accuracy of eyewitness testimony as often-inaccurate eyewitness testimony can have serious consequences leading to wrong convictions. Eyewitness testimony is a powerful tool within any field, particularly that of justice, as it is a readily accepted form of evidence that allows for convictions. However, Tests conducted by Loftus have shown an enormous swing from a non-guilty verdict, to guilty within the same case, simply through the introduction of an eyewitness. This alone displays the importance of eyewitness testimony, and accentuates the theory that jurors tend to over believe, or at least rely heavily on such accounts.